Monday, Jan. 25, 1971

In with the Outs

Havana has been a haven for exiled revolutionaries for more than a decade. Algiers, too, has been a trendy fixture on the circuit for a few years. Now the Chilean capital of Santiago, home of Latin America's first freely elected Marxist government, is fast becoming the In place with the Out crowd.

In recent weeks, terrorists, revolutionaries and other troublemakers on the lam have gravitated to Socialist President Salvador Allende's capital from Bolivia, Brazil and Uruguay. Currently, the chief revolutionary in residence is Jules Regis Debray, 30, the French Marxist (some say Maoist) and Castro confidant who was captured in Bolivia shortly before Che Guevara was killed there in 1967. When he was released a month ago by the leftist military regime that recently seized power in La Paz, Debray had served nearly four years of a 30-year sentence for aiding Che's abortive attempt to stir up a peasant revolt. In Santiago, he has been working on a chronicle of the Allende regime and tells newsmen that he has "matured" since his days as a champion of violent revolution.

Last week the capital was also invaded by 70 urban guerrillas who were sprung from Brazilian jails in return for the release of kidnaped Swiss Ambassador Enrico Giovanni Bucher. The Brazilians, most of student age, were warmly received. When one bellowed "Down with the Brazilian dictatorship!" as he stepped off the plane, a claque of admiring Chilean students chorused back: "Down, down, down, down!"

How long Chile's popularity will last is uncertain. Santiago would doubtless rate more stars than Havana in any Bakuninist Baedeker. The four Quebec terrorists who were flown to the Cuban capital last month in exchange for the release of British Trade Commissioner James Cross were grousing about their future in Castro's hardscrabble country even before they arrived. Still, Chile is not even trying to match the amenities available in Algeria, where President Houari Boumedienne provides visiting revolutionaries with housing, $500 a month in expenses, air-travel vouchers and even artillery practice. After the initial abrazos, Chilean officials put the arriving Brazilians up in welfare dormitories, then told them that they would be on their own after 15 days.

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