Local Argentine Expert's Citizenship After Lamont Broadeast

One Harvard graduate can never return home--even for Christmas; his country, wants him dead or alive.

He is Walter M. Beveraggi-Allende, professor of Latin-American economy at Boston University, who got his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard last spring and one month later learned the Peronist legislature had revoked his citizenship.

The action came as a result of his statements at a Lowell Institute "America At The Crossroads" broadcast from the Lamont Forum Room last June when he charged the Argentine government was "riddled with Communists" and urged the United States intervene and oust Peron. It was the first time in Argentina's 426-year history a citizenship had been taken away.

"I was not suprised," Allende said yesterday, "Peron would go to any lengths to discredit me."

Arrested and Tortured

Allende was one of the Argentine Labor Party leaders who is 1948 were arrested and tortured by the Peron police. This was an attempt to make the leaders confess they had tried to assasinate Peron as part of a U.S. plot to overthrow the Argentine government.

After being starved and tortured for five days the group was brought before a judge for the first time and told that if they said anything about their torture the police would secretly execute them. The mock trial which followed sentenced them to a jail term and at the same time granted all temporary paroles--but with a 24-hour police guard.

Allende, in a storybook escape, got out of the country. Two fellow labor leaders were later jailed again and are still in prison.

He subsequently appealed to the United Nations, charging Argentine violation of human rights and citing examples of the torture of women, children, and priests. The appeal was ignored.

"Dead or Alive"--Peron

Last spring, after finishing his work here, he took a three-month trip to Uruguay to collect information about Argentina. "I had been there only a few days when I learned from the underground that Peron himself had issued a police order to take me dead or alive."

ernment agents. "Because of this, nothing happened," he added.

The former labor party leader still got frequent reports from undegound.

From then on Allande was closely guarded by the Uruguay anti-Peron govsouces about what was going on inside the country. He said that the news out of A gontina was more closely censored than "anyone realizes in this country."

One law, he said, gives correspondents a jail sentance of up to 6 years for issuing "alarmist" news. While in Monte Video he found out what happened last summer to the man who was then head of the Associated Press in Argentina.

"He was picked up in Buenos Aries at 11 p.m. one night without any charges against him and crowded first into a car and then a plane. For eight hours he had no idea of where he was or where he was being taken. At 7 a.m. the next morning he was released in Uruguay, without any Argentina re-entry papers."

Allende said news of the story was suppressed at the time because of the danger of breaking relations with Argentina.

Incidents like this, besides examples of violence by the Peronists which he cited, aroused the Labor Party official against the lack of United States' policy in Argentina.

"While there is so much concern about supporting liberties in places like Kores, there is no concern of peoples oppressed by tyrants in other parts of the world, as long as those tyrants claim to be anti-Communist," he said.

No United Front

"With that kind of solidarity by the democratic governments I doubt if there will be any real united front to fight the Communist totalitarianism."

Allende, an expert on South American affairs, described Argentina's economic situation as "acute." He pointed to the decreased output of wheat in Argentina, once the world's second largest wheat exporter, and said the country was now forced to import at least 6 million bushels yearly from the U.S. Allende cited this and decreased industrial outputs as results of the growing "passive resistence" to the Peron regime.

"The current nation-wide strike of 50,000 students shows what is really happening in Argentina," he said.

He referred to strikes of students, traditionally one of the most active political groups in Argentina, which broke out six weeks ago because the government made them join a Peron front organization. In 1946, when Peron came into power, all Argentine university professors were forced to join a similar organization, causing 1600 to resign