Venezuela: Primary Target

The night before Venezuela's President Rómulo Betancourt was to dedicate a new archbishop's palace in Ciudad Bolívar, 275 miles southeast of Caracas, two men were caught planting a time bomb behind a wall near the speakers' platform. Who were they? Members of the Communist Party, and allies of Cuba's Fidel Castro. His patience stretched to the breaking point, Betancourt at first ordered the arrest of every one of the country's estimated 40,000 Communists, Castroites and far-leftists, but later amended the order to cover only "activists and terrorists." The incident proved once more that Castro is determined to export his revolution, and that Venezuela's democratic, reform-minded President, whom the Reds have been after for years, is still target No. 1. As an Organization of American States committee recently reported: "There is no doubt that the Castro regime has chosen Venezuela as its primary objective."