Control

There was an ominous clarity to the handbills that littered Caracas' Central University. "The people threw out Nixon in 1958," they said. "They can do the same in 1961." The signature: "Young Communists." In 1958, appeals by Communists and their friends produced such mob frenzy that the car carrying the touring U.S. Vice President was stopped and stoned; Nixon was unharmed, but his visit was ruined. Last week Venezuela's Communists were out to get new U.S. Ambassador Teodoro Moscoso when he ar rived to take up his post. But their best efforts were unable to mobilize a single rock-throwing rioter.

Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt took grim care to ensure the safety of Puerto Rico-born Moscoso. No arrival time was published in the press; inflammatory wall scribblings were quickly erased. The complement of 80 national guardsmen stationed along the superhighway from the airport to the capital was reinforced by 1,200 troops. Sirens screaming, 20 police cars escorted Moscoso to the embassy residence.

In the days just after Betancourt won Venezuela's presidency (but lost Caracas, 5 to 1), even so determined a display of security could not have kept rioters off the streets. Since then, Betancourt has repeatedly demonstrated that he will use whatever force is necessary to save his country from mob rule. Lately, militant groups of the President's Democratic Action Party have taken to coping with violent street opposition with strong-arm squads of their own. As it also becomes obvious that riot organizers are nearly always of the extreme left or the extreme right, the students and unemployed slum dwellers, who made up the mobs, have grown more and more reluctant to fight.

For Moscoso, the result was a peaceful ride up the hill to his new job. And for Betancourt, it was another indication that he may at last be getting his faction-torn country under democratic control.

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