THE AMERICAS: Bridge Game

With rigorous attention to protocol, the strongman Presidents of Venezuela and Colombia met one afternoon last week on the long, narrow steel bridge over the borderline Taáchira River. Venezuela’s General Marcos Peérez Jimeénez brought along his wife, his top ministers and a band of military chiefs; Colombia’s General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla was backed up by his wife and a similar party.

At the beginning of the meeting (as one observing newsman put it), “protocol controlled every wink and sneeze.” Because neither President had legal permission to leave his own country, they shook hands over a carefully surveyed international boundary marker at mid-bridge. The presentations of wives and officials were made in a minuetlike ritual. Then the two chiefs retired to a little pavilion built at one side of the bridge, sat down, and talked.

Colombia’s Foreign Minister had earlier announced that the talks would “go a little beyond mere protocol,” but if the strongmen made any agreement, they did not announce it. There is no political tension between the countries. Regardless of what they said, by merely meeting, the Presidents affirmed what every dictator who is trying to keep the lid on likes to know: the flanking nation is in understanding hands. “We are both military men,” said Rojas Pinilla later. “We have the same problems and the same “enemies.”