"The President Is Sick"

Costa Rica, once an exemplary Latin American democracy, was a melancholy land last week. Martial law ruled in San Jose, where government riflemen, many of them Communists, tramped grimly in the half-empty streets. Trade had died. Jammed in jail were 500 political prisoners, caught in the political strife that had brought civil war to Costa Rica (TIME, March 15).

The war was also international. Despite U.S. diplomatic pressure, Nicaraguans, Dominicans and Hondurans fought for the leftist government. Guatemalan and Panamanian soldiers of fortune were backing Otilio Ulate, who had apparently won last month's presidential election which Costa Rica's Congress annulled on grounds of fraud.

Cigar & Fuse. Reported TIME, Correspondent Jerry Hannifin: "The war is only an hour from San Jose in the dense brush and oak-clad forest of Cerro de la Muerte (Hill of Death). At the roadside is the command post for a unit of 500 men commanded by a skinny, glowering, 19-year-old colonel. 'This,' says he, 'is the People's Army of Liberation. We are fighting Ulate and his Nazi-Falangist fanatics led by Jose Figueres.'

"There isn't a defined front, only infiltration from both sides. Snipers squat behind rocks, climb trees, hide in the brush of the 11,000-ft. Meseta Central.

"From across a nearby ridge comes the sound of machine-gun fire, then the roar of a low-flying plane. 'We're bombing them,' says the colonel. Both sides are using planes, but Figueres sparingly. The government has borrowed DC-3s from TACA and LACSA (Pan American's Costa Rican affiliate), bombs the rebels with dynamite-packed cans which are rolled out the side door of the cabin after the bombardier's cigar has touched off the fuse.

"Somebody nearby cuts loose with a 15-second burst from a machine gun, looping fire over the ridge in the hope it will hit the rebels. The colonel whirls, yells: 'Cut that out. Want to burn up that gun?' Firearms and ammunition are not to be wasted. On a log a soldier methodically cuts cross notches on the noses of his lead bullets. I ask him how the dum-dums work in his machine gun. 'Not very well; it jams.' Were Figueres' men using dum-dums? 'Who knows?' He notches another slug.'

Knife & Chuzo. At week's end, Rebel Figueres, a squat dynamo of a man who sometimes wears elevator heels, had ridden out the government's hottest attacks and now threatened to storm into Car-tago.. If his guerrillas succeeded, the government would be forced back to a last-ditch defense of the capital. Over the rebel transmitter, Figueres appealed to his countrymen to arm: "Don't pretend that you have no weapons. In the humblest kitchen there is a knife, in every farm hut a chuzo [a sharp-pointed prod for oxen]. Do what you can, little or much. We are coming soon. Together we shall found the Second Republic."

President Teodoro Picado was dispirited. To correspondents who sought an interview, an aide reported: "The President is sick. It makes him feel bad to put so many of his friends in jail."

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