Word: estradas
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...months later, investigators began rooting through the ruins of Pérez Jiménez' tumbled empire. Newspapers filled columns with gruesome stories of the dictator's sadistic security police, reported such murky financial dealings as those of a trucking firm, owned by Security Boss Pedro Estrada and the President's wife, that netted $3,500,000 on a $30,000 investment...
Vallenilla Lanz fled by plane to Paris, Estrada to the Dominican Republic. The country's tension dropped sharply, but Venezuelans openly wondered whether Perez Jimenez could last until his inauguration day, April...
...President's protection) and argued forcefully that the prestige of all the armed forces hung on making concessions to the anti-dictatorial feelings of the rebels and their covert sympathizers. Almost from the beginning, the military men demanded the heads of Laureano Vallenilla Lanz and Pedro Estrada...
...Pedro Estrada, 48, had headed the strongman's secret police, the Seguridad National, for five years. Rising from a gumshoe job under an earlier dictator, Estrada perfected the arts of spying, bribing, the third degree and rebellion spotting, and thus made himself an invaluable prop for Perez Jimenez. Caraquefios said that he "sleeps with his eyes open." Widely feared and hated among his own fellow citizens. Estrada ingratiated himself in slangy English with foreigners, especially U.S. citizens. "We have no political prisoners," Estrada liked to explain, "just people caught in terroristic activities...
Tension Relaxed. The pressure to oust Vallenilla and Estrada reached a peak one midnight last week with a resignation of the entire Cabinet. For 14 hours the officers at Miraflores haggled over new ministerial choices. Then Perez Jimenez, worn, jittery and angry, called in reporters. From the head of a huge table, he presented the new Cabinet, including eight high officers and five holdovers. They were, he said glumly, designated "in accord with the feelings of the national armed forces." With the new Cabinet came a new Seguridad chief. Significantly, he was a colonel, which in effect gave the army...