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Judi Lynn

(160,217 posts)
4. Eisenhower's Vice President Richard Milhouse Nixon went to Venezuela in 1958 and created a riot!
Fri Jun 4, 2021, 08:04 PM
Jun 2021

Wikipedia:

An attack on Richard Nixon's motorcade occurred in Caracas, Venezuela, during his 1958 goodwill tour of South America, undertaken while Nixon was Vice President of the United States. The attack on Nixon's car was called, at the time, the "most violent attack ever perpetrated on a high American official while on foreign soil".[2] Close to being killed while a couple of his aides were injured in the melee, Nixon ended up unharmed and his entourage managed to reach the U.S. embassy. The visit took place only months after the overthrow of Venezuelan dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez, who was awarded the Legion of Merit and later granted asylum by the United States, and the incident may have been orchestrated by the Communist Party of Venezuela. U.S. Navy Admiral Arleigh Burke mobilized fleet and Marine units to the region, compelling the Venezuelan government to provide full protection to Nixon for the remainder of the trip.

The attack was denounced by all major Venezuelan presidential candidates standing in that year's election, except for the incumbent leader Admiral Wolfgang Larrazábal. Nixon was generally applauded in American press reports for his calm and adept handling of the incident and was feted with a "hero's welcome" on his return to the United States. His recollections of the attack form one of the "six crises" explored in his Six Crises book.




. . .

Tour in Venezuela
Background
Earlier in 1958, the disliked Venezuelan dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez had been overthrown in a popular uprising and had gone into exile in the United States. A military junta formed a caretaker government to rule the country until new elections could be held. Admiral Wolfgang Larrazábal, head of the governing junta, had announced his intention to stand in those elections; his candidacy was backed by a coalition of parties, including the Venezuelan Communist Party. The United States' decision to grant Pérez Jiménez asylum and to award him the Legion of Merit on 12 November 1954[12][13] combined to create a charged atmosphere leading up to Nixon's arrival. The Caracas municipal council even passed a resolution effectively declaring Nixon persona non grata.[14] Prior to Nixon's arrival in Caracas, media reported on rumors that an attempt had been planned on the vice-president's life during his visit.[15] The CIA station chief in Venezuela, meanwhile, urged that this leg of the trip be canceled.[14]

In an interview conducted after he retired from government service, Robert Amerson, then-press attache to the United States embassy in Venezuela, claims that the demonstrators who disrupted the Venezuela stop on the tour "had been bused down by the professional agitators and organizers" affiliated with the Communist Party of Venezuela.[17] This view was one echoed in a report issued by William P. Snow, acting Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, who wrote that "the pattern of organization and of slogans in all cases points to Communist inspiration and direction, as do certain of the intelligence reports".[3] Nixon, himself, also blamed Communist instigation.[4] A Universal Newsreel at the time characterized it as "another of the well-planned campaigns of harassment" and a "communist-sparked onslaught".[18] Venezuelan journalist Carlos Rangel has indicated the "Nixon carnival" was organized by the Venezuelan Communist Party as a way of demonstrating that it had the ability to "dominate the streets, that the Caracas masses were ready to be mobilized".[19]

Arrival

Nixon arrived, via air, in Caracas on May 13, 1958. According to a U.S. Secret Service report of the incident, a crowd of demonstrators at the airport "purposely disrupted ... [the] welcoming ceremony by shouting, blowing whistles, waving derogatory placards, throwing stones, and showering the Nixons with human spittle and chewing tobacco".[20] Reporting for the New York Herald Tribune, Earl Mazo wrote that "Venezuelan troops and police seemed to evaporate. The vice-president and the whole official party literally had to fight their way to cars behind a thin but sturdy phalanx of U.S. Secret Service agents".[1]


Admiral Wolfgang Larrazábal, leader of the ruling junta, was reportedly concerned heavy-handed policing would alienate his base
The original itinerary had Nixon moving from the airport to the National Pantheon of Venezuela where he was to lay a wreath at the tomb of Simón Bolívar. However, a United States naval attache sent ahead with the wreath reported a crowd that had assembled at the Pantheon had attacked him and torn up the wreath. At this point it was decided to proceed directly to the U.S. embassy.[17]

Attack
For the first time on the South America tour, the Nixons traveled in closed-top cars, as opposed to convertibles, a decision later credited with saving their lives.[18]

As the Nixons traveled by motorcade through Caracas, the vehicle carrying the Vice-President was slowed to a crawl by heavy traffic.[c] A crowd used the stoppage to throng Nixon's vehicle, stoning it and banging the windows with their fists.[20] Nixon was protected by twelve United States Secret Service agents, some of whom were injured in the melee.[22] According to the Secret Service, Venezuelan police declined to intervene to clear the crowd. When the mob began rocking the car back and forth in an attempt to overturn it, U.S. Secret Service agents, believing the vice-president's life was in jeopardy, drew their firearms and prepared to begin shooting into the crowd. In an act described as "the kind of presence of mind for which battlefield commanders win medals", Nixon ordered Secret Service agent-in-charge Jack Sherwood to hold fire and shoot only on his orders; no shots were ultimately fired.[8][20][23]

Nixon would later recount that Venezuelan Foreign Minister Óscar García Velutini, who was traveling with him, was "close to hysterics" and kept repeating "this is terrible, this is terrible". According to Nixon, Velutini explained the police inaction was because the communists "helped us overthrow Pérez Jiménez and we are trying to find a way to work with them".[4] Nixon's longtime secretary, Rose Mary Woods, was injured by flying glass when the windows of the car in which she was riding, following Nixon, were smashed. Vernon Walters, then a mid-ranking U.S. Army officer serving as Nixon's translator, would end up with a "mouthful of glass",[23] and Velutini was also hit by shards of the limousine's supposedly "shatter-proof" glass.[8]



More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Richard_Nixon%27s_motorcade

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