Tacho's Turn?

In San Jose hotel rooms last week sat the men who had masterminded the victory of Rebel leader Jose Figueres in Costa Rica's civil war. Most of them were Nicaraguan and Dominican exiles, and they were indifferent to the celebrations in the streets outside. They had business to do. Said soft-voiced Dominican Colonel Miguel A. Ramirez, who had been Figueres' chief of staff in the recent campaign: "This is only the beginning. There are other, harder projects ahead."

Those projects were to smash three dictators: Nicaragua's Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza, the Dominican Republic's Rafael Leonidas Trujillo and Honduras' Dictator Tiburcio Carias. The battle-hardened exiles in Costa Rica had formed a "junta for the liberation of the Caribbean." Said bald old Dominican Juan Rodriguez Garcia, who had sunk $400,000 in last summer's abortive plot against Trujillo: "The free people of the Caribbean are uniting against despots. The liberation of the Caribbean is our object."

Guns on the Go. Many of the guns with which Figueres' men fought to victory had been stacked last summer on a finca outside Havana for use against Trujillo. At the last minute the Cuban army authorities seized the guns, and the exped tion flopped. "We waited too long," the exiles say now. Last winter Guatemalan planes began taking loads of flowers to Havana. They flew back by night, carrying heavier cargo. Cases of guns were quietly stowed away in Guatemalan warehouses. Then, when Figueres rebelled in Costa Rica, the guns were flown to his mountain forces. They helped to win the war for him.

Nicaragua's Somoza feared that those guns were now to be turned on him. From his hilltop command post overlooking Managua, he ordered a daily air patrol flown over the Gulf of Fonseca. He hustled supplies south to his National Guard patrols, who crossed the border and shot up a Costa Rican town. He cabled every Latin American republic that Nicaraguan exiles were meeting in Puerto Limon, Costa Rica, organizing an expedition to overthrow him.

Men on the Move. Tacho toyed with the idea of a blitz invasion of Costa Rica. But he could hardly tag this a crusade against Communism when Costa Rica's No. 1 Communist, Manuel Mora, had just been run out of the country.

Nor did he want to queer his chances of U.S. recognition. He was not too worried about Figueres, whose new regime was already being challenged by Costa Rica's rightist landlords; but he didn't want Costa Rica to be a base of operations against him. Then he had to think about Guatemala's Arevalo, who hated him and who had just shown, by going to Figueres' rescue when it counted, that Guatemala would intervene on the side of Tacho's enemies.

These considerations made Dictator Tacho nervous.

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