The Teen-Age Rebellion

From the lips of Venezuelan travelers to Trinidad, Costa Rica, Mexico and the U.S. last week came bits and pieces of the story behind what censored news cables have lately called "student disturbances" in Venezuela. The "disturbances" shaped up as a brutal police attack that killed a 17-year-old girl who was her school's "student queen" and wounded children as young as twelve.

All accounts agreed that the episode started as a protest by students of Fermin Toro high school in Caracas (pop. 1,000,000) against the sudden switch of examinations from the usual period in July to February. High-spiritedly, the teen-agers marched off toward the Ministry of Education. Almost any mild measure would presumably have stopped them, but the police-minded government of President Marcos Perez Jimenez sent well-armed cops. Angered and insulted by student insolence, the police attacked with sabers and (according to some accounts) fired on the shrieking school kids. An army officer arrived in time to see his daughter struck by a cop with the flat of a saber; he shot the policeman on the spot.

Thereafter demonstrations of protest--this time aimed at the regime itself--spread to schools all over Venezuela. Students wrecked laboratories and stoned policemen. Medical students at the National University in Caracas, who also work as hospital interns, spread word of wards crowded with wounded youngsters. At one point they ran up on a flagpole what they said was the bloody dress of the slain girl. The police cracked down by arresting teenagers, teachers and protesting parents.

How many were killed no traveler could say; newspaper mention of the rioting was censored clear down to the burial notices. The minimum eyewitness count of the dead was two and the highest estimate was 20. Other estimates: wounded, 70 to 100, jailed, 300 to 3,000.

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