The Challenger

Over & over, the men & women massed in the Caracas bull ring chanted "Caldera si, Gallegos no!" Venezuela's chief opposition party, the right-wing COPEI (Committee for Independent Electoral Political Organization), had at last found a candidate for the presidential election on Dec. 14. Against famed 63-year-old Novelist Romulo Gallegos, candidate of the ruling Accion Democratica, would be pitched young (31), burly (6 ft., 200 lbs.) Rafael Caldera, one of COPEI's founders.*

Handsome, good-natured Rafael Caldera has been a teacher of sociology at the University of Caracas. When he was only 20, he helped draft Venezuela's labor code, still in force. He has lost none of his interest in labor; last year, on a visit to the U.S., he made a point of consulting C.I.O. leaders. Briefly, before going into opposition, he was attorney general in President Romulo Betancourt's revolutionary government.

As had Gallegos (TIME, Sept. 29), Caldera last week picked the Caracas bull ring for the opening speech of his campaign. After the cheers had rolled away, he outlined his party's "Social Christianity" program. "The rich should be less rich, the poor less poor," he said. He asked more rights for labor. Pumping away with his right arm, he attacked the Marxism of Accion Democratica, called for "social peace" to replace the class struggle. Caldera, whose party has church support (it accuses Accion of being anti-Catholic), plumped for a concordat that would abolish the state's present right to approve church appointments.

At COPEI's crowded headquarters in an old tumbledown house in the north end of the capital, Caldera talked of the campaign. Said he: "We have no great illusions. Our fight will be important in the civic and educational sense." A year ago, in the elections to the Constituent Assembly, COPEI polled about 220,000 votes to Accion's 1,200,000; Caldera was one of 19 COPEI members elected to face Action's 137. This week Caldera begins a 20-state tour; the ex-schoolteacher will learn a lot of civics between now and election day.

*The Communists finally picked 49-year-old Gustavo Machado, longtime political exile and Commie organizer.

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