VENEZUELA: Third-Time Loser

In downtown Caracas, where names are given to blocks and street corners (rather than to streets), is a block known as Cipreses-to-Velásquez. There one day last week, during the early-morning bustle of market-bound housewives, the political police closed in on the grill-windowed colonial house numbered 12/1. After a thundering fusillade, the cops charged upstairs and captured Alberto Carnevali, 36, commander of the underground resistance to Venezuela's provisional President, Colonel Marcos Pérez Jiménez.

Carnevali was the man most wanted by Pedro Estrada, the government's burly police boss. Since Estrada's cops killed Carnevali's predecessor, Leonardo Ruiz Pineda, on the streets of Caracas...