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Call to Terror. The full measure of Castro's fury at his humiliation came clear in the radio messages crackling across the Caribbean from Havana: "This is a call to terror . . . Attack U.S. citizens and their properties . . ." Here and there throughout Latin America, street riots erupted and were easily put down. Only in Venezuela was there real trouble. Hours after the call to terror from Havana, four explosions shook the eastern shore of Lake Maracaibo, where foreign oil companies have 9,000 wells pumping 2,400,000 bbl. of oil daily. The blasts wrecked four offshore electric transformer stations belonging to Creole Petroleum Corp., knocking out 600 wells and cutting Creole production (1,300,000 bbl. daily) by almost half. On a well platform 300 ft. from one of the damaged transformer stations, Creole workers found two men still alive but horribly burned—victims of their own sabotage. A third man was found dead in the water. Police identified all three as members of the Venezuelan Communist Party. It took Creole three days to restore normal production. Then the Reds hit again—this time blowing up three important U.S.-owned pipelines 160 miles east of Caracas.
Venezuela's tough-minded and hard-pressed President Romulo Betancourt, a liberal who is a dedicated enemy of Castro's, had already started preparing his country for a state of mobilization on the ground that Cuba "stands as a constant threat to our security." He now sent battle dressed marines to stand vigil over the oilfields and put one-half of Venezuela under virtual martial law.