Terror from the Extremes

One evening last week a well-dressed woman walked casually into the powder room of Caracas' Hotel Tamanaco, the favorite Venezuelan hotel for well-heeled U.S. tourists and businessmen. Minutes after she left, a thunderous explosion blew out the powder-room walls, shattered glass in the lobby, wrecked the interior of the cocktail lounge and injured five persons. Timed to coincide with the Tamanaco blast, a hail of fire from machine guns and mortars poured into an army motor pool on the other side of town. Troops returned the fire, and for two hours many of the expectant mothers in a nearby maternity hospital cowered beneath their beds as bullets ricocheted through the building. A bystander was killed and eight wounded before the attackers scattered and escaped.

First to Finish? The violence had a single objective: to undermine the government of President Romulo Betancourt, 54, and bring it down. But Betancourt is not an easy man to topple. Since taking office nearly four years ago, he has survived street riots, assassination attempts and barracks coups--the last a bloody marine corps uprising at Puerto Cabello naval base last summer. In the meantime, he has doggedly pursued a policy of reform. Under Betancourt's agrarian program, more than 3,700,000 acres of land (mostly government property) have been divided among nearly 55,000 families; 5,000 miles of farm-to-market roads have been built in two years. Illiteracy has been halved to 25%; the number of primary school students has jumped from 700,000 to 1,200.000, and for the first time in Venezuelan history the government is spending more on education than on the military. This, in a nation that Liberator Simon Bolivar once called ''the barracks" of South America. Now Betancourt is struggling to finish his five-year term, hold free elections and see his legal successor take office in February 1964. If he succeeds, it will be another historic first for a nation whose history is riddled with revolt and dictatorship.

Those who are out to stop Betancourt are tagged "extremists" by Venezuelans. Most of them are from the extreme left-members of the Communist Party, of the Castro-following Movement of the Revolutionary Left, of a Reddish faction of the left-of-center Republican-Democratic Union. Some are far-right opportunists who hate Betancourt for his insistent social and economic reforms. Their campaign is disjointed: occasional attacks on isolated villages in the hills, the murder of a few Caracas policemen, machine-gun forays on Caracas embassies, a Molotov cocktail thrown at a newspaper printing plant. Up to now, the bulk of the country's military has supported Betancourt in the interests of stability--and because they prefer his moderate reform to the violent upheaval a homegrown Castro would provoke. But as the tension continues, rumors of an impending coup rattle through the capital.

Privilege Abused. Taking his own steps to restore order, Betancourt last week suspended constitutional guarantees of assembly and free speech, imposed radio and press censorship, suspended the right of habeas corpus and privacy of the home. More than 300 known enemies of the regime were rounded up. And Venezuela's embattled President redoubled his efforts to revoke the congressional immunity of extremist Deputies who have abused it by openly preaching insurrection against the government.

All this was strong medicine, but tough-minded Romulo Betancourt knew that he had to prescribe it in order to hold the extremists at bay.

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