VENEZUELA: Crackdown on the Mob

Caracas, like Paris of old, is a city with a mob. The mob's hungry, resentful, mostly unemployed members live in shanties that cling to the hills around the rich and modern city like a scabby rash. Their economic plight deeply moves President Rómulo Betancourt, but politically they form a volatile threat to his regime. They are the ones who kicked and spat at U.S. Vice President Nixon, cheered Cuba's Fidel Castro when he visited Venezuela (and voted 5-1 in Caracas against President Rómulo Betancourt in the 1958 election). Last week 400 of...