Extra Dividend

Twelve U.S. newsmen who junketed south last week to publicize L.A.V.'s (Linea Aeropostal Venezolano) new Constellation service from New York to Caracas got an extra dividend. They saw the tail end of a real (if short-lived) South American revolt, complete with bombs and bullets.

The junketeers missed the overture. The furious bugling, the quick rattle of gunfire, the bomb burst at dawn at Maracay Airport barely disturbed them as they slept nearby in the sprawling Hotel Jardin. To the New York Daily News's John O'Donnell, the bomb sounded like a distant door slam. He went back to sleep.

But the tourists were on hand, bathed and breakfasted, for the 9 o'clock act. A rebel light plane buzzed the hotel entrance, gave loungers there a quick machine-gun burst. By the time the next and last rebel plane swooped down, rotund Bernard Relin, L.A.V.'s New York pressagent, had clucked his willing charges behind stone pillars and solid masonry.

Packed back to Caracas, the newsmen were told by amiable, bespectacled Provisional President Romulo Betancourt that the revolt was over and that "all is O.K." in Venezuela. The 200-odd rebels who had captured the Maracay Airport gave up that afternoon. The lone plane crew that tried to bomb the Presidential Palace in Caracas had missed, and the scattering revolutionary outbursts in the interior found little popular support. President Betancourt had himself crimped rebel strategy: instead of going to Maracay for graduation exercises at Venezuela's West Point of the Air--and facing capture--he had wisely stayed home.

As some airborne rebels came down in neighboring Colombia and others surrendered, Venezuelans learned what the shooting was about. A faction of hot-blooded Army impatients (who had helped put Betancourt and his Action Democratica Party in power only a year ago) wanted a reshuffle. Their chief objection: the leftist tone of the moderate Betancourt Government.

Demonstrated by last week's revolt: 1) rule in Venezuela is still subject to trial by combat; 2) the majority of Venezuelans are behind Betancourt's regime.

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