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 the most resentful and hot-tempered mobsters came down from the hills to riot and burn.

Luring them down into town was a gathering of unemployed workers; leading them on was a cadre of antigovernment hoodlums. The leaders scattered leaflets blasting Betancourt's Acción Democrática Party, got about 200 of the unemployed to join a protest parade toward the Plaza Silencio, Caracas' traditional riot spot.

On the way to Silencio they stopped buses, let air out of their tires to block traffic. They tossed stones at display windows and police cars, got bullets and tear gas in return. As they began burning vehicles, trucks roared into the center of the city carrying 2,000 battle-ready National Guardsmen. The troops brought a brief lull; then the mob tried to lynch a cop. Troops and more cops broke up the lynching bee, but for nearly seven hours the rioters smashed windows, burned, looted, tried to invade central police headquarters. By the time peace returned, one rioter had been shot through the head, 23 more were wounded, 242 were under arrest.

When the rioting broke out, Betancourt was outside Caracas, inaugurating public works and dividing government land among peasant farmers. He dashed back to the capital, held a grim-faced meeting with his Cabinet, ordered a crackdown. Result: without benefit of trial, those arrested as arsonists, looters or vandals during the riots were flown to road-building camps in eastern Venezuela. Betancourt, "as a democratic Venezuelan and a sensible man," regretted the necessity, but he added: "I have given instructions to all police forces to proceed with maximum energy against those who try to repeat the shameful events." The first test of the get-tough policy would come Jan. 23, second anniversary of the day the mob helped overthrow the 1950-58 dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez and cleared the way for Betancourt's democracy.

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