Student Agitators Seen Endangering Betancourt

This is the last in a series of articles on Venezuela, drawn from interviews with Venezuelan journalists who vilsted the University last week.

The principal immediate threat to the constitutional government of Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt is the continued incidence of terrorism; and the principal source of this terrorism is the Central University of Venezuela, in Caracas.

This is the opinion of Marcelo Gonzalez Molina, civil engineer, former Dean of the Faculty of the University, and one of a group of Venezuelan journalists and intellectuals who visited the University last week.

Violence is endemic at the Central University, according to Gonzalez. Scarcely a week passes without some incident, and scarcely a month without a major one.

Thus, in January, a group of some 900 armed students seized one of the university buildings, using it as a base from which to fire rooks, insults, and bullets at police on the street below. Since the police are forbidden to enter university property, the students could be dislodged only after prolonged negotiation.

Nor is violence confined to the university grounds. The student terrorist organization is closely linked to the FALN (Armed Front for National Liberation), which in the last six months has destroyed an oil refinery, burned a Sears Roebuck warehouse, plundered an exhibition of Van Gogh and Cezanne paintings, hijacked the freighter Anzoategul, and performed numerous other acts of violence.

Expulsion Not Possible

The university is practically powerless to control political violence in the student body. What would seem to a North American the most natural remedy, expulsion, is forbidden to the authorities in Caracas: any move to identify and expel the terrorists will produce massive student rioting, and further disruption of the curriculum, precisely what the administration is trying to avoid.

The only action taken is to close the university, in hopes that the tension will die down. Violence is, however, so common that the university usually closes down at least some part of every month.

In addition to being ineffective, this policy, according to Gonzalez, "injures the nation more than the terrorists." The curriculum is disrupted, and the ability of the university to produce the trained men Venezuela needs is impaired.

The university is divided into 11 undergraduate faculties, including several that in North America are considered graduate departments, such as law, medicine, and theology. At the head of the university is the rector, elected by the faculty and students under a system whereby 40 student votes equal one faculty vote.

Supreme authority resides in a board of directors, similar to the Harvard Corporation, but consisting of representatives of the various faculties and of the student body.

The power the students have in the administration of the university is symptomatic of what Gonzalez regards as the root cause of the terrorism: the high position that the university student occupies in Venezuelan society in general, and in political life in particular.

Little Job Pressure

In a country with an acute manpower shortage, where by 1980 70 per cent of the population will be under 21, the university students represent the only source of trained workers. Consequently, there is little job pressure on them: any graduating student, especially in a technical field, is certain to obtain a well-paid position. Admission to the university is admission to the elite, to the governing class of Venezuela.

A student from outside Caracas who comes to the university is assured of the respect and admiration of his neighbors, a tribute given to one who has already taken a high place in their society.

The students' self-confidence has been strengthened by political events since the war. In that period, two dictators have been overthrown, Gomez in 1945 and Perez Jimenez in 1958, both by revolutionary movements that began at the university.

With its freedom from police intervention, the university provided the only place in which dissident groups could meet regularly in safety. In both revolutions, student rioting provided a crystallization point for discontent with the regime, and a coup d'etat by the army followed.

The students have continued to think of themselves as the natural focus and outlet for discontent with the regime Betancourt's government has provoked dissatisfaction among those who think that despite progress in education and land reform, it is not doing enough about basic economic problems, such as unemployment. Corruption is alleged in the bureaucracy, and especially in the police, the natural target of student violence.

Because of the scarcity of manpower few employers at the time of hiring pay attention to a student's record in the university. Hence the incentives to study are small, and the brightest students tend to be drawn into politics. They feel that politics is a meaningful activity in a sense that studies are not; and that political agitation and violence are a legitimate means of self-expression.

Fighting by Tradition

It is incorrect to say that all the violence is inspired by Communist or Cuban agents, Gonzalez said. Student political violence is a tradition at a university which since 1908 has always been in opposition to the governments of Venezuela.

Nevertheless, the two largest groups of student terrorists are the Communists and the Fidelista MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left). Though indistinguishable from the Communists in action, according to Gonzalez, the MIR derives much of its strength from those, especially from rural areas, who do not want to incur the stigma attaching to Communism--"I wouldn't want my mother to hear I was a Communist."

Despite the difficulties, some efforts are being made to control the incidence of violence, and the disruption of the curriculum. Gonzalez described "orientation classes," taught by the older and more responsible professors. In these sessions, emphasis is laid on the scholarly and research functions of the university