Where the Terrorists Are

On the whole, Communist terrorism appears to be waning in Latin America. For one thing, the hemisphere's major Communist leaders agreed at last January's Tricontinental Conference in Havana to abandon their violent revolutionary line in favor of the via pacifica, which calls for subtle infiltration of Latin American governments and cooperation with other leftist parties in United Fronts. For another, Communist subversion during the past year has suffered severe setbacks in three major target countries--Peru, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. Still, in other places Communist operations are neither very pacifica nor subtle. Items:

>In Colombia, terrorists ambushed an army patrol 125 miles southwest of Bogota, killed 15 troopers and wounded 15 others before escaping without a single loss. It was the first appearance in more than a year of the last of Colombia's big-time bandits, Pedro Antonio Marin, 35, alias Tiro Fijo (Sure Shot), who in recent years has styled himself a Castroite guerrilla. Under former President Guillermo Leon Valencia, Colombia's anti-insurgency troopers won control of four of the country's five Communist redoubts in the high Andes. Colombia's new President, Carlos Lleras Restrepo, called for a maximum army effort to make sure that Sure Shot made no repeat performance.

>In Mexico, police uncovered a "school for guerrillas" in three neighboring houses in a quiet residential area of the nation's capital. Arrested in the raid were 49 instructors and students, who had been discussing such revolutionary subjects as how to manufacture fire bombs and operate automatic weapons. Among the leaders was a writer named Victor Rico Galan, who works for the Soviet-supported magazine Siempre.

> In Guatemala, Manuel Orellana Portillo, a former president of the Guatemalan Congress, was stopped in his auto near the town of La Fragua, 55 miles from the capital, and shot by Communist terrorists as "an enemy of the people." Such killings are the trademark of Luis Turcios Lima, 24, a former Guatemalan army officer who leads a daring band of 250 terrorists. Though President Julio Cesar Mendez Montenegro has offered the guerrillas an amnesty ever since he took over last May from the military regime of Colonel Enrique Peralta, they refused to lay down their arms.

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