Down on His Luck

By longstanding custom, when a LatinAmerican head of state is overthrown, he is either tossed into prisonor hustled into exile, where he can live on the money that, mostprobably, he has stashed away while in office. But last June, whenGeneral Juan Carlos Onganía and his military supporters oustedArgentina's President Arturo Umberto Illia, they did not bother withsuch formalities. Judging the mild-mannered, scrupulously honest,onetime country doctor to be no threat to them, the soldiers simplytold him to go home. Trouble was, Illia had no home.

He could not return to his home town of Cruz del Eje, 540 miles north ofBuenos Aires, for the residents resented his having refused whilePresident to pass out patronage to his friends there. Nor did he havethe money to set up a new home. With no private income, Illia hadbarely managed to get by on Argentina's parsimonious presidentialsalary of $500 a month . And out ofoffice, he was too proud to apply for the presidential pension, whichany how amounts to a mere $14 monthly.

So Illia moved into his brother's house in a Buenos Aires suburb andwatched over his ailing wife, Sylvia, 46, who recently returned fromthe U.S., where she had been treated for cancer. Occasionally, hewould break the bedside vigil to receive some of his old friends andformer ministers, with whom he talked for hours about what might havebeen.

Last week Sylvia died, and curious crowds pushed and shoved as asaddened Illia walked slowly through the streets behind his wife'scasket. At the church, and later at the cemetery, the unruly throngtried to turn the sad occasion into an anti-Ongania demonstration byshouting, "Death to dictatorship!" and "The military trash cannotgovern us!" Dazed and tearful, Illia ignored the shouts. After theceremony, he retreated once more to his brother's home. His plans: tosell some of the gifts he received while President and with the money,plus contributions from friends, rent an apartment in Buenos Aires. "Heis a sober man," said a friend. "He will not need much."

Cancer
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