Presidential elections in Venezuela are almost a year away, but the campaign drums are already beating wildly for one unannounced candidate: Vice Admiral Wolfgang Larrazábal, 50, a leftist maverick who bossed the military junta that ruled for ten months after the 1958 ouster of Dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez. Openly supported by the Communists, the darkly handsome Larrazábal ran a close race with President Rómulo Betancourt in the elections that followed, and then was sent into semi-exile as Venezuela's Ambassador to Chile. Last week Larrazábal returned to Caracas for "a personal visit," and his supporters, many of them far leftists, gave him the full, fanatic Latin American welcome.
At 6:28 p.m., when Larrazábal's Air France 707 arrived, an uncontrollable mob of thousands overflowed the airport chanting "Viva Larrazábal" and "Down with Betancourt." In the crowd was TIME Correspondent Moisés Garcia, who was invited to ride with Larrazábal on the triumphant trip into Caracas. In the crush, Larrazábal's aides pulled Garcia in through a rear window while two Venezuelan National Guardsmen yanked on his legs to keep him out. Garcia was an eyewitness to the enthusiasm.
The car barely edged through the screaming, cheering mob. Larrazábal kept nervously combing his hair and murmuring "My God! My God!" The car's clutch was burning, and the party, Garcia included, had to be transferred to another car for the trip into Caracas, where 3,000 viva-shouting greeters waited.
They crowded in on the car, which seemed alive with arms and faces thrust through the windows. The driver tried to inch ahead. A voice shrieked: "Watch out! You're running over somebody!" The driver tried to back up—no use. A woman's legs appeared on the hood, and disappeared as she climbed over the windshield and onto the roof. More people began stomping on the roof, and as it started to cave in, Larrazábal climbed out a window and onto the roof to try to calm the mob. A fat woman in a tight skirt nearly squashed him in a bear hug. Larrazábal frantically leaped down, fled to another car, and finally managed to get away.
With their hero gone, the crowd hurled rocks at the National Guardsmen assigned to keep order. One Guardsman fired his pistol into the air. The mob charged, and the Guardsmen triggered a warning burst from their tommy-guns. The mob set fire to a bus and charged again. The Guardsmen aimed lower. Three rioters were killed, nine wounded.
At home, Larrazábal received a steady stream of visitors, among them several of Venezuela's top Communists. It had been quite a welcome—except for one small thing. Somewhere along the way, one of his admirers had lifted Larrazábal's wallet, containing $1,500.