JadeZ

TIME

February 21, 1955 12:00 AM GMT-5

Perched on an ornate armchair in his office last week, Colonel Marcos Pérez Jiménez, President of oil-rich Venezuela, received with protocolary propriety Admiral Jerauld Wright, U.S.N., commander of NATO’s Atlantic Fleet. The next day, with solemn ceremony, President Pérez Jiménez opened the 1955 session of his obedient Congress.

But it was not for due care to such affairs of state that Pérez Jiménez drew his countrymen’s attention. Amid Cabinet meetings and the signing of decrees, they noted, the President worked in an astonishing schedule of extracurricular activities. He went to a garden party, an auto race and a pre-Mardi Gras fiesta, where he awarded the queen’s prize. He tried out —a new rowboat and pitched the first ball of the Caribbean baseball tourney. He went to the touring Folies Bergère of Paris, whose nude cuties have been a scandalous success in Caracas. At week’s end he was off to the seashore.

Once the starchiest of statesmen, Pérez Jiménez was clearly becoming more and more the relaxed socialite and sportsman. Venezuelans seemed to find the change refreshing.

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