Haven for 60,000

One morning last week 126 bearded, bedraggled men in faded overalls and cheap suits crowded round the door of La Guaira's Interior Ministry. The night before, just 42 days after leaving Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, they had disembarked from the tiny, 75-year-old schooner New Adam to the Venezuelan shore and a new life in the new world.

None of the newcomers had papers to show the authorities. They were illegal immigrants. They had left Spain and the Canaries because they needed work and probably, though they would not talk about it, because they were anti-Franco. Each had paid 4,000 pesetas ($367.20) for passage. "Hungry guys from an overcrowded country," one immigration officer called them. "They're good workers and Spanish-speaking Latins," said another official. "The kind we like best."

Hungry men from Las Palmas are the most picturesque but not the most numerous immigrant group to accept Venezuela's warmhearted postwar welcome. All told, some 60,000 Europeans have migrated to Venezuela in the last three years. Of the Latin American countries, only Argentina and Brazil have taken more. When its smaller population (4,490,000) is taken into account, Venezuela's welcome has been heartiest of all.

The International Refugee Organization has ferried in 14,000 displaced persons. Next week five ships are expected to dock at La Guaira with 1,800 more. Special Venezuelan immigration offices abroad have helped other thousands to cross from Spain, France and Italy.

The stream of settlers is changing the face of the country. Almost every Venezuelan town now has its Italian barbershop and restaurant, its German-speaking innkeeper. San Cristobal has a Russian photographer, Merida a Russian butcher. Near Turen, about 175 miles southwest of the capital, farmers from Andalusia, Tuscany and the Ukraine are tilling new lands cleared for them by government bulldozers. In time, Venezuela hopes, such immigrant pioneers may supply the eggs, fruit and other foodstuffs that the country now imports from the U.S.

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