Bombs in Caracas

TIME Correspondent Phil Payne was in Caracas last week when revolt crackled through the capital and five other cities of Venezuela. His report:

Two homemade bombs, one of them exploding accidentally and one of them failing to explode as planned, last week touched off an automatic reaction by Venezuela's jumpy military junta: cries of revolt and arrests by the hundreds.

The explosion occurred in a little house with a corrugated aluminum roof in Caracas' eastern suburbs. Two revolutionaries were assembling a bomb from dynamite and steel pipe when the weapon, set off unintentionally, killed both. At Columbus Day ceremonies next day, someone tossed a bomb, hidden in a bouquet, at members of the junta: Lieut. Colonels Marcos Perez Jimenez and Luis Felipe Llovera Paez and their civilian satellite, President German Suarez Flamerich. Military policemen quickly scooped up the bomb, but it was a dud anyway. Twenty-four hours later, Llovera Paez broadcast that the junta had "crushed" a countrywide uprising, with gunfights in 16 towns.

For each bomb and for each brief battle, the junta blamed Accion Democratica, the party of the elected government which the military men tossed out of power and "dissolved" by decree in November 1948.

"We Have No Trouble." A.D. is the junta's triple migrain headache. It has underground cells everywhere, especially among students and oilworkers. The government employs an estimated 10,000 informers and agents, led by the Political and Social Brigade of the Seguridad Nacional, the federal police. Seguridad men are forever raiding the homes of known A.D. members without catching the men they want most, and without stopping clandestine A.D. newspapers.

Just before last week's bombings, the acting head of the Seguridad showed me his headquarters, discussing each section except the Political and Social Brigade. We whipped through that section so fast I was able to ask only two questions:

"Are you making any political arrests these days?"

"Oh, no, our work is mostly social. We have no political troubles. Oh, a few bomb-throwing anarchists, but every country has those," said the chief.

"And do you have much trouble with clandestine literature?"

"Clandestine literature? How do you mean? Political? Why, no, there is no such literature in Venezuela."

It was a nice try, but he overdid it.

The Pointed Parable. Recently a Caracas reporter named Oscar Yanes wrote a story under the headline, IN CARACAS, EVERYBODY'S GROUCHY. Mourned Yanes: "Every day, people laugh less," and he illustrated his point with a photograph of caraquenos glumly leaving a movie theater after a comedy. Everywhere Yanes found unsmiling citizens giving each other the rough sides of their tongues. "Pardon me," said Yanes to a man he had jostled in the street. "Pardon, is it? A little more of that and I'll slug you?" was the reply. Yanes left the reader to wonder what Venezuelans have to laugh about.

In prosperous Venezuela, why isn't everybody happy?

No other Latin American country has anything like the oil industry from which the Venezuelan government siphons off 60% of its annual income. Venezuela has mountains of iron ore, plenty of potential hydroelectric power. The country never saw anything like the present building activity, public and private.

Venezuela has no unhappy foreign relations. The Communist Party, which has made such strides in other unsmiling nations, is split and largely ineffective. Anti-yanqui propaganda is limited (Venezuela's favorite Americans are baseball players). Of the arts, music is liveliest; Caracas will have 100 concerts this year. There is talk of television in Maracaibo.

Well, then, why isn't everybody happy?

Phony Election? The guarded answer to this question from most Venezuelans is : political instability. Like all de facto governments in Latin America, the junta dreams of the magic ceremony at the polls which can turn a military dictator into a constitutional President. Last April came the decree promising the election of a constituent assembly within 14 months.

But will there really be elections? Venezuelans answer: yes, there will be, because the junta has committed itself to elections and fears the popular reaction to further delay. However, Perez Jimenez (the junta's Strong Man) is determined to become President, so the elections will have to be in his favor. And there is always a good chance that an A.D. revolution will beat him to the punch.

Or Real Revolution? For the A.D. view, I talked freely for an hour and a half with the Secretary General of Accion Democratica, Leonardo Ruiz Pineda, former cabinet minister. The cops have been looking for him for 27 months. Ruiz Pineda changes his residence every three days and goes out only at night, but he keeps in touch with the whole organization, sends and receives some 20 letters a day and frequently addresses meetings. Recently 80 policemen surrounded the house where he was staying, but he and a few friends shot their way out.

Ruiz Pineda contended that A.D. has learned much and will do better next time it is in power. When will the next time be? And will it be evolution or revolution? "The government will decide," answered Ruiz Pineda. "If they continue to deny us liberties, if they continue to hold all the power, then it must be revolution."

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