VENZUELA: The Old Army Game

The army gave Venezuela its first democratic government; the army took it away. The military leaders in the “cold coup” last week were the same officers who had ousted Dictator-President Isaías Medina Angarita in 1945, opening the way for last year’s popular election of President Rómulo Gallegos.

As long ago as last August, Caracas’ everlasting bolas (rumors) had whispered that the army was dissatisfied with the way things were going in the government offices at green-walled Miraflores Palace. Novelist-President Gallegos and the ruling Acción Democrádtica party wanted to reduce the army to a police force; the army had no intention of being demoted. High officers called on President Gallegos, demanded four cabinet posts, four governorships. Easygoing, well-meaning Gallegos did nothing.

From a Sickbed. The officers waited, then early in November called again. This time they meant business. Gallegos and Rómulo Betancourt, leader of Acción Democrádtica, were willing to bargain but they refused to accept dictation. Behind them, they hinted, were nearly half a million militant party members.

For two weeks, tension mounted and rumors grew. Venezuelans began to pray that handsome, tuberculous Lieut. Colonel Mario Vargas would return from his Saranac Lake, N.Y. sickbed. The army liked Vargas. He was also a close friend of both Gallegos and Betancourt. Vargas, people said, would straighten things out.

Early last week shy, bespectacled Lieut. Colonel Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, Minister of Defense, and dumpy Lieut. Colonel Marco Pérez Jiménez, Chief of Staff, called on President Gallegos. Their message was simple: do as the army has bidden or else. Deadline: tomorrow. Next day the entire cabinet resigned, but the day dragged on without a word of a new cabinet.

Into this situation strode Mario Vargas. He was plump, but with the telltale flush still on his cheeks. He argued with his officer friends for compromise. “Things have changed,” he was told. Vargas decided to goalong with them. Then tanks rumbled down Caracas’ narrow, hilly streets, truckfuls of steel-helmeted soldiers screeched up before Miraflores. In a matter of 30 minutes, troops had occupied every important building and intersection in the city.

Under the Portrait. In the Defense Ministry, stubby Pérez Jiménez strode from telephone to telephone like an animated fireplug, gushing orders. The reports were soon in: every garrison in the country had supported Chief of Staff Pérez; hardly a shot had been fired.

At midnight, standing under a portrait of Simon Bolivar, Lieut. Colonel Delgado Chalbaud was made provisional president at the head of a junta consisting of himself, Pérez Jiménez and Assistant Chief of Staff Luis Llovera Paez Secocín.

Gallegos was held under protective custody in the Escuela Militar; other prominent Acción Democratistas fled to foreign embassies for sanctuary. Betancourt went into hiding. But the vast majority of the party’s politicians and labor leaders were clapped into jail. Union funds were seized by the army. Newspapers were ordered to hew strictly to the army’s line, and an almost continuous radio barrage of pro-junta propaganda helped to sell the coup to the country.

Next morning, stunned Venezuelans blinked, shrugged and went back to work. Shops were open, businesses were functioning. By week’s end, there was horse racing in the Hipódromo Nacional.

The junta promised to stand by Gallegos’ labor legislation, honor oil contracts, hold early elections and continue “democratic principles.” In the same breath it suspended guarantees of “the inviolability of correspondence, of the home, of liberty of thought, of travel, of changing address, of leaving the country and returning to it, of public assembly and of individual security.”

Gone with the coup was Venezuela’s first experiment with democracy. Gone also was the illusion that the electorate had at last replaced the military as the source of political power. Said the unblushing Pérez Jiménez: “The mind of the professional soldier should now be freed from all preoccupation with politics . . .”