Repudiating Castro

Squads of steel-helmeted combat troops guarded every polling place, and an air force DC-3 droned low over Caracas with a loudspeaker broadcasting guarantees of safety to the voters. It was Election Day in Venezuela--the day that Castroite F.A.L.N. terrorists had promised to fill with violence. They proved themselves ineffectual.

A few bombs exploded around the city; at one point a sniper fired from a building, killing one man and wounding his wife. The troops quickly flushed him out, and the balloting went on. By nightfall 3 million Venezuelans, more than 90% of the electorate, had gone to the polls to choose a new President to take over next March from Romulo Betancourt, who is constitutionally barred from succeeding himself.

No Majority. Yet if the election was a personal triumph for Betancourt, it was considerably less of a political victory. As expected, the winner was Raul Leoni, 57, the shrewd, dour president of Betancourt's Accion Democrdtica party. A founder of A.D., Leoni served as Venezuela's Labor Minister while Be tancourt was provisional President from 1945 to 1948, later took over the party leadership in 1958 when Dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez was overthrown and Betancourt elected President. Leoni campaigned on a promise to continue Betancourt's successful economic and social reforms. But he lacks Betancourt's flair and almost hypnotic hold on back-country campesinos; squabbles within A.D. also worked against him. As a result, Leoni and A.D. won only 33% of the vote last week (v. nearly 50% in 1958), enough to elect Leoni President but far from enough for a working majority in Congress.

To govern effectively, Leoni will have to turn to the man who finished a surprisingly strong second: Rafael Caldera, 47, leader of the Social Christian COPEI Party. He won 21% of the vote. An able Caracas lawyer who advocates far-reaching reform, Caldera has been gathering strength from new voters and those disenchanted with A.D.'s bickering factions. Five years ago, COPEI won 16% of the vote and a junior voice in a coalition government with A.D. Now Caldera's COPEI support is crucial to A.D., and Leoni will have to offer more for a deal with Caldera.

As far as the U.S. was concerned, the political difficulties were less important than the fact that Venezuelans had been able to hold a democratic and peaceful election. "The real winner," said a State Department spokesman, "is the democratic process."

Four days after Venezuela's election, the F.A.L.N. terrorists released U.S. Army Colonel James K. Chenault, whom they had kidnaped as an election publicity stunt. During Chenault's confinement, TIME Correspondent Mo Garcia was offered a secret interview with Chenault, met his F.A.L.N. source as agreed, standing outside a Caracas movie theater holding a newspaper and a swizzle stick. Garcia was led to a car; his eyes were taped, and he was driven to a hideout somewhere in Caracas. He found Chenault, blindfolded and dressed in light yellow pajamas. The colonel said he had received "reasonably good treatment," except that his captors, youths about 16 to 18 years old, continually tried to indoctrinate him in Marxism. Three days later, Chenault was turned free.

The idea of kidnaping Americans seemed to be spreading. In Bolivia, Communist-led tin miners announced that they were holding four Americans --two U.S.I.S. officials, an Alliance labor adviser, a Peace Corpsman--and would keep them until the Bolivian government released three miners arrested for murder and misuse of union funds.

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