VENEZUELA: The New Orderliness

Proving that “order and democracy are perfectly reconcilable” is the prime aim of Venezuela’s new government—no small feat with Venezuela’s record for jackboot rule. But in Caracas, where Communist-led street mobs stoned Vice President Richard Nixon last spring and rumbled menacingly when their candidate lost a free election in December, the new notion is taking hold. In the squat white building that 16 months ago housed the dreaded cops of ousted Dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez’ Seguridad National, a branch of the Education Ministry was quietly at work last week. Lavender city buses cruised lazily down Avenida Sucre, where the Nixon limousine was trapped.

The new orderliness, still precarious, is the accomplishment of President Romulo Betancourt, 51, the veteran politician who led Socialist-minded Acción Democrática (A.D.) to victory over a Communist-backed coalition at the polls. Betancourt must still walk a line between the Communists, who wield ominous power with the Caracas street mobs, and the armed forces, intact and distrustful of both A.D. and the Reds.

Into the Lair. Betancourt began by wooing the military in its own lair—the marble, mahogany, and gold-crusted officers’ clubs built as a form of bribery by Pérez Jiménez. He offered not bribery but calming talk: “The armed forces are indispensable for the republic.” He insistently hinted that the day of the bloodless, predawn coup had ended.

The President excluded the Communists from his government but achieved a look of political unity by giving three Cabinet posts each to opposition parties, only two to his own A.D. (Seven “independents” are all trusted Betancourt friends.) With a solid majority in Congress and state governorships, A.D. is launching a fight for the labor unions, heavily infiltrated by Communists after the dictator fled.

Behind the Door. Pipe-smoking President Betancourt disappears behind his padded office door in Miraflores Palace before 8 a.m., sees some 60 visitors a day. His time is largely devoted to a nightmarish array of white elephants left behind by the dictatorship. Items: an unfinished $450 million steel works, gathering rust in the Orinoco jungle, a chain of showpiece hotels, 300 colorful apartment buildings, some of them 15 stones high, in Caracas. By official count, 90% of the apartment tenants refuse to pay rent.

Betancourt is still firmly committed to socialism but will try to sell off or shut down the worst of the money losers. He also plans such overdue measures as building hospitals and schools (the country is 65% illiterate), which will strain even the oil-rich budget. The army still has tanks, and the Communists still could muster 80,000 well-organized rioters. But working for Romulo Betancourt are his honesty, his political savvy and his country’s deep hunger for peace.