Echoes from a Coup

More than a month had passed since a military junta seized the government in Venezuela, and the U.S. had not recognized the new regime in Caracas. President Truman, who had come to know and like ousted President Romulo Gallegos on their two-day trip across the U.S. to Bolivar, Mo. last July, was personally responsible for the decision.

Last week Washington learned how Harry Truman had made up his mind. Shortly after the Gallegos government was overthrown, a White House secretary called the Simon Bolivar Memorial Foundation, which had arranged last summer's celebration in Bolivar. "The President," said the secretary, "would like to see your film on the Bolivar ceremony." Harry Truman sat silent through the half-hour, full-color documentary. Both his own speech and that of Gallegos were exhortations in praise of democracy. The movie over, the President said: "A fine picture. It says what we want to stress. It should be shown in every school of the Americas."

Twelve days after the screening, the State Department issued its statement denouncing military power grabs like the one that had deposed Gallegos.

In La Paz last week, Bolivian Foreign Minister Xavier Paz Campero quit in a cabinet squabble over recognition of the Venezuelan junta. A leading exponent of the "automatic recognition" policy at last April's Bogota conference, Paz Campero had made his country the first to recognize the new military regime in Peru, had been all for giving Venezuela the same pat on the back. But the Bolivian government, in company with the U.S. and many a hemispheric neighbor, had decided to go slow in making friends with juntas.

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