Word: betancourt
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...himself and his wife a $225,000 mansion in Miami Beach and settled down for a nice palmy retirement. A year later, the unexpected occurred: the new Venezuelan government wanted him back to stand trial on charges of embezzling $13.5 million. The country's new President, Romulo Betancourt, a onetime Marxist who has since moved to the center and who had lived many years in exile, knew the benefits of benevolent asylum; but he was also convinced that if Venezuela was to move toward democracy, it had to break the cycle of graft-and-go leadership...
Venezuelan agents promptly loaded him aboard a chartered DC-6B, flew him home to a maximum-security cell in San Juan de los Morros prison, 50 miles southwest of Caracas. Though P.J. kept telling anyone who would listen that he would be killed when he got home, President Betancourt promised that he would be treated "just like any common criminal, and will be given the same rights...
When dictators ruled Venezuela, the country's prisons were kept in lock-and-key efficiency. This is one thing dictators are particular about. Under the left-liberal government of President Rómulo Betancourt, neither the cops nor the jails are what they used to be. Prisons are run down and poorly managed, and jail breaks are a daily occurrence...
From their looks, the two might be brothers. Both are bald and portly; in their rabble-rousing university days, they shared each other's clothes, spent time in the same jail, were both packed off to exile by the ruling dictatorships. In the early 1940s Leoni helped Betancourt found A.D. He personally organized its labor wing and was rewarded with the labor ministry (Betancourt was provisional President) in the junta that ruled from 1945 until it was overthrown in 1948. When Dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez was toppled in 1958 and Betancourt became President, Leoni took...
Leoni promises to carry on Betancourt's social and economic reforms, but he has little of Betancourt's magnetism. Dour, shrewd and sardonic, with little personal charm, he is more of a backroom politician than a stump-thumping vote getter. For that reason, many Venezuelans had hoped for a continuation of the joint front between A.D. and the Social Christian COPEI party led by Rafael Caldera, 47, an able and personable Caracas lawyer. A.D.'s insistence on Leoni, whom COPEI regards a party hack, diminishes the chance of a united democratic ticket against the left at election...