With Impunity & Immunity

Only a fraction of Venezuela's 7,000,000 people are Communists or Castroites. They stand little chance of toppling President Romulo Betancourt by direct frontal attack. But they are persistent at sabotage and artful in harassment, hoping to prove that Betancourt cannot maintain order. So far, the tough old ex-revolutionary -- who wants to be come his country's first freely elected President to survive his term -- has been powerless to end the terrorism.

Pipelines & Paintings. The outfit that splashes its F.A.L.N. initials on any inviting wall calls itself the Armed Forces of National Liberation. Its membership --leftist students, disgruntled workers, professional saboteurs and gunmen--may number less than 400, though Venezuelan far left parties claim 60,000 members. Hardly a day goes by without an irritating reminder of the F.A.L.N.'s existence. Last week a main gas pipeline into Caracas went up in a blast of flame; a major bridge on the highway 25 miles east of the capital was destroyed by dynamite; and four soldiers were killed in an F.A.L.N. ambush in the eastern mountains. So it has gone for more than a year--a government freighter hijacked, banks robbed, policemen murdered, hotels bombed, the U.S. military mission headquarters in Caracas burned.

For Betancourt, the most maddening element in the situation is that the sponsors who bankroll and control the F.A.L.N. are easily identifiable. Most sit in full view as members of federal and state legislatures, protected by congressional immunity. In 1960, a federal Deputy led mobs that turned Caracas into a battleground for seven days. Two other Deputies were involved in bloody rebellions at Carupano and Puerto Ca-bello last year. All claimed congressional immunity--and all but one got away with it.

The U.S. Enemy. One of the inner-circle leaders of the F.A.L.N. is Gus tavo Machado, 65, chief of the Venezuelan Communist Party and federal Deputy from Caracas. The rebellious son of wealthy parents, Machado spent two student years in jail for opposing Dictator Juan Vicente Gomez. He went into exile, first in the U.S., then in France, where he became a convinced and highly disciplined Communist. Returning to Latin America in the 1920s, Machado helped found the Communist Party in Cuba, carried cash and medicines to guerrilla fighters in Nicaragua, worked with the Venezuelan Commu nist Party from exile on the Dutch island of Curacao. Eventually he kidnaped the Governor of Curasao, commandeered an American ship, and invaded his homeland.

These days Machado directs the party from a comfortable, middle-class apartment in Caracas and an office in the National Congress Building. His hair turned a distinguished white, the Communist boss carries (as do many Venezuelan politicos) a .38 pistol in his pocket. Of his family, he says that three of his brothers and two sisters are "members of the oligarchy--but good people in spite of that." He is "proud" of the work of the F.A.L.N., and explains its attacks on U.S. holdings by saying, "The enemy of the Venezuelan liberation movement is the U.S. monopolists, so in any war action we always point to this enemy."

Majority Withheld. Three weeks ago, the F.A.L.N. tried to blow up Betancourt as he dedicated a new arch bishop's palace. Angrily Betancourt ordered a roundup of terrorists and activists. But his police are woefully inefficient. And although he has outlawed participation of parties of the far left in elections late this year, he cannot legally cancel the immunity of incumbent Congressmen without a majority vote of Congress--a vote his congressional opponents, who now control the legislature, are not apt to give him for fear that he might remove enough extreme leftists to cancel their majority.

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