Word: rez
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Pudgy, nearsighted General Marcos Pérez Jiménez, 43, already one of the world's senior dictators, last week began another five years as President of Venezuela-barring, of course, assassination or a coup by his military juniors. He won the term in a plebiscite that gave voters a choice of him or nothing. So cynically rigged was the election that two hours after the polls closed, Interior Minister Laureano Vallenilla Lanz summoned foreign newsmen to hear the results. Just as a small television receiver in the corner of his office beamed the opening of the first...
...Think," said President Marcos Pérez Jiménez, "of a country convulsed in political battle; of different parties, each trying to get votes by speeches filled with threats and defamation mixed with promises and offers of wellbeing; of streets in cities and towns painted and papered to the saturation point with posters designed to incite; of the populace abandoned to discussion and mental struggles, to screaming and tumult." It made a horrifying picture, but Venezuela's dictator was able to reassure his own people last week that they, at any rate, were in no great danger...
...splashy newspaper advertisements, businessmen prudently lavished praise on Pérez Jiménez' substitute for free elections. The semiofficial press carried supplements as long as twelve pages crammed with nothing but the names of citizens expressing their "adhesion" to the government. The President ordered all businesses in booming Venezuela to pay out their compulsory Christmas bonuses ($60 million this year) before the election not after...
Fatherland Week, as the holiday is called, was the kind of glittering circus that could be mounted by no Latin American nation except oil-rich Venezuela. Pérez Jiménez and his guest got things started by snapping to attention in Caracas' Plaza Bolívar while a comely maiden presented a "sacred torch," run into town by relays of students from the battle shrine at Carabobo, 120 miles away. Then, before a crowd of 100,000, the two strongmen dedicated the Avenue of Heroes, a gaudy, neo-Grecian plaza fronting the mammoth Armed Forces Club...
Argentina, once the domain of Pérez Jiménez' friend Juan Perón, last week stepped up its drive to get Perón kicked out of his Venezuelan exile-and out of the hemisphere. The Argentine ambassador presented carefully documented proof that Perón was violating the rules of asylum, conducting an espionage and sabotage network from his Caracas apartment. Pérez Jiménez angrily rejected the Argentine protest, abruptly recalled his ambassador from Buenos Aires, and declared the Argentine ambassador persona non grata. Argentina responded by suspending diplomatic relations with Venezuela...