Who's Intervening Where?

Trying to do something about Castro inevitably brings up soul-searching debate about nonintervention. But the bearded Castro himself obviously has no qualms about getting in other people's hair. Last week three Latin American nations found themselves coping with Castroite attempts to subvert their people and overthrow their elected governments.

P: In La Paz, Bolivia, Castro agents working out of the Cuban embassy hatched a plot with local Communists to overturn the government of Reformer-President Victor Paz Estenssoro with a "hunger march" on the capital by striking leftist tin miners. Forewarned, the Bolivian government declared a state of siege, rounded up the chief conspirators and called out a well-armed militia of nonstriking workers to block all roads into the capital. The march fizzled out.

P: In Caracas, Venezuela, the government of liberal President Romulo Betancourt, whom Castro calls a "lackey of imperialism," intercepted several tons of arms--Czech submachine guns, ammunition, grenades--shipped from Cuba to isolated points along the Venezuelan coast. The Venezuelan government, which is not anxious to arouse its volatile populace, issued an official denial of the reports, but intelligence sources insist that the shipments have been going on since December, and a Venezuelan official lamented last week: "We have a long and open coastline. They can smuggle that stuff in virtually anywhere. We catch what we can."

P: In Pernambuco, Brazil, where Castro agents are taking advantage of frightful poverty and hunger and an angry and miserable peasantry (two ranches and two big sugar plantations invaded in recent weeks, riots in the city of Recife), the situation was approaching open guerrilla action. President Janio Quadros, long a let's-leave-Castro-alone man, had to fly in an infantry battalion from Rio to help local army units keep order. When troops raided a Peasant League headquarters in the neighboring state of Paraiba, they found 100 rifles, reportedly exported from Cuba, thousands of Portuguese translations of textbooks on guerrilla warfare printed in Cuba, Castro-style military caps--plus a supply of good Cuban cigars for the peasant leaders to pass out to the deserving.

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