Argentina’s Mutineers Surrender to President : Alfonsin Confronts Rebellious Officers at Army Camp, Reports His Success to Cheering Throng

A furious President Raul Alfonsin stormed into a suburban military base in a three-piece suit Sunday to personally command the surrender of a clique of rebellious army officers. The rebels laid down their arms peacefully.

Crowds of civilians brushed past military guards and police firing tear gas to support Alfonsin inside the base. Hundreds of thousands of others filled the historic Plaza de Mayo downtown to shout their approval.

“I am going personally to Campo de Mayo. I ask you all to wait for me here,” Alfonsin roared to the crowd at mid-afternoon on a cloudless Easter. “If God wills, I will return shortly with solutions.”

Alfonsin flew by army helicopter to sprawling Campo de Mayo, the country’s largest military base, where 50 to 150 rebel officers had been holed up for four days demanding that human rights trials of military officers be halted and that the army’s chief of staff be dismissed.

At the base, Alfonsin talked briefly with Lt. Col. Aldo Rico, 41, who had triggered the revolt and was immediately cashiered.

Three hours later, Alfonsin was back on a balcony before a crowd estimated by one independent Argentine news service at 400,000. The feisty, mustachioed president was a changed man in the same dark suit.

“Happy Easter!” he boomed, tears glinting in his eyes. “The rebels have given up. As the law demands, they will be arrested and tried. . . . The house is in order. There is no blood in Argentina.”

The sweatered crowd, its numbers swelling steadily during a long, brisk and tense autumn day, screamed, “Alfonsin! Democracia! “ Strangers held hands to sing the national anthem as the president embraced weeping members of his Cabinet and opposition politicians who had rallied to him during a Holy Week crisis that proved the gravest threat to Argentina’s three-year-old democratic administration.

Jubilation echoed through crowded plazas in cities around the country. In one typical reaction, Carlos Juarez, the governor of tranquil and distant Santiago del Estero province, telegraphed Alfonsin on Sunday night: “In my province we have lived anguished hours, but we are proud that democratic forces have overwhelmed the madness of a group of seditionists.”

Alfonsin’s dramatic and unprecedented intervention at the huge base, which sprawls across more than 20 square miles an hour’s drive northwest of this capital, ignited an Easter that had dawned somberly for the government.

Although Alfonsin insisted that he had never ordered an attempt to overwhelm the rebels by force, well-placed Argentine sources insisted that the government had been told that loyal units rushed to the scene from other bases would bottle up the rebels but would not attack them.

The government won support from the navy, the air force and leaders of the army, but the longer the crisis dragged on, the greater became the uncertainty about the loyalties of mid-ranking army officers.

Firm on Constitutional Rule

Alfonsin had vowed from the onset of the crisis Thursday that civilian, constitutional government, restored in 1983 after seven years of harsh military rule, was not negotiable, but it remained unclear Sunday night whether the government had offered concessions to win a peaceful solution.

In a statement to local reporters after meeting with Alfonsin, rebel leader Rico said: “We reached an agreement with the president as commander in chief. We were not seeking a coup. This was strictly a military problem; a reaction against a corps of generals that has led us to one failure after another.”

Government sources said Sunday night that Rico was under arrest at the base, but reporters who spoke with him there said that the rebels remained with their arms inside the headquarters of the infantry school where they had barricaded themselves Thursday and would formally surrender themselves to military authorities today.

No Support for Coup

Massive public support, as unremitting as it was astonishing in a country routinely riven by economic crisis and divisive internal politics, buoyed Alfonsin, making it plain that there was no civilian support for a coup against him.

Leaders of every political party joined with Alfonsin in signing a declaration in defense of democracy at the Government House on Sunday, while the crowd in the plaza outside applauded. Trade unions controlled by the Peronists, Alfonsin’s bitterest domestic foes and sponsors of half a dozen general strikes against him, called a general strike today to support the government. Once the revolt ended, the strike was canceled.

The Alfonsin government drew strong backing as well from other Latin American democracies, West European governments and the United States. In a tough statement Sunday, the California White House unqualifiedly reinforced earlier State Department support for Alfonsin.

Civilians Jeered at Rebels

Politicians of every stripe and hundreds of civilians jeering at the rebels fueled confusion and fears inside the Campo de Mayo base Sunday as Alfonsin flew to meet with Rico.

“For the love of God go home. Take the children away. It’s dangerous,” yelled a loyalist general as crowds milled around the infantry school where the heavily armed rebel officers withdrew their pickets, washed off camouflage paint and shaved while waiting for Alfonsin.

Officials close to Alfonsin had long ago concluded that human rights trials for abuses committed during military repression of Marxist guerrillas, together with his determination to bring the arrogant services under tighter civilian control, might produce a vest-pocket uprising.

It came Thursday in the interior industrial city of Cordoba, where an army major accused of heading a clandestine torture center during the so-called “dirty war” against subversion during the 1970s refused to appear in court and found refuge in a paratrooper unit.

The major, Ernesto Barreiro, fled Friday, but by then the bespectacled, charismatic Rico, a decorated veteran of Argentina’s 1982 war against Britain over the Falkland Islands, had revolted at the infantry school with support of some of the officers stationed at the Campo de Mayo base.

Sought Military Changes

In periodic contact with reporters, the rebels said they sought a housecleaning in the corps of generals, beginning with Lt. Gen. Hector Rios Erenu, who is army commander, commander of the joint chiefs of staff and an Alfonsin loyalist.

The rebels also demanded what they called a “political solution” to the human rights question. By count of the Alfonsin government, the security forces abducted and killed about 9,000 people during the “dirty war.”

Under trials ordered by Alfonsin, 10 officers, including two former presidents and three other members of juntas that ruled from 1976 to 1983 have been sentenced to terms up to life. Congress approved a controversial government-proposed law that ended filing of new charges in February except in a few cases, but accusations are still pending against about 200 active and retired military and police officers, including more than a dozen admirals and generals.

Middle-ranking officers who were subalterns during the “dirty war” are incensed by the proceedings.