VENEZUELA: Escape Story

By day attractive Evelyn Trujillo, 28, was a stenographer in the Caracas offices of the Socony-Vacuum Oil Co. After hours she had a more interesting job as an underground courier for Acción Democratica, the big left-of-center party that has been outlawed in Venezuela since the ruling military junta seized power three years ago.

Recently the junta’s Seguridad National (national police), making little progress in its bumbling search for the underground’s top leaders, began rounding up some of the small fry. Evelyn, who was on the point of quitting her job to marry an American oilman, came under surveillance. In two months her widowed mother’s house was searched twelve times by flying squads (and burglarized twice by thieves obviously untroubled by Seguridad patrolling). One day a friend saw a station wagon and a group of small, shabby men with blank expressions and Cuban heels outside Evelyn’s house, and spotted them for Seguridad detectives.

Warned by telephone, Evelyn fled to the house of Acción Democratica friends. After voluble discussions of her plight, they decided to move her to another house. Her new hosts were dismayingly hospitable. They gave parties and introduced the fugitive to their guests. Finally the underground supplied the information Evelyn needed: the Seguridad thought that she had information to spill, and would arrest her soon. After another long discussion, it was decided that she should seek asylum in the Chilean embassy.

There, next morning, the fugitive found white-mustached Ambassador Alberto Serrano Pellé mowing his lawn. When she asked asylum, the ambassador curtly refused. There was a sharp argument.* “Thank you,” snapped Evelyn, “I won’t forget this.” Serrano shouted: “I won’t forget it either!” Desperate, Evelyn ran out, hailed a taxi and went to the Ecuadorian embassy, which she had previously feared to try because the Seguridad had guards on watch outside. Suddenly ordering the driver to stop, she skipped in the side door past three flatfooted Seguridad sentinels. Inside, she got a quick “Yes” from the ambassador and a warm welcome from four other undergrounders who had recently availed themselves of the Latin American right of political asylum.

* An observer of this scene was TIME Correspondent Phil Payne, who had learned earlier of Evelyn Trujillo’s predicament, and decided to cover the story of her search for asylum. The angry ambassador reported the visit of both the fugitive and the reporter to the authorities. Three days later Seguridad officials deported Payne for “mixing in internal politics.”