Troubleshooter

When Venezuela's President Romulo Betancourt leaned forward to embrace visiting Argentine President Arturo Frondizi in Caracas, one photographer captured the scene from an opportune angle. There, jutting out of Betancourt's pocket, was a pistol butt. The picture raised questions of why a head of state should pack his own pistol. But in Latin America, where the bullet is often more decisive than the ballot, no politician has a better right to fulltime self-protection than Venezuela's embattled chief executive.

As a fiery revolutionary in his youth, Betancourt won the undying hatred of many conservatives and unreconstructed military men. As a more moderate reformer and courageous anti-Communist in his later years, he has earned himself an equal number of enemies from the left. Among his many narrow escapes:

>Imprisoned in leg irons by Tyrant Juan Vicente Gomez in 1928, Betancourt faced almost sure torture and death, was only spared because of spontaneous strikes by sympathetic citizens.

> Forced underground in the mid-'30s, he ran into a police trap one night, escaped only after a blazing gunfight.

> Ousted from power by the army in 1948, Betancourt for two weeks eluded patrols with orders to shoot him down, finally made it to sanctuary in the Colombian embassy.

> Exiled in Havana in 1951, he was attacked on the street by a man who attempted to jab poison into Betancourt's left arm with a hypodermic needle.

>On hand to attend a fellow exile's funeral in Mexico City two years later, Betancourt was warned by police to stay indoors because of a plot to assassinate him en route to the cemetery.

> Cruising through Caracas in June 1960, Betancourt barely escaped his old enemy Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic; Trujillo's agents parked a car loaded with high explosives along the route, triggered it by a microwave transmitter. The blast killed Betancourt's aide-de-camp, his chauffeur and a bystander and severely burned Betancourt himself--to the extent that his hands, 16 months later, are still horribly scarred and tender.

At public functions, Betancourt mingles closely with his people, sitting at a table surrounded by the throng, pushing his way through densely packed crowds. He has the standard complement of aides and plainclothesmen spotted around to keep an eye out for enemies. The pistol is a little personal troubleshooter.

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