Pride & Protest
Sir:
Your article about my country in the Feb. 28 edition made me even more proud and more cognizant of the fine job that Colonel Marcos Pérez Jiménez is doing. As a Venezuelan, I would like to express my thanks for your article . . . It is a good way to better relations between the two countries.
OSCAR ANTONINI
Grinnell, Iowa
Sir:
I congratulate you for your article . . . Some people still think that Venezuela is an opéra comique paradise, and that we live in a perpetual revolution followed by a perpetual siesta. Venezuela is an ultramodern democracy where everybody has to work or get out. (Much of the bad publicity has generally been made by those who have had to get out.) . . .
RENE BORGIA
New York City
Sir:
. . . Having spent the major portion of my life in South America, I am convinced that democracy as we know it will never work there . . . It is with such men as Pérez Jiménez of Venezuela and Odria of Peru that Latin American countries will forge ahead . . .
JAMES I. MORTON
Berrien Springs, Mich.
Sir:
Your article was excellent, but you really should have emphasized the terror of this regime more than you did . . . In addition to the ice you mentioned, a favorite method of persuasion is the electric treatment . . . To drive a car here is as near to terror as can be. The traffic police can stop you for no reason whatsoever, accuse you of speeding (even if you are standing still), and haul you off to jail for a stay of ten days or a fine of anything up to $60.
The wealth that pours up out of the ground here is used to improve almost every state but Zulia (this one); a drive through the oilfields will leave you appalled by the dirt, squalor and misery that is the lot of anyone not lucky enough to be employed by the oil companies . . .
. . . If you love freedom, if you are used to American justice, free speech, free press and all the wonderful things that go with a democratic state, stay away from Maracaibo . . .
JOSÉ CONCHA
Maracaibo, Venezuela
Sir:
. . .When I left Caracas just four weeks ago, it was a bustling, lively city with a population rapidly approaching the million mark. Some miraculous shrinking must have taken place since (you report 87,000 population).
MAX LEHMANN
Portland, Ore.
¶No miracle; a printer lost one seven from the correct figure of 877,000.—ED.
The Ubiquitous Cadillac
Sir:
There must be millions of Americans to whom there is some ultimate goal in life other than owning a Cadillac, in spite of the manufacturer's seamy advertising appeals. But I wish TIME would not continue to dignify this nauseating notion . . .
Consider the issue of Feb. 28. You have Venezuela's President Pérez Jiménez riding in his Cadillac limousine, Pennsylvania Bell Telephone President Gillen's picture over the caption "There is more to life than Cadillacs," the change in Huntington Beach, Calif. from shanty town to "Cadillac Lane," and the reference by the reviewer of John P. Marquand's new novel to the "middle-classic double play: Ford to Buick to Cadillac."
WILLIAM H. MORRIS
Rochester, N.Y.