History of Venezuela
Encyclopedia
This article discusses the history of Venezuela
. See also the history of South America
.
-shaped flake
tool
s, together with chopping
and plano
–convex scraping
implements exposed on the high riverine terraces of the Pedregal River in western Venezuela.
Late Pleistocene
hunting artifacts, including spear
tips, come from a similar site in northwestern Venezuela known as El Jobo. According to radiocarbon dating
, these date from 13,000 to 7000 BC.
Taima-Taima, Muaco and El Jobo in Falcón are some of the sites that have yielded archeological material from these times. These groups co-existed with megafauna like megateriums
, glyptodonts
and toxodon
ts.
Archaeologists identify a Meso-Indian period from 7000-5000 B.C.to 1000 A.C. In this period, hunters and gatherers of megafauna started to turn to other food sources and established the first tribal structures.
Beginning around 1000 A.C. archaeologists speak of the Neo-Indian period, which ends with the European Conquest and Colony period.
In the 16th century when Spanish colonization
began in Venezuelan territory, the population of several indigenous peoples such as the Mariches (descendants of the Caribes) declined. Historians have proposed many reasons for this decline, including exposure to European diseases and the systematic elimination of indigenous tribes for control of resources valued in Europe. Indian cacique
s (leader
s) such as Guaicaipuro
(c. 1530–1568) and Tamanaco
(died 1573) attempted to resist Spanish incursions, but the newcomers ultimately subdued them. Historians agree that the founder of Caracas
, Diego de Losada
, ultimately put Tamanaco to death.
Christopher Columbus
sailed along the eastern coast of Venezuela on his third voyage in 1498, the only one of his four voyages to reach the South American mainland. This expedition discovered the so-called "Pearl Islands" of Cubagua
and Margarita
off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. Later Spanish expeditions returned to exploit these islands' once abundant pearl oysters, enslaving the indigenous people of the islands and harvesting the pearls so intensively that they became one of the most valuable resources of the incipient Spanish Empire in the Americas between 1508 and 1531, by which time both the local indigenous population and the pearl oysters had become devastated.
The Spanish expedition led by Alonso de Ojeda
, sailing along the length of the northern coast of South America in 1499, gave the name Venezuela ("little Venice" in Spanish) to the Gulf of Venezuela
— because of its imagined similarity to the Italian city
.
Spain's colonization of mainland Venezuela started in 1522. Spain established its first permanent South American settlement in the city of Cumaná
.
At the time of the Spanish arrival, indigenous people lived mainly in groups as agriculturists and hunters: along the coast, in the Andean mountain range, and along the Orinoco River.
An abortive plan for German settlement
from Habsburg
lands (1529–1556) (which the Fugger
bankers would have financed) failed.
By the middle of the 16th century not many more than 2,000 Europeans lived in Venezuela. The opening of gold mines at Yaracuy
led to the introduction of slavery
, at first involving the indigenous population, then imported Africans. The first real economic success of the colony involved the raising of livestock, much helped by the grassy plains known as llanos
. The society that developed as a result — a handful of Spanish landowners and widely-dispersed Indian herdsmen on Spanish-introduced horses — recalls primitive feudalism
, certainly a powerful concept in the 16th-century Spanish imagination, and (perhaps more fruitfully) bears comparison in economic terms with the latifundia
of antiquity.
During the 16th and 17th centuries the cities which constitute today's Venezuela suffered relative neglect. The Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru
(located on the sites formerly occupied by the capital cities of the Aztec
s and Incas respectively) showed more interest in their nearby gold- and silver-mines than in the remote agricultural societies of Venezuela. Responsibility for the Venezuelan territories shifted to and fro between the two Viceroyalties.
In the 18th century a second Venezuelan society formed along the coast with the establishment of cocoa plantations manned by much larger importations of African slaves. Quite a number of black slaves also worked in the hacienda
s of the grassy llanos. Most of the Amerindians who still survived had perforce migrated to the plains and jungles to the south, where only Spanish friars took an interest in them — especially the Franciscans or Capucins, who compiled grammars and small lexicon
s for some of their languages. The most important friar misión (the name for an area of friar activity) developed in San Tomé in the Guayana Region
.
The Province of Venezuela came under the jurisdiction of the Viceroyalty of New Granada
(established in 1717). The Province became the Captaincy General of Venezuela
in 1777. The Compañía Guipuzcoana de Caracas
held a close monopoly on trade with Europe. The Guipuzcoana company stimulated the Venezuelan economy, especially in fostering the cultivation of cacao beans, which became Venezuela's principal export. It opened Venezuelan ports to foreign commerce, but this recognized a fait accompli. Like no other Spanish American dependency, Venezuela had more contacts with Europe through the British and French islands in the Caribbean. In an almost surreptitious, though legal, manner, Caracas itself had become an intellectual powerhouse. From 1721 it had its own university, which taught Latin, medicine and engineering, apart (of course) from the humanities. Its most illustrious graduate, Andrés Bello
(1781–1865), became the greatest Spanish American polymath
of his time. In Chacao, a town to the east of Caracas, there flourished a school of music whose director José Ángel Lamas
(1775–1814) produced a few but impressive compositions according with the strictest 18th-century European canon
s.
Some Venezuelans began to grow resistant to colonial control towards the end of the eighteenth century. Spain's neglect of its Venezuelan colony contributed to Venezuelan intellectuals' increased zeal for learning. The colony had more external sources of information than other more "important" Spanish dependencies, not excluding the viceroyalties, although one should not belabor this point, for only the mantuanos (a Venezuelan name for the white Creole
elite) had access to a solid education. (Another name for the mantuanos class, grandes cacaos, reflected the source of their wealth. To in Venezuela the term can apply to a presumptuous person.) The mantuanos showed themselves presumptuous, overbearing and zealous in affirming their privileges against the pardo
(mixed-race) majority of the population.
The first organized conspiracy against the colonial regime in Venezuela occurred in 1797, organized by Manuel Gual and José María España It took direct inspiration from the French Revolution
, but was put down with the collaboration of the "mantuanos" because it promoted radical social changes.
European events sowed the seeds of Venezuela's declaration of independence. The Napoleonic Wars
in Europe not only weakened Spain's imperial power, but also put Britain (unofficially) on the side of the independence movement. In May 1808, Napoleon
demanded and received the abdication of Ferdinand VII of Spain and the confirmation of the abdication of Ferdinand's father Charles IV
. Napoleon then appointed as King of Spain his own brother Joseph Bonaparte
. That marked the beginning of Spain's own War of Independence
from French hegemony and partial occupation, before the Spanish American wars of independence even began. The focal point of Spanish political resistance, the Supreme Central Junta
, formed to govern in the name of Ferdinand. The first major defeat that Napoleonic France suffered occurred at the Battle of Bailén
, in Andalusia
(July 1808). (At this battle Pablo Morillo
, future commander of the army that invaded New Granada and Venezuela; Emeterio Ureña, an anti-independence officer in Venezuela; and José de San Martín
, the future Liberator of Argentina and Chile, fought side-by-side against the French General Pierre Dupont
.) Despite this Spanish victory, the French soon regained the initiative and advanced into southern Spain. The Spanish government had to retreat to the island redoubt of Cádiz
. Here the Supreme Central Junta dissolved itself and set up a five-person regency to handle the affairs of state until the Cortes Generales
could convene.
Word of these events soon reached Caracas, but only on 19 April 1810 did its "cabildo
" (city council) decide to follow the example set by the Spanish provinces two years earlier. Other provincial capitals — Barcelona
, Cumaná
, Mérida
, Trujillo
, among them — followed suit. Although the new Junta of Caracas had self-appointed élite members who claimed to represent the pardos (free blacks and even slaves), the new government eventually faced the challenge of maintaining the alliance with the pardos. Given recent history these groups still had grievances against the mantuanos. A segment of the mantuanos (among them a 27-year-old Simón Bolívar
, the future Liberator) saw the setting up of the Junta as a step toward outright independence.
The Venezuelan War of Independence
ensued. It ran concurrently with that of New Granada.
On 17 December 1819 the Congress of Angostura declared Gran Colombia
an independent country. After two more years of war, which killed half of Venezuela's white population, the country achieved independence from Spain in 1821 under the leadership of its most famous son, Simón Bolívar
. Venezuela, along with the countries of Colombia
, Panama
, and Ecuador
, formed part of the Republic of Gran Colombia until 1830, when Venezuela separated and became a separate sovereign country.
and New Granada
the Creoles displaced the Spanish authorities with relative ease, as Caracas had done at first. The autonomous movement swept through New Granada, but the country remained politically disunited. Bogotá
inherited the role of capital from Spain, but the royalists were entrenched in southern Colombia (Popayán
and Pasto
). Cali
was a bastion of the independence movement just north of royalist territory. Cartagena declared independence not only from Spain but also from Bogotá. Bolívar arrived in Cartagena and was well received, as he was later in Bogotá, where he joined the army of the United Provinces of New Granada
. He recruited a force and invaded Venezuela
from the southwest, by crossing the Andes (1813). His chief lieutenant was the headstrong José Félix Ribas
. In Trujillo, an Andean province, Bolívar emitted his infamous Decree of War to the Death
with which he hoped to get the pardos and any mantuano who was having second thoughts on his side. At the time that Bolívar was victorious in the west, Santiago Mariño
and Manuel Piar
, a pardo from the Dutch island of Curaçao
, were successfully fighting royalists in eastern Venezuela. Quickly losing ground (much as Miranda had a year earlier) Monteverde took refuge in Puerto Cabello, and Bolívar occupied Caracas, re-establishing the Republic, with two "states", one in the west headed by Bolívar and one in the east headed by Mariño. But neither the successful invasions nor Bolívar's decree were provoking a massive enrollment of pardos in the cause of Independence. Rather it was the other way around. In the llanos
, a populist Spanish immigrant caudillo, José Tomás Boves
, initiated a widespread pardo movement against the restored Republic. Bolívar and Ribas held and defended the mantuano-controlled center of Venezuela. In the east, the royalists started recovering territory. After suffering a setback, Mariño and Bolívar joined their forces, but they were defeated by Boves in 1814. Republicans were forced to evacuate Caracas and flee to the east, where, in the port of Carúpano, Piar was still holding out. Piar, however, did not accept Bolívar's supreme command, and once again Bolívar left Venezuela and went to New Granada (1815). (See Bolívar in New Granada
). In Bogotá, he was given the task of reducing the independent state of Cartagena, which had not joined the United Provinces of New Granada
. After failing to take the city or getting it to join him in a combined effort against neighboring royalist Santa Marta
, he abandoned the enterprise.
In Spain, anti-French forces had liberated the country, and the restored Ferdinand VII sent a large expeditionary force to Venezuela and New Granada under Pablo Morillo
, who had distinguished himself during Spain's War of Independence
. The traditional image of the Venezuelan llanos swarming with caudillos like Boves exaggeratets the situation. Boves was the only significant pro-Spain caudillo and he was acting in concert with Francisco Tomás Morales, who was a regular officer of Spain. In the Battle of Urica, Boves was killed and Morales took command and carried out mopping up operations against the remaining patriot resistance, which included the capture and execution of Ribas. As was still common in the early 19th century, Morales had his head boiled in oil (to preserve it) and sent to Caracas. (See the Execution of Miguel Hidalgo in Mexico.) Morillo arrived in Venezuela and began operations with Morales. Royalist forces under Morillo and Morales captured Cartagena and Bogotá in 1816. Before leaving for New Granada Morillo had decommissioned most of the irregular forces that had fought under Boves, except those that he took to New Granada. With little prospects, some pardos and llanero
s began to join the rebellions that were breaking out against Spanish rule in the broad plains of southern Venezuela. In the meantime, Bolívar chose to sail to Jamaica
to enlist British aid, which was refused. From there, he went to Haiti
, which had been the first Latin American republic to become independent
. With the support of the Haitian president Alexandre Pétion
and with the naval aid of Luis Brión
, another émigré, who was a merchant from Curaçao, Bolívar returned to Margarita Island
, a secure republican redoubt, but his command of the republican forces was still not firm. Mariño, who had come back with Bolívar from Haiti, headed his own expeditions and succeeded in temporarily capturing Cumaná in 1817. With Brión supplying a small fleet, Bolívar sailed west along the Venezuelan coast to Ocumare de la Costa (the Expedition of Los Cayos), where, in fulfillment of Pétion's request, he officially proclaimed the end of slavery (although this went unheeded). Morales, back in Venezuela after subduing New Granada, attacked the republican expeditionary force with an army that vastly outnumbered the republicans. Bolívar fled, sailing once again to Haiti with Brión. However, Piar and Gregor MacGregor
, a Scottish soldier of fortune
, who had previously been active in New Granada, managed to escape with their forces into the interior of the country, defeating Moreles at El Juncal in September 1816 before moving south to Guayana.
), to where Bolívar headed and was chosen as supreme leader of the independence movement. (It was at this time that Bolívar ordered the addition of a new star for Guayana to the seven stars on the Venezuelan flag
, which represented the number of provinces that originally had favored independence. Since Bolívar plays a central role in the symbolism of the current Venezuelan government led by Chávez
, this long-forgotten change was revived in the 2006 revision to the flag.) Once in Guayana, Bolívar quickly cashiered Piar, who had been trying (or was accused of trying—historians still debate this) to form a pardo
force of his own, by having him arrested and executed after a court martial in which Brión was one of the judges. British veterans of the Napoleonic wars began arriving in Venezuela, where they formed the nucleus of what later became known as the British Legion
. Morillo returned to Caracas and Morales was given troops to dominate eastern Venezuela, which he did successfully. Francisco de Paula Santander
, a New Granadan who had retreated to the llanos after Morillo's invasion, met with Bolívar and agreed to join forces. Morillo's other lieutenant, the second in command of the expeditionary force, Miguel de la Torre
, was ordered to put down a significant rebellion in the llanos of Apure
led by José Antonio Páez
. At the time in the Southern Cone
of South America, José de San Martín
had concluded the liberation of Chile with the essential support of the Chilean Bernardo O'Higgins
.
The year 1818 saw a stalemate between the patriots based in Angostura (and free-wheeling in part of the llanos) and Morillo (entrenched in Caracas, triumphant in eastern Venezuela, and operating in the llanos as far as Apure). This is the time during which (according to Marx), Bolívar dilly-dallied and lost one skirmish after another, also saying that European officers in Angostura were egging him on to attack the center of Venezuela. (Bolívar did attempt to do so, but suffered defeat at La Puerta.) At the time James Rooke
did in fact command over 1,000 European soldiers within Bolívar's army in Venezuela. But Morillo had larger forces, and not just of Spanish line troops but also of pardos still loyal to the Spanish crown.
In 1819 Bolívar proclaimed the republic of Great Colombia
, which included Venezuela and New Granada. New volunteers arrived in Venezuela, though most, like those that preceded them, were in essence mercenaries probably under the illusion that there were fortunes to be made in Venezuela, which was hardly the case. There is no evidence that the British government was backing them, but since Spain was no longer a British ally, it wasn’t hindering them either. In Europe, generally, Bolívar's name was known as was the Spanish American movement for independence, which had the sympathy of every liberal-minded person, as did the independence of Greece, then also in the process of emancipation
. Morillo had his hands full and pardos were starting to look towards patriot leaders. Campaigns in eastern Venezuela began turning the tide for independence and in the llanos Páez defeated Morillo and Morales in Apure. This cleared the way for Bolívar and Santander to invade New Granada, where, in Pantano de Vargas
, the Spaniards were defeated in a battle in which the British Legion played a central role and its commander, Rooke, was killed in action. In the battle of Boyacá (1819), Spanish power was crushed in New Granada, except in the south. Páez occupied Barinas and, from New Granada, Bolívar invaded Venezuela.
from the Argentine war of independence
, even though they occurred through parallel but separate and distant political processes and only converged in Perú
. In Buenos Aires
, locals had established a junta similar to that of Caracas on 25 May 1810. But the interior of Argentina (still called La Plata
— "silver" (the name "Argentina", from the Latin word for "silver", first won adoption in 1826)) — either out of royalism or from fear of the capital — remained fractious until General José de San Martín brought it to heel between 1814 and 1817.
In Spain in 1820, liberal sections of the military under Rafael del Riego
established a constitutional monarchy, which precluded new Spanish invasions of America. Before his recall to Spain, Morillo signed a truce with Bolívar. Morillo left Miguel de la Torre in command of the royalist forces.
The truce ended in 1821 and Bolívar had all available forces converge on Carabobo, a hilly plain near Valencia, to face de la Torre and Morales. The defeat of the Spanish right in the Battle of Carabobo
, which is credited to the British Legions
whose commander Thomas Farrier fell, decided the battle. The remnants of the royalists tried to resist in Maracaibo and Puerto Cabello
but by 1824 all had been reduced by Mariano Montilla
and Jose Prudencio Padilla
. After Carabobo, a congress met in Cúcuta
, Santander's birthplace, and approved a federalist
constitution
for Great Colombia.
The liberation of Quito
followed both strategic and jurisdictional imperatives. A Quito-Pasto-Popayán royalist axis existed and had functioned as a thorn in the side of Great Colombia. Jurisdictionally, Quito remained a dependency of the viceroyalty of New Granada. Bolívar always believed that the new Spanish American nations should keep to the approximate borders they had under colonial jurisdiction, which was not a question so much of aggrandizing Great Colombia as of trying to prevent future border disputes. There was an additional factor and it was that Guayaquil
, Quito's port, had declared its independence and needed support. Peruvian soldiers under orders from San Martin, then occupying Lima
, had arrived in Guayaquil. A young Venezuelan general, Antonio José de Sucre
, had shown his mettle in previous campaigns and Bolívar sent him with troops by sea to Guayaquil while he invaded from the north. Bolívar defeated the royalists early in 1822, but Pasto opposed his advance. After failing twice to march directly on Quito, Sucre occupied Cuenca
and from there, leading a coalition army in which probably Colombians and British or Irish were a marginal majority—it must be kept in mind that most of both the patriot and royalist sides usually never concentrated above brigade size (5,000 men)—he marched on Quito and occupied the side of the Pinchincha volcano facing the city. The Spanish commander tried to outclimb him but the patriots in the end got the best of their enemies in hand to hand combat. Sucre entered Quito and then turned north and repressed the extremely recalcitrant Pasto royalists, making it possible for Bolívar to join forces with him.
preserved his forces intact. When the Colombians had liberated Quito he sailed to Guayaquil for a "summit of Liberators" with Bolívar. The two leaders met in secret and there has been much speculation about what they talked about. Some believe that San Martin wanted to claim Quito; others that he sought Bolívar's help to defeat the Spaniards in Perú. San Martin was a strictly military man. He did not like intrigues and he was not prominent in the political infighting in Buenos Aires. As he was uncomfortable in the political world of Lima, which had not been especially keen on liberation, it is likely that he did ask Bolívar to finish the war in Perú, upon which both generals were agreed on its strategic necessity for the consolidation of South American independence. As the viceroyalty of La Plata, from which the independent United Provinces of La Plata had emerged, had once been the administrative center for Upper Perú (today's Bolivia
), and additionally there had been two previous Platean invasions of the region, it is also likely that he indicated his country's interest in Upper Perú. Be that as it may, San Martin left Lima, went back to Buenos Aires, and shortly later emigrated to London, where he spent the rest of his life.
Peruvians summoned Bolívar to Lima, possibly because Peruvian aristocrats by now knew that their loyalty to Spain could become a drawback once Perú had become independent. The Spaniards still occupied the port of Trujillo
in northern Perú, which Colombian forces secured (1823). Bolívar landed in El Callao, the port of Lima, but skirted the fort (where a Spanish force remained holed up and only surrendered in 1826). In Lima itself he was named dictator. Bolívar and Sucre went after the royalist forces which they beat in the battle of Junin
(1824). The battle consisted of cavalry charges on both sides. Bolívar went back to Lima and Sucre chased La Serna's army and defeated it in the battle of Ayacucho
, considered the landmark victory of South American independence for it involved the highest number of troops ever engaged in the wars of independence (possibly around 20,000 in all). While these events were going on in South America, in the USA, which already had 42 years as an independent state, president James Monroe
enunciated in 1823 the doctrine that bears his name
declaring the Western Hemisphere
, except Canada, its area of influence and warning European powers not to encroach on it. Bolívar's response to American claims of hegemony was the convocation of the Congress of Panamá
, which was held in June–July 1826 and which the USA did not attend. Sucre went on to Upper Perú, apparently without Bolívar's authorization, and he defeated feeble local resistance and created the Republic of Bolivia (1825), named after Bolívar. Bolívar made public the letter in which he reprimanded Sucre, but he wrote the constitution for Bolivia, which he considered his legislative masterpiece. Sucre became president of Bolivia.
. Thus began the rivalry between Santander and Bolívar. In 1828, in view of the political opposition he faced both in Venezuela and in New Granada and because his Great Colombia had started to disintegrate, Bolívar named himself dictator
. He escaped an assassination attempt with the help of his mistress, Manuelita Sanz, a pardo woman from Quito. Santander was exiled but Jose Prudencio Padilla, the pardo general who had helped corner Morales after Carabobo in Maracaibo, was executed instead. The emboldened Peruvians now invaded Guayaquil. Bolívar had to return to Quito in 1829 to repulse them, which didn't take much doing, for the invasion had petered out before Bolívar arrived. Back in Bogotá, Bolívar pleaded for unity and, though he had offered to resign various times during his career, this time, when Great Colombia had a new constitution (not Bolívar's Bolivian one) and a president, Joaquin Mosquera, Bolívar finally did resign in 1830. At that point, Páez not only had declared the second independence of Venezuela but promoted a campaign of vituperation against Bolívar. Seeing the state of things, Quito followed suit under Venezuelan general Juan José Flores
, and Sucre was assassinated while riding alone through a thick forest on his way to that city. A downcast Bolívar rode to the coast with the intention of leaving the country, but he was truly exhausted and very sick. He died near Santa Marta
in Colombia at the age of 47.
As in human affairs everywhere, patterns of political ascendancy, downfalls, and resurgences developed. The same geographical reasons that had made possible the formation of Venezuela as a distinct national entity separate from New Granada
during the colonial period, also made Venezuela a country difficult to govern. Venezuela had various regions: the Andes, the plains that stretched from the borders with New Granada to the Orinoco delta, Guayana, the Maracaibo basin, the Coro region, the Barquisimeto
region, and central Venezuela, formed by the Caracas-Valencia axis and its surrounding areas. The llanos themselves comprised different sub-regions: the eastern part which included the Cumaná
region (and the island of Margarita by extension), the Apure
llanos, and the central and western llanos. Except for the llanos, where there were no geographical barriers between them, the other regions were separated from each other by either outright mountain ranges or rough mountainous terrains. The distinction between the eastern, central and western llanos was due to political precedents and circumstances. The eastern llanos and Guayana, had practically fought their own war of independence within the wider war of independence. They also had outlets to the sea. The central and western llanos, which politically were considered extensions of Caracas (except Barinas), had varying access to the central region. The Apure llanos were a prolongation of the central llanos. The western llanos, with the capital in Barinas, had been a province separate from Caracas, but they were in effect (the same as Apure) part of the same social, military, and political landscape.
Independence saw Venezuela possibly the most impoverished country in Spanish America. In 1800 the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt
had estimated the population of the province of Venezuela at around one million. A calculation made by Agustin Codazzi, an Italian officer and engineer who chose Venezuela as his homeland, put the population at 810,000 Whether these figures are reliable or not, it is undeniable that after over a decade of incessant warfare, Venezuela's population must have gone down, if not from the wars themselves, from the unstable social conditions they engendered. Venezuela had no means of communication outside of the caminos reales (royal roads) from the colonial period. There existed a stone-paved camino real from Caracas to La Guaira and there were earthen roads that crisscrossed central Venezuela from Caracas to Valencia and from the center to the llanos. In the llanos themselves, there were the trails made by cattle-herders from one town to another. In the rest of Venezuela, roads were no better than mule tracks that followed lines of least resistance. Caracas had started re-building itself when the war for independence ended, but by all measurable social standards the city had deteriorated from its colonial apogee. It had no public buildings of any note. Its cathedral would have been considered a minor church in México
. In terms of social organization, Venezuela had inherited the colonial distinctions between the minority ruling whites, the majority un-enfranchised pardos, and the slaves. Government was mostly a local affair. The country was 90% or more rural and the regional caudillos exerted their authority from their own large land holdings through the small towns that acted mostly in name as capitals in all the regions. Despite its relative insignificance as a city, Caracas was the symbol of political power and its control was considered to some extent legitimating. In brief, Venezuela was not a cohesive country, but the political forces that determined its history were not entirely arbitrary or chaotic.
In the seventy years from 1829 to 1899, by one official tally, Venezuela had thirty presidential terms, but this leaves out some transitional presidencies which would boost the figure to 41. In reality, a mere 16 presidents served a total of 28 non-transitional terms. One cannot regard Venezuela as stable during this period: at least thirty insurrections occurred, albeit most of them unsuccessful. The usual pattern was that some local, usually white, caudillo would "recruit" an "army" of 100 or more pardos and make a pompous "revolutionary" proclamation. If this caudillo had some measure of charisma, he could put other caudillos on his side and, with the other recruited pardos, march on Caracas. If he succeeded in seizing poqwer, his continued success depended on his getting other caudillos to put down the minor insurrections that cropped up here and there against him. There were other features of note. In Venezuela, as if the caudillos had a tacit understanding among themselves, there were no political executions with but one minor(?) exception. All a significant caudillo had to fear from failure was either jail, usually for a short term, or exile. However, these privileges did not extend to the pardos, who were easy to recruit, easy to punish, and easy to forget once a caudillo was in power.
Between 1830 and 1899 the series of caudillos who succeeded each other as president came mostly from the llanos, the Eastern region, and from the state of Falcón. From 1899 until 1958, chieftains from the Andean regions held the presidency.
Roughly, one can divide the history of Venezuela in the 19th century into the following periods:
A distinguished military leader in the independence war and a colleague of Bolívar, Páez had a strong claim to the Presidency, especially as, despite his pardo origins, the white oligarchy in Caracas supported him enthusiastically.
Although the 1830 Constitution prescribed democracy, tradition and practical difficulties militated against the actual working of a republican form of government, and in practice an oligarchy governed the nation.
During his first year in office Páez created a three-man Office of Foreign Relations within the Ministry of Finance. It had little occasion to deal with war-related diplomacy between Venezuela and other states, because Venezuela had only small military forces and they had the primary function of protecting the presidency from internal threats and of maintaining order. (This has remained the essential role of the Venezuelan military to .) The Foreign Office dealt mostly with difficulties involving foreign citizens doing business in Venezuela: especially breaches of contract, damage to persons and property during civil strife, and acts of oppression such as illegal imprisonment of aliens.
Doctor José María Vargas
, like Páez a member of the Conservative Party, became President in February 1835. As a civilian, he had the support of some who wanted an alternative to the independence-war military veterans who had predominated in Venezuelan politics. In July 1835 the Revolution of the Reforms led by José Tadeo Monagas
outed Vargas, but he returned to power when Páez defeated the rebels. He resigned permanently in April 1836.
Monagas, the leader of the rebellion, had served as a distinguished independence-war general. Although defeated, he suffered few consequences because he had his base in the Eastern llanos, a region where Páez had no effective control. Besides, Monagas had as much right as Páez to count among the "liberators" of Venezuela and he had the additional credential that, whereas Páez had turned his back on Bolivar's Gran Columbia, he, at least in principle, had manifested his allegiance to it until its disintegration was irremediable.
Independence-war general Carlos Soublette, a Conservative, became president in 1837. Páez succeeded him in 1839, but Soublette took the rein
s from Páez again in 1843, and governed until 1847.
While President, Monagas broke with the Conservative Party. In 1848, his supporters assaulted parliament and he imposed personal rule and sent Páez into exile. His younger brother, José Gregorio Monagas
, won election as President for the 1851–1855 term and also governed dictatorially. José Tadeo returned as President in 1855 but resigned in March 1858 in the face of an insurrection in Valencia which was led by Julián Castro
and included elite members of both the Conservative and Liberal Parties.
Both brothers governed as Liberals. José Gregorio abolished slavery in 1854, and José Tadeo abolished capital punishment.
The eastern llanos produced many caudillos because its economy was open to international trade and the exports from that region (cattle, hides, coffee) were staples of the Venezuelan economy.
Castro became the first military President who had not fought in the War of Independence. Castro was a creature of the Caracas-Valencia oligarchy and not very effectual. During his presidency, there was a proliferation of aspiring caudillos in Caracas itself and he exiled them all. This was what provoked the Great War of the Caudillos, called in Venezuelan historiography the Guerra Federal or the Federalist War
, although federalism was not what these men really had in mind. Castro was not competent either as president or as soldier and he handed power to the civilians of the oligarchy, who were soon being overwhelmed by insurrections in the central and western llanos. Páez was called backed from exile in the USA, and ruled as dictator from 1861–1863; but he was no longer the caudillo he once was and he had to surrender to the leader of the federalists, Juan Crisóstomo Falcón
. One result of the War of the Caudillos was that the official denomination of Venezuela was changed from "republic" to the "United States of Venezuela", a national name it had, as well as the motto "God and Federation", until a dictator in the mid-20th century changed it back to "republic".
, who had spent much of his public life as Venezuelan ambassador at large. When he came to power, he did not do so in the name of federalism, which he once espoused, but as a liberal. Venezuela was a country of peripheral enclaves, defined by ports through which international commerce was carried on. These enclaves were the source of customs revenues, which, with some foreign loans, were the main fiscal resources of the Venezuelan government. Caracas had its port of La Guaira
, to which it had been connected by a railroad. Valencia was linked to Puerto Cabello. Maracaibo constituted an enclave in itself. It was the outlet for coffee, mostly by river and lake Maracaibo
from Táchira, in the Venezuelan Andes, and from Colombia. The eastern llanos had an excellent natural harbor near Lecherias, but its potential was not discovered until well into the 20th century with the rise of the oil industry. The telegraph had been introduced since the 1850s, but it went from Caracas to Valencia.
, the most sophisticate
d Venezuelan president (in office three times between 1870 and 1887) of the 19th century, was also the most charismatic of the caudillos. He adeptly contracted loans for Venezuela, from which he amassed a small fortune. Guzmán Blanco had ambitious goals for Venezuela. He wanted to make Caracas a mini-Paris and he did build some theaters and a capitol, but these projects were on a very minor scale. He was also good at progressive legislation. He declared education free and obligatory for all Venezuelans, but Venezuela still had no roads, so his decree was wishful thinking. He did build the railroad from Caracas to Valencia and tried in other ways to modernize the country, but the facts were stacked against him in a country of over one million square kilometers with a wild and inhospitable topography and its some 1,200,000 inhabitants living mostly in rural areas. The political stability of Venezuela was principally the doing of his principal lieutenant.
, was a colorless caudillo, who inaugurated some of the projects Guzmán Blanco had started, among them a submarine cable to Curaçao, which linked Venezuela to the rest of the world, and the Valencia-Puerto Cabello railroad. López was replaced by the civilian Juan Pablo Rojas Paúl
with Guzmán Blanco's far-away blessing. Crespo, who thought he should have been chosen president, went into exile and started planning his own revolution. Rojas Paúl actively promoted an anti-Guzmán popular reaction in Caracas and other cities. He turned power over to another civilian, Raimundo Andueza Palacios
, who forgot the cardinal rule of relying on caudillos for support, a power vacuum which Crespo promptly filled in 1892. Ambitious but unassuming, Crespo ruled until 1898 and handed power to Ignacio Andrade, but Crespo was the military mainstay of the government. In suppressing a serious threat to the government he was killed in action and Andrade was left to fend for himself.
For a complete list of Venezuelan leaders, see List of Presidents of Venezuela.
, a short-tempered and highly ambitious man, formed a real army with Andean recruits and the support of his friend Juan Vicente Gómez
. Castro met practically no resistance on his march to Caracas. His forces were larger now under the command of Gómez. As was to be expected, the new government was like lighting not one but many fuses to many enterprising, aspiring caudillos. Castro was himself courageous, but he did not need to take the field: he had Gómez, who in two years of active campaigning with his Andean troops put down not only the on-going rebellions, but even made sure that there were not to be any more rebellions by placing Andean lieutenants and Andean troops in all the regional capitals of Venezuela.
Few would deny two things about Castro: he was a debauchee with an insatiable taste for cognac and he was a daredevil in foreign relations defying Europe as if he had a navy and adequate coastal defences. Many Venezuelans consider Castro a great patriot but in fact, when he got embroiled with his Venezuela's European creditors, he did not hesitate to invoke the Monroe Doctrine
in defense of his country's sovereignty. Guzman Blanco had tried to have Britain recognize Venezuelan sovereignty to the Essequibo river, in modern terms over half of the state of Guyana. Britain ignored this claim but in 1887 in tried to extend the boundary far into the actual territory of Venezuela prompting the first Venezuelan appeal to the Monroe Doctrine. The USA in 1895 asked that Britain submit its claim to arbitration, which London refused at first creating tension with Washington. There was some eye-winking on the two sides and finally Britain accepted arbitration, which validated its rejection of the Essequibo river boundary, and accepted a broad interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. Castro had nothing to do with this affair, but he inherited from his predecessors a burden of foreign debt which he refused to honor. The resulting crisis of 1902–3
saw an international fleet of European gunboats blockade Venezuela's coasts. With the Guiana border precedent in mind, Castro invoked again the Monroe Doctrine. Germany was aggressively pursuing its blockade in western Venezuela, where there was a large colony of German merchants in Maracaibo, and this preoccupied the Theodore Roosevelt
administration, which told the Germans to back off. But at the same time it told Castro that the Monroe Doctrine did not apply to unpaid debts. The debt question was sent to the Hague Tribunal
which faulted Venezuela. Castro was reluctantly forced to start paying up, but the total cancellation of the overdue bills did not occur under his government. Another war, this time with the Netherlands
, broke out in late 1908.
In 1908, Castro was too sick to be cured in Venezuela and he left for Germany leaving Gómez in charge. Castro had not gone further than the outer Antilles when Gómez took over the government and forbade Castro from returning. This was the beginning of a regime that lasted until 1935 and is interwoven with the early development of the oil industry, the greatest influence ever on the history of Venezuela. One of Gómez's first measures was to start canceling outstanding Venezuelan international debts, a goal which was soon achieved. Under Gómez, Venezuela acquired all the appurtenances of a regular national army staffed and officered almost entirely by Andeans. At the time, the country had a widespread telegraphic system. Under these circumstances, the possibility of caudillo uprisings was curtailed. The only armed threat against Gómez came from a disaffected former business partner to whom he had given a monopoly on all maritime and riverine commerce. Although there are many tales of Gómez's cruelty and ruthlessness, they are mostly exaggerations by his enemies. The man who had tried to overthrow him, Roman Delgado Chalbaud, spent fourteen years in jail. He later claimed that he was in ball and chains during all that time, but he was released by Gómez. His son, Carlos Delgado Chalbaud
, would later become president of Venezuela. When university students staged a street demonstration in 1928, they were arrested but were soon released. But Gómez was indeed ruthless in throttling all opposition and he allowed a personality cult, but this was as much his doing as that of his sycophants, who were numerous all over Venezuela. Gómez, unlike Guzmán Blanco, never erected a statue of himself anywhere in Venezuela. He was a stickler for legal formalisms, which in essence meant that he introduced new constitutions any time it suited his political ends, although this was also the rule during the 19th century. During his dictatorship, Gómez appointed two figurehead presidents while he kept a tight hold on the armed forces from Maracay
, his favorite city, west of Caracas, which he embellished and made the main Venezuelan garrison, a status which it retained until at least the 1960s.
, refused to allow the oil companies to build refineries on Venezuelan soil, so these were built them in the Dutch islands of Aruba
and Curaçao
. The one in Aruba was for a time the second largest in the world, after the one in Abadan
, Iran
. Although the Venezuelan oil boom started around 1918, the year when oil first figured as an export commodity, it took off when an oil well called Barroso blew a 200 feet (61 m) spout that threw up an average of the equivalent to 100,000 barrels a day. It took five days to bring the flow under control. After that, there was no looking back. By 1927, oil was Venezuela's most valuable export and by 1929 Venezuela exported more oil than any other country in the world.
It has been said that Gómez did not tax the oil companies and that Venezuela did not benefit from oil production, but this is only a half-truth. The Venezuelan government derived considerable income from the concessions and from taxes of one sort of another, but the original fiscal laws which applied to the oil companies were hammered out between the government and American lawyers. The laws were relatively lenient, but Gómez, who had an acute business sense, understood that it was necessary to create incentives for investors in the Venezuelan oil fields, some of which were very accessible but others were deep in jungles. Oil income allowed Gómez to expand Venezuela's rudimentary infrastructure and the over all impact of the oil industry on Venezuela was a modernizing trend in the areas where it operated. But in a wider sense, the Venezuelan people, except for those who worked for the oil companies and lived badly but had a steady income, benefited little or not all from the country's oil riches.
Gómez took power in a very poor illiterate country. The white/pardos social divide was still very much in place. When Gómez died in his bed in 1935, Venezuela was still a poor illiterate country and if anything the social stratification had been accentuated. The population had grown from perhaps one million and a half to two million. Malaria
was the greatest killer. Gómez himself probably had Amerindian ancestry, but he was overtly racist and he was much influenced by a historian, Laureano Vallenilla Lanz
, who published a book claiming not inaccurately that the Venezuelan War of Independence was really a civil war with the dubious added argument that pardos were a menace to public order and Venezuela could only subsist as a nation ruled by white strongmen. Gómez, for instance, prohibited all immigration from black Caribbean islands. Even though Venezuela's population in his time was 80% pardo, passports, which were first issued under Gómez, identified carriers by the color of skin, which they still did until the 1980s. Venezuela did change considerably under Gómez. It had radio stations in all the important cities. There existed an incipient middle class. But it still had only two or three universities. An estimated 90% of families formed through common-law marriage
s. The social progress that did take place was through a spontaneous trend towards modernization in which oil played the central role.
, succeeded him: a tall, thin, disciplined soldier with a solid education. Before arriving at his post, he served the Gomecista government loyally wherever he was sent, including at one time Venezuela's eastern land's end, a village called Cristobal Colón, across from Trinidad
. In power, López Contreras allowed the pardo masses to vent for a few days before clamping down. He had Gómez's properties confiscated by the state, but the dictator's relatives, with some exceptions who left the country, were not harassed. Gómez never married but he had various illegitimate children. Initially, López Contreras permitted political parties to come into the open, but they tended to become rambunctious and he proscribed them, although he did not use strong repressive means (which weren’t necessary anyway) as the politicians that led them, called in Venezuelan historiography the "1928 Generation", did not yet have large popular followings. One of the reasons for this hard stance was that, during his first year as president, López Contreras was faced with a labor strike which paralyzed the oil industry in Zulia
state in western Venezuela, whose capital was Maracaibo, where the most productive fields were located.
López Contreras had created a labor ministry and his representative there, Carlos Ramírez MacGregor
, received orders to make a report of the situation, which confirmed the workers’ grievances. He also had instructions to declare the strike illegal, (which he did). Government forces made the workers return to their jobs, although after that incident the oil companies did start taking serious initiatives to improve conditions for Venezuelan workers. Among the notable goals of López Contreras was a campaign to eradicate malaria in the llanos. This task was finally accomplished during the following presidency through the use of DDT
.
Two communists led the oil strike: Rodolfo Quintero and the oil worker Jesús Faría. The history of Marxism
in Venezuela is rather complex, but a brief overview is that communism never sunk roots in Venezuela and its impact on mainstream politics was minimal. Even Chávez
today is not a Marxist. His sloganeering has communistic overtones but he has not carried out a systemic communist ordering of society as Castro
did in Cuba
. López Contreras tried to create a political movement called Cruzadas Cívicas Bolivarianas (Civic Bolivarian Crusades), but it did not pan out, for whatever he did had the taint of his background as a pillar of the Gómez regime. Even the name "crusades
" was suspect with its clerical
overtones. Constitutionally, López Contreras finished Gómez's last term and in 1936 he was elected by the docile congress for the term ending in 1941.
After a vote in the same congress for the 1941–1946 term, López Contreras handed power to his war minister and personal friend, the Andean general Isaías Medina Angarita
, who in many ways made a strong foil to his predecessor. He was stout and good natured and did not make excessive demands on himself. Medina Angarita legalized all political parties, including the divided communists
: some were hard-line, such as the Machado brothers of a traditional Caracas family; and others, gradualists or conciliatory, led by Luis Miquilena
, a union leader who supported Medina's step-by-step approach and for a time was allied to one of the Machado brothers. Under Medina there was an indirect democracy, which followed the 19th century custom of elections at the municipal council level. But Medina was committed to a still restricted but wider national democratic election. For that he had officialdom in all the Venezuelan states form a pro-government party named Partido Democratico Venezolana or PDV (Venezuelan Democratic Party
). But the real genius at political organization was Rómulo Betancourt
, who created from the bottom up what was in effect a pardo party with a strongly reformist, but not Marxist, agenda.
to the Peruvian military academy, which was reputed in Latin America as being very efficient, where the young Andean officer had as professor Gen. Manuel Odria, later to become dictator of Perú. Another Peruvian influence on Venezuelan politics was Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre
, who tried to create an inter-American alliance of leftist anti-imperialist parties, which vaguely fitted Betancourt's own program. Another up-and-coming officer was Carlos Delgado Chalbaud
, the son of the anti-Gomez conspirator previously mentioned. Delgado Chalbaud had spent most of his life in France, where he studied engineering and later attended the St. Cyr military academy. He returned to Venezuela in 1939 and was promptly commissioned in the Venezuelan army by Lopez Contreras. Because of his background, Delgado was the undisputed leader of a group of conspirational officers, among whom the second most important was Pérez Jiménez.
As the 1945 elections approached, Betancourt, who knew how large his national political base was now, accepted Medina's invitation to participate in them on the tacit understanding that the official candidate, Diogenes Escalante, would win with the support of Acción Democrática (AD)
, as Betancourt's party had been named. In exchange, the following elections would be totally democratic. Escalante was party to this agreement, but on his return to Venezuela from Washington, where he was ambassador, to participate in his own election, he started mumbling and making incoherent statements. The man was insane! Medina then made a mistake, which was to choose a substitute for Escalante without consulting AD. Betancourt was incensed and thus it was that the strongest political party in Venezuela and the military conspirators, none of which had a rank higher than major, made a deal whose consequences were to be long-lasting. In October 1945, the military declared themselves in open rebellion in Caracas and Betancourt called on the people to stage a civilian uprising. Medina resigned, but it is generally acknowledged that the army, except for the rebels, was on his side and could have put down the pardo adecos as well as arrest the insubordinate officers. This is believable because the army was the making of Gomez and Lopez Contreras and even Medina. It was a disciplined institution. But there was the other historical antecedent and that was the long history of violence in Venezuelan politics during the previous century and Medina did not want a bloody civil war on his hands.
A junta formed, headed by Betancourt and with Delgado as Minister of Defence. Fully democratic elections were held for congress, in which it was shown that AD under Betancourt had indeed become the party of the vast majority of Venezuelans. Two other parties were founded: COPEI
(Independent Electoral Committee), by the pro-clerical Rafael Caldera
, whose party later was later re-baptized Social Christian COPEI; and URD (Republican Democratic Union), which was joined by Jóvito Villalba
, considered one of the greatest orators in Venezuelan history, and made over practically into his personal party. Since the death of Gomez, the following governments had been gradually increasing oil taxes. In the junta, energy minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo
decreed a 50-50 sharing agreement with the oil companies. The junta also took other daring measures. Catholic schools, which were the best in the country, were forced to close temporarily while a new national curriculum was elaborated. Agrarian reform
was approved. But most noticeable was that bureaucracy, which previously had been kept at the barest possible minimum, made a phenomenal forward leap, and not just because of all the reforming that had to be done but also because AD had to reward its more prominent backers
.
The white/pardo divide was in theory demolished although in practice not many pardos could fulfill even the lowest requirements for civil service, into which nevertheless many entered. A national educational campaign was inaugurated, but fundamentally, as the majority of Venezuelans were still illiterate, all this amounted to was that the few who could read would be teaching the many that could not. There was a national election for the presidency in 1947, which the adeco
candidate, the talented novelist Romulo Gallegos
, won, again by a huge margin. But at the time there was much discontent in the middle class, which was Caldera's base of support—he got 262,000 votes—not to speak of the upper crust; and of course the officers who had ushered AD into power were on the lookout for the main chance. There was no particular incident that set off the bloodless 1948 coup, which was led by Delgado Chalbaud. There was no popular opposition. This might have meant that the odds were too great or that the pardo masses had not noticed any particular improvement in their lives despite the incessant government propaganda. All prominent adecos were expelled. The other parties were allowed but muzzled.
Delgado Chalbaud was twice a betrayer, but Venezuelan historians tend to speak well of him, analogously as they argue in America that John F. Kennedy
would not have allowed the Vietnam War to escalate. But both positions are contrafactual, hence un-provable. What is often said is that Delgado Chalbaud was planning to restore Venezuelan democracy. If that was his intention, he did not get the chance to accomplish it. One day in November 1950, as he was being driven unescorted through a wooded part of Caracas towards the presidential palace, he was cut off by cars and kidnapped. His captors took him to an isolated house in southern Caracas. All versions of this incident are more or less agreed that someone's gun went off wounding the leader of the kidnappers, that Delgado was then hustled out of the car and he confronted his abductors, and that finally they shot him to death. The main kidnapper, who was bleeding badly, was soon captured and later, in the then official version, he was killed trying to flee. No one accepts this version, which is why it is widely believed that it was his political partner, Pérez Jiménez, who had Delgado Chalbaud assassinated.
, who was dismissed by the military in 1952, and the ambitious Pérez Jiménez became dictator with the consent of Llovera Páez, who was an obscene non-entity. The former majors, who had risen to colonels in the democracy, were now generals. Pérez Jiménez himself was physically not very impressive. He was short, balding, and tubby, and read speeches monotonously, although surely on the personal level he must have had some magnetism. He was a megalomaniac of much character that when a Time magazine interviewer asked him what Rome's greatest legacy was, he said, : "Its ruins", apparently wanting to give the impression that while the ruins of Rome were all that remained of its greatness, his own will surpass them with his grand-scale building projects. In some ways, this is understandable. Pérez Jiménez, unlike most Venezuelans, received a thorough education from the military academies he had attended and graduated from with highest honors.
By the time he came to power, Pérez Jiménez had developed a flair for fascist opulence and boasting about his projects in making Venezuela the major power of South America. The greatest of Venezuelan writers at the time (and for a long time after that) was Arturo Uslar Pietri
and he became famous on television with analytical biographies of great historical figures. Uslar Pietri had a felicitous phrase: "Sow the oil", which became a national slogan meaning that the state's oil income should be productively invested. But in Venezuela "sowing the oil" implied "sowers" and the country did not have too many of these. In fact, it was the undeclared understanding that "sowing the oil" really meant "give Venezuelans employment by creating government jobs".
The other reason for Pérez Jiménez's "ruins revelation" was that what he intended to do as president, apart from becoming rich, which he did, like Gomez, with his own military and civilian cronies, was to build and build and build, and here too he was undeniably successful. It is only fair to point out here that while Gomez did become immensely rich, he never had in his life a foreign bank account (as ignorant as he was, not to mention the time in which he was living), and even though Pérez Jiménez in relative terms was not as rich as Gomez, all the dollars he accumulated went offshore. Pérez Jiménez also had an efficient secret police, but the stories about tortures and killings were, like those about Gomez, mainly inventions by the frustrated adecos, although whoever in Venezuela tried to be active clandestinely was sure to be either imprisoned or shot if he resisted. Also like Gomez, Pérez Jiménez had a theoretician, Laureano Vallenilla Lanz, who happened to be the son of Gomez's own historian and had his father's persuasions. Like his father, this Vallenilla was also a racist. It was he who authored the immigration policy of the regime. By the time Pérez Jiménez had all the power in his hands, which despite his uninspiring qualities he did manage to do, Venezuela had around five million inhabitants. Depending on which measures you apply, the country can be said to have been under-populated. If you consider, for instance, that population density is not necessarily good, then it could be argued that Venezuela was not under-populated but under-educated. The idea that Vallenilla Lanz and Pérez Jiménez had was to open the doors of the country to as many Europeans as wanted to come, with which they, and many non-pardo Venezuelans, believed that two flies would be killed with one swat: the country's population would grow, but not with more ignorant pardos: with Europeans who brought with them, however lowly they might have been in their own countries, a higher average education than Venezuelans had. But this backfired for the immigrants were precisely from countries that had given rise to the existence of pardos—a euphemism for bastardy and ridiculous illiteracy.
Up to a point, this kind of social engineering might have been defensible, but the immigrants, who came from Spain, Portugal, and Italy on the rationale that they would adapt better to Venezuela and Venezuelans would adapt better to them (than, say, to Swedes), did not emigrate from their countries to give Venezuelans lessons in civics. They came for a better income and probably the majority of the some two million who did come started returning as soon as they had made enough to live better in their own lands. This counter-flow became massive during the 1980s, when Venezuela's economy started sliding down like a luge. It is possible that the proportion of the white population in Venezuela might have increased slightly. Many of the emigrants did make a lot of money and chose Venezuela as their country, but as to industrializing or increasing agricultural production, their effect was not and is not noticeable; and this for the simple reason that the Venezuelan government considered that diversified industrial development was its responsibility and private citizens of any nationality—in this sense, it can be said that Venezuela is perhaps the most un-discriminatory country in the world—were given ample rights in the areas of commerce, of services, and of other ancillary activities. Despite this insidious racism, it was under Pérez Jiménez that the mythification of the Amerindian caciques, who supposedly had resisted the conquistadors everywhere in Venezuela, was given a big boost, especially when an exchange house founded by an Italian immigrant brought out a series of souvenir gold coins in which each cacique was depicted with facial traits that were invented out of whole cloth by Pérez Jiménez's laureate painter, Pedro Francisco Vallenilla. Despite his rigorous Catholic upbringing, Pérez Jiménez also encouraged the underlying animism of Venezuelans when he erected in the middle of Caracas’ first speedway a statue of Maria Lionza, a sort of Amerindian goddess who sits atop a tapir and is much worshipped in a jungle sanctuary in Yaracuy
in central Venezuela.
Pérez Jiménez, confident that he had done good work as dictator, scheduled elections for 1952
. His official party ran against COPEI and URD, which had only managed puny showings against AD in the presidential election of 1947. When the time came to vote, Venezuela's pardos wanted their adecos back and the exiled leadership of the party let it be known that it wanted URD to win. As the results started coming in showing that AD was still the political top dog in Venezuela, Pérez Jiménez shut down the polls, and the country, and after a few days, during which he probably was making sure that he counted with the loyalty of his generals, he published results that were so lopsidedly in his favor as to seem ludicrous. Pérez Jiménez thus inaugurated himself for another five years as president, and just as he had intended from the beginning. he went on spending on infrastructure and way beyond this to gigantic industrial, agricultural, and power-generating projects. In foreign affairs, Venezuela was a faithful ally of the American government, although servile would probably be more to the point. When the government of the socialist Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala
was implementing real social reforms in a country that badly needed them, Venezuela was host to a conference of the OAS (Organization of American States
) in which Guatemala was ostracized. Shortly afterwards the CIA sponsored a coup in which Arbenz was overthrown. Pérez Jiménez also changed entirely the face of Caracas with a building program such as the city had not seen since Guzman Blanco, and compared to what Pérez Jiménez built, Guzman's buildings, one of which Pérez Jiménez had cut at the nose, were dwarfs. The author of this "face lifting" was Luis Malausena, whose taste was in all to Pérez Jiménez's sense of grandeur and went from the ultra-modern to a non-descript "neo-classicism". The Caracas that one sees today is, then, the unimaginative creation of a character whom no one remembers, and no one probably will as, after he made millions upon millions, he fled the country with Pérez Jiménez, never to be seen again. Caraqueños, incidentally, have never complained about the legacy of Malausena. (As a footnote, Hugo Chávez Frias
was born in 1954 in what he describes as a thatched hut.)
The next presidential election fell due by the end of 1957. Pérez Jiménez thought he had learned from the 1952 political debacle and instead of an election he decreed a plebiscite on his government. He probably knew he wasn’t going to win this one either, so the results were rigged. The people who queued to vote were civil servants and indirect employees of the government and its subordinate companies and institutions, who were instructed to show some proof that they had voted for the regime, usually by presenting the "no" card, although this was a silly ploy. All the government needed was a turnout, and that is what it got. Economically, Venezuela apparently was not doing so badly, but the signs of prosperity were mostly in the cities, and the countryside, where half of Venezuelans still lived, had social indexes way below what would have been expected from such a fiscally rich country.
Pérez Jiménez's illegitimacy was so patent that some officers conspired to overthrow him. There was also some cautious civilian clandestine agitation. On the last day of 1957, a military uprising coordinated by officers of air and tank forces struck, but the coordination was not that good. The air force rebels flew over Caracas and dropped randomly some bombs while a commander started out from Maracay
with a column of tanks. Somehow the signals got crossed, the tanks turned back, and the pilots fled the country. These officers probably thought that Pérez Jiménez would turn tail in the face of this demonstration, but the bulk of the armed forces remained loyal. However, this show of defiance did set off a sequence of events which eventually made Pérez Jiménez fear for his political survival. The underground civilian opponents started goading the people in Caracas, where they needed little goading and were out in the streets whenever and wherever they could. The repressive secret police rounded up all civilian suspects, but this was like trying to do the little Dutch boy trick
. The popular resistance to the government was not just a pardo thing and reached to all levels of society. The navy had taken a non-committal attitude in a situation where its guns were not of any service. It was not in on any conspiracy. There were signs of restiveness in the land forces with some officers working to rules, so to speak, but there was not at any time a military insurrection. But the crowds were getting bigger and bigger. Finally, with various suitcases stuffed with dollars, Pérez Jiménez took off in his private DC-3 and sought refuge in the Dominican Republic
, where his resilient colleague, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo
, had been ruling since 1930.
The flight of the dictator ushered in an amazing incident in the history of Venezuela. Pérez Jiménez had been unsure of whom to trust. He was arbitrary and authoritarian but there is no evidence that he was particularly courageous. Like Guzman Blanco, he possibly considered that hanging on to power was not worth the effort, especially considering that his fortune would allow him to live royally outside of Venezuela. When he fled, the country was for all practical purposes leaderless. The Caracas masses had no leader, because no one in the streets had the stature to be one, and any potential leader was in jail. For various days before his hasty departure, Pérez Jiménez had not been giving any inspiration or even orders to the army generals loyal to him, which were still a majority. There were junior officers here and there acting on their own. A military committee was functioning in the military academy. When these officers received word that Pérez Jiménez had left, they felt - reasonably enough - that it was up to them to exercise authority. Thus it was that Wolfgang Larrazábal
, an admiral who owed to Pérez Jiménez his rise in the services and who had never manifested any disaffection to him, was chosen to lead the country solely because he outranked every one else. Had Pérez Jiménez ordered the commander of the Caracas garrison to arrest any officer not at his post and to put the fear of volleys into the crowds, he would have been obeyed, so in some way it redounds to his credit that, like Medina Angarita before him, he ran because he did not want bloodshed, although Medina had not run at all but had been imprisoned and released. As soon as it became unmistakable that Pérez Jiménez was out, the exiled politicians started streaming in. Larrazábal was made head of a civilian-military junta. Overnight, without having lifted a finger to deserve it, Larrazábal became the idol of Caracas, though in the rest of Venezuela the pardos were still adecos to the tip of their tails.
During the Cuban Revolution
of the 1950s, a number of liberal organisations in Venezuela declared their support for Fidel Castro's guerrilla operations against Batista
. The Venezuelan government refrained from taking a position on the Cuban rebellion, but unofficially during Larrazábal's Presidency contributed 50,000 dollars to Castro's revolutionaries.
manner and one in particular, the most influential, was completely irrational.
A so-called Emergency Plan gave hand-outs to those who could claim they were unemployed
. These popular subsidies were far above what the average Venezuelan earned in the rural areas and there followed inevitably a flood of migrants to Caracas, a city that before had few shantytowns, and settled and built shacks on the hillsides on the eastern and western edges of the valley in which Caracas nestles. The population of the city soon doubled with these rural, barely educated newcomers, who were obviously strongly pro-Larrazábal but were also a potential source of political de-stabilization. The pardos in effect became a force to be reckoned with in the forthcoming elections. But before these took place many things were occurring. The officers who felt they had been cheated staged various insurrections, even to an "invasion" by one of them from Colombia who managed to take over San Cristobal
, the capital of Táchira
state. All these conspiracies were contained although some required drastic means and at one point the Larrazábal government was in real danger of being toppled. The armed forces were instrumental in quelling the revolts, but each time there was one, Caracas mobs went wild prodded by the politicians.
The most menacing of these popular riots took place in May 1958 when U.S. vice-president Richard Nixon
and his wife Pat
visited Venezuela. Nixon represented the Dwight D. Eisenhower
administration, which had conferred on Pérez Jiménez the Legion of Merit
. The Venezuelan government had not anticipated the raging public reaction to this emissary from Washington, possibly because it thought that it had assuaged public indignation by allowing the hysterical daily denigration of the former dictator. Venezuelans were not that versed in foreign affairs, but the communists were and it was at their instigation that crowds assaulted Nixon's motorcade along an avenue that ran close to where many shantytowns had grown, ironically not far from a huge apartment complex that Pérez Jiménez had built for workers. Before the Venezuelan army intervened—preventing a ready-to-go Marines intervention—Nixon's car had been rocked back and forth, its windows had been smashed, and the vice-president and his wife had been thoroughly drenched in spit. As would be expected, once safe in the American embassy residence, Nixon let loose with imprecations and he returned quickly to the U.S. It says well of him that when he reported on his trip, which was meant as a fact-finding and conciliatory gesture to Latin America, he stressed that his country was partly to blame for the unfriendly reception in Caracas.
As the elections approached, the three main parties, AD, COPEI and URD, initiated talks to form a united political front "in defence of democracy". This implied, if not a single candidate chosen among them, at least an understanding for future cooperation in ruling Venezuela. The pact, known as the puntofijismo remained essentially in place until Hugo Chávez' victory in 1998. Another significant pact that emerged during 1958 was the unspoken one by which, mainly Betancourt, agreed not to mess with the military in any way and let them run their own affairs. The military in their turn pledged that they would not to allow politicization within their ranks — to the extent that they even renounced their own right to vote (voting became compulsory for the rest of the Venezuelans). The wily Betancourt, who sometimes is referred to as the "father of Venezuelan democracy" (much less in than before), insisted that the communists were not to be included in the political talks, and excluded they were but took it very calmly. The chances of one candidate were slim and nothing came out of the negotiations except a well-meaning consensus that the parties would stick together in the defence of democracy from whatever threats might arise in the future. This meant that the electoral process was on and that each party had to look itself.
AD knew that it remained the most popular party all over Venezuela: it chose Betancourt as its candidate. Caldera had no rivals in COPEI, the party he founded, and he entered the political fray counting on the conservative middle class. Villalba and his URD party adopted an opportunistic strategy, which was practically an admission that they could not compete with the AD national pardo popular base. It was the pardo masses in Caracas that Villalba was targeting when, instead of postulating himself, he chose Larrazábal, who also had the communists with him, to be the URD candidate. Larrazábal turned over the provisional presidency to a civilian and he went on campaign. When the results were in, Betancourt was elected for the term that ended in 1964, but this time by a plurality and not the absolute majorities that AD had gotten in 1946 and 1947. Caracas was no longer an AD redoubt. The city from then on became a marginal that could swing in any unforeseen direction and this time it went all out for Larrazábal, who came in second. Caldera did not do badly in third place and received proportionally more votes than he had in 1947. But the Venezuelan panorama was cloudy at best. Part of the 1958 demagoguery was that the UCV (Central University of Venezuela
), which likes to style itself "casa primada" (first house of Venezuelan learning), was granted "autonomy", which meant that the police were barred from the University City; and starting in 1960 it became a bastion of an insurrection that leftists started to recoup the chance they thought they had missed when Caracas was so politicized that they could get crowds in the streets by snapping their fingers, although Larrazábal's showing with mainly URD votes should have taught them that they weren’t as popular as they thought, that they were not popular at all, to put it bluntly. Under its autonomy status, the UCV gave sanctuary to every leftist movement and its rectors were complicit with the communists or themselves Marxists. It got so bad that Caldera, when he finally got his shot at being president, was forced to close it for a year. But, as things in Venezuela have a way of taking surprising turns, when Chávez began to "revolutionize" Venezuela, the UCV was collectively, though mildly, opposing his regime.
The British allowed free elections in their dependency in 1961, but when a Marxist, Cheddi Jagan
, won them, it annulled the results and after three years permitted new ones which were won by a man, Forbes Burnham
, who turned out to be at least as leftist as Jagan. When British Guiana became independent Guyana
in 1966, the Venezuelan claim became an undecipherable legal tangle, but Venezuelan maps to this day still look as Betancourt had them drawn. That the Venezuelan claim was bogus populism had its most perplexing demonstration when the Guyanese allowed Californian cult leader Jim Jones
, to establish a religious community right next to the Venezuelan border in 1977. The Venezuelan minister of foreign affairs at the time, Simon Alberto Consalvi, only found about the Guyanese sleight-of-hand when California representative Leo Ryan
went to Jonestown
to investigate complaints from constituents about missing relatives. When the congressman got there in November 1978, the suicidal followers of Jones, many of them blacks, first shot him dead and then 917 of them, including 276 children, committed suicide with cyanide-laced Kool Aid. Jones too killed himself.
In other things, Betancourt demonstrated a realistic approach. He respected the virtual autonomy of the armed forces and he did all he could to keep on the good side of Washington. Betancourt held two particular grudges: against Pérez Jiménez, for obvious reasons, and against Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, the Dominican dictator against whom in his youth, with José Figueres of Costa Rica, he had carried on an active subversive opposition. The first of these targets of his ire led him to undercut developmental projects which would have been beneficial to his country. His hatred for Trujillo almost cost him his life, although in the end it was Trujillo who lost his. Pérez Jiménez had left in place the basic plans and projects for the further modernization and for the heavy industrialization of Venezuela.
Guyana had large iron deposits. The infrastructure for exploiting them was laid as well as the complementary huge steelworks. Communications had been a priority and Venezuela was endowed with a network of roads and bridges that covered the territory where over 90% of the population lived. Half or more of these were improved surface and all they lacked was the asphalt paving. This system linked with the many blacktops that the oil companies had built in eastern and western Venezuela. These had been traced for exploration and exploitation, but they also served for the use of the general population and were now linked to the national highway system.
Pérez Jiménez had built motorways from Caracas to Valencia and from Caracas to the port at La Guaira. By 1955, one could drive from one end to the other of Venezuela in a matter of days where before it would have taken weeks, months if the rainy season hampered travel. Also, Pérez Jiménez had begun the construction of a coherent railway system, although he had not had time to do more than the railroad from Puerto Cabello to Barquisimeto. Pérez Jiménez had also created government subsidiaries, called "institutos autónomos" (autonomous institutes)—the "autonomous" was supposed to mean non-political, but its real function was to allow them to negotiate foreign loans—that were to build waterworks and electric power plants in all important urban centers. He thus had started the construction the huge Caroni river dam which in time was to provide the entire country with a reliable electric grid. Betancourt's government adopted the plans and the administrative system for carrying them out that the dictatorship had left in place.
But the politics of repudiation had to have its pound of flesh, and Betancourt and his cabinet also canceled some crucial public works merely because Pérez Jiménez had initiated them. The railroads were scrapped with the argument that Venezuela did not need them having so much asphalt it could expand the road network at a lower cost. Pérez Jiménez had built a large reservoir in the central llanos with the irrigation potential to make Venezuela an exporter of rice. The adecos in power built instead a small hydroelectric dam for Caracas upstream and effectively starved the rice-producing scheme which was only realized to a fraction of its planned area.
In time, most of the land that would have been irrigated was converted into cattle ranches, the traditional but at that point inessential llanos economic activity. In addition to the government–financed development projects, Pérez Jiménez was not averse to protectionism and incentives to local industries, but the Betancourt government made a fetish of import substitution and instead of allowing the free importation of industrial goods for which Venezuela did not have the training, it tried to force foreign suppliers to build plants in the country for the assembly or packaging of finished products that were allowed tariff-free into the country. The automobile "industry" was the import substitution model.
Venezuela still does not manufacture car engines and all that the Betancourt and successive governments achieved was to assemble cars, which did give some Venezuelans employment—some parts suppliers, like makers of windshields, also prospered—but made the cars more costly than if they had been imported whole from Detroit to feed Venezuela's car-mania. But economic nostrums and interventionism went beyond that. The government had opted for "guided planning" and what this meant was that businesses were strictly regulated through a system of controls that went from the permission to start one to limits on where and on how they should operate. The author of this "developmental strategy" was José Antonio Mayobre, a former communist and Betancourt's economic guru.
All of this required more government employees and again, as after 1945, the Venezuelan bureaucracy bloomed, as it would go on doing with each new president until it reached its height under Carlos Andres Pérez
, Betancourt's personal secretary and future president. Another trusted Betancourt minister was Leopoldo Sucre Figarella
, who considered that a long bridge to complete the Caracas-Valencia motorway was unnecessarily expensive and he had the six-lane highway constructed along the mountain contour, but the ground beneath was not firm and this section of the motorway started sliding and during the following decades the cost of shoring it up was at least ten times what the bridge would have cost.
Pérez Jiménez had gone from the Dominican Republic to Miami, but Betancourt had him accused of filching in the state treasury (justifiably, although only circumstantial evidence existed) and the Venezuelan supreme court convicted him. Venezuela asked the John F. Kennedy administration for the extradition of Pérez Jiménez, and, to everyone's surprise, the USA complied, betraying an unconditional ally it had once bestowed a medal upon. Pérez Jiménez was first held in the Miami county jail and was finally sent to Venezuela to finish the term in a comfortable prison. In all he spent five years in prison.
, which used Venezuela as the exemplar for all of Latin America. The ideology behind this came in a package called "development economics
" expressed in a work by the economist W.W. Rostow, who described economic progress with the "take-off metaphor": a developing economy was like an airplane which got its motors running, taxied to the head of the runway, then sped along until it took off, which was the historical moment of self-sustaining growth. There were many other ideas of this sort. Another was the "trickle down effect", which posited that, as an economy developed, its lower social strata would benefit from the achievements of free enterprise
. But in Venezuela free enterprise was a very relative concept because of the proliferation of government regulations, not that Betancourt had anything like a "command economy" in mind, for the rights of private property were never meddled with. The trickle down effect took the form of political clientelism through which state hand-outs and local state-created posts, some purely nominal, were financed at the lower pardo levels. This was the rule in the Caracas shantytowns, but also in the rural and semi-rural areas where adeco loyalties were firm. The Betancourt government expanded educational facilities of all sorts on a large scale. New universities were created; vocational and craft schools were founded. Pérez Jiménez's immigration policy was halted. Paradoxically, Venezuelans were not doing basic jobs, such as plumbing and carpentry, and a new and larger wave of immigration swept over the country mainly from Colombia, much of it illegal. Venezuela became for its neighbor what the USA was for México. There was no pardo discrimination—as such this had never existed in Venezuela—but when it came to upper echelon positions in and out of the government, Venezuelan whites and foreigners were generally preferred to the average Venezuelan. With Betancourt, Venezuela started becoming a nation of social parasites. But Venezuelans themselves had no trouble with that.
But Betancourt in power primarily faced the problem of merely surviving, even in a personal sense. The underlying cause of the instability was that the 1958 elections had settled the issue of who had the right to govern democratically, but this was not as many disgruntled officers saw it, because they still felt very strongly that it was the armed forces and not the "people" who had overthrown Pérez Jiménez. This created an indescribable mélange of partisans of Pérez Jiménez, rightists who were calling Betancourt a communist in disguise, and new insubordinate officers who were clamoring for a "real revolution". During his first year in power Betancourt was the object of an assassination attempt through a remote-control car bomb. He suffered minor lesions. The Dominican dictator Trujillo, who himself was assassinated by his own disaffected officers in 1961, was blamed, but the actual perpetrators were Venezuelans. Then, military insurrections in Carúpano
and in Puerto Cabello, which were supposed to take place simultaneously in 1962, instead followed upon each other. The promoter among the military of these rebellious movements was a then little-known personage called Manuel Quijada. The military held their part of the 1958 agreement with Betancourt and suppressed them. But the strangest of all the movements against Betancourt, and the least effectual—although Carúpano and Puerto Cabello can only be described as aberrations—came from the communist left.
Fidel Castro occupied Havana in Cuba in January 1959. He was considered a reformist compared with the unscrupulous mulatto dictator Fulgencio Batista
, a man who as a sergeant had carried out his first coup in Cuba back in 1936. The first sign that Castro was different from all the caudillos that Latin America had ever had, was that he ordered the public executions of over a hundred Batista army men and policemen, although he himself had benefited by a pardon from Batista when he had tried to take over a military barracks
in 1953. Once in power, Castro never concealed his anti-Americanism and in 1961 he claimed that he was and had always been a Marxist-Leninist. Venezuelan leftists, and especially the communists, were watching, and they came to the unreasonable conclusion, not entirely unlike that of the rightist officers who had plotted against Betancourt, that the 1958 "revolution" had been hijacked at its most popular and effervescent and that they were going to attempt a repeat of Castro's real revolution. Urban guerrillas were formed even as in Congress leftists were clamoring against Betancourt. The subversive cells carried out some sensational acts, one being the daylight robbery of an exhibition of Impressionist painters sponsored by France at the Venezuelan art museum. In another more deadly action they shot and killed eight Venezuelan soldiers in the back to steal their weapons. Betancourt put his aide Pérez in charge of repression. The leftist deputies were arrested. The urban insurrection was brought under control, but the communists and their leftist allies took to the hills with the intention of repeating the pattern of Castro's rural guerrillas. Betancourt wanted to back the American proposal at an OAS conference in Costa Rica to expel Cuba from that body, which was achieved, but his own foreign minister, Ignacio Luis Arcaya, refused to obey and abstained in the final vote.
the adeco
Raúl Leoni
, a long-time ally of Betancourt from the times of Gomez, won handily. Caldera came second. The Larrazábal political phenomenon was eclipsed and Villalba on his own did poorly. AD was still the pardo party par excellence, but Caracas was definitely lost. Leoni's government was unexceptional, but it was Leoni who had to liquidate the remnants of the communist insurrection, for which he put the army in charge of the country with carte blanche to be as ruthless as it had to. But in fact it was the communist guerrilleros themselves who brought about their own liquidation. They had no rural support whatsoever. Unlike guerrillas all over the world, they did not control villages and lived from hand to mouth. They knew they were no match for the army and avoided confrontations. Castro had been hoping that Venezuela would be the second act of the Latin American revolution and he tried to supply the Venezuelan guerrillas. This was in keeping with the theory of what could be called the "permanent agrarian revolution", which the French intellectual Régis Debray
had expressed in the widely circulated book Revolution Inside the Revolution, and Ernesto "Che" Guevara
had been trying to carry out first in Africa and later, fatally for him, in Bolivia. Castro sent a trusted officer, Manuel Ochoa, to assess the Venezuelan guerrillas and the report that he brought was negative, which effectively ended Cuba's intervention in Venezuelan affairs. By then the Venezuelan leftists had given up on violence and were seeking legalization, but Leoni did not offer it. Ochoa was later tried and executed by Castro on an unlikely charge of drug-smuggling.
The elections of 1968
proved conclusively that Venezuela had an indisputably working democracy. But a few caveats remained. During the Betancourt presidency AD had produced a radical offshoot led by Domingo Alberto Rangel, but as it was banned it could not participate in the 1963 elections. AD had a core of pardo leaders and still another offshoot was led by one of these, but they suffered a heavy defeat in the same elections. The rural clientelist system was definitely working. But during 1968, according to the "Buggins turn" rule that the party applied, a referendum was held in which the two rival adecos were Luis Beltran Prieto Figueroa
, the living symbol of the party's inter-racial credentials, and Gonzalo Barrios
, a politician who was the leading light in the so-called "Parisian circle" within the party and whose turn it definitely wasn’t. As the vote was an internal party affair the true results are not really known. It is as likely that Prieto Figueroa won as that he didn’t, but the party hierarchy claimed that Barrios had and Barrios became the official candidate. Pietro Figueroa was incensed and he formed his own party whose secretary general was another pardo, Jesus Angel Paz Galarraga. Caldera was anything if not obstinate and he had been the losing Social Christian COPEI candidate in the elections of 1947, 1958
and 1963. This time (1968) Caldera's perseverance paid off and he won against runner up Barrios by the slim margin of 30,000. In another Latin American country this would have provoked turbulence, as even in America Bush's electoral margin in 2000 did in a legal sense, but not in Venezuela. Caldera thus became president by the skin of his teeth. Prieto Figueroa came in third, but amazingly a party that had been formed by nostalgic Pérezjimenistas and had no organization whatever obtained around a quarter of the vote for Congress, and this was happening less than ten years since the dictator's overthrow.
Democracy functioned, but did not fulfil everybody's expectations. Pérez Jiménez himself won election to a seat in the Senate, but when he returned in the belief that Venezuela would respect the election result, the adecos had already had their complaisant judges issue orders of arrest on one pretext or another and at the airport Pérez Jiménez was mobbed by adeco thugs. He fled Venezuela looking very scared, never to return from his Madrid mansion. This was a clear demonstration that elections in Venezuela had to be won by the right people or else. And not only that: the democratic Venezuelan government wasn’t even respectful of Venezuelan civil liberties as was shown when Caldera had a highly disrespectful magazine with a respectable circulation, called Reventon, shut down by the military with the unlikely charge that it had insulted the armed forces by saying that some soldiers were gay (statistically inevitable) . In his political past, Caldera had been pro-business, but in his incarnation as president
he increased government intervention in the economy. He was hamstrung by Congress, which was controlled by the adecos, so bureaucracy was kept at the same level it had been, but the new government applied unabashedly the "to the victors belong the spoils" practice. The leftist parties, of which now there were many more than in 1958, were legalized. Towards the end of his government, oil prices increased sensationally but fiscal revenues came into the state's coffers too late for Caldera to use them to shape up his party's muscles. There was also an eye-popping building boom in Caracas but suspiciously the new constructions were going up but not into the market.
created his public persona as a well-tailored man and in general refurbished his "image". Diego Arria was a politician who served under Caldera and was appointed by Perez as mayor of Caracas where his constructive ideas did not prosper. Arria was investigated for corruption and there is an arrest warrant pending against in Venezuela. After serving a stint as Venezuelan ambassador to the UN under the second Perez administration, he settled in New York.
Congress gave Pérez a mandate to rule by decree for 100 days - and then for a further 100 days. He also had a fiscal fortune in his hands such as no Venezuelan president ever had. And Pérez didn’t lose time to start spending it. He commissioned a report on government which was prepared and carried out by Arnoldo Gabaldón. It contained a blueprint for further large scale bureaucratic expansion. Gabaldón himself was named to a super-ministry which combined public works and communications. As it was impossible to hire every Venezuelan, Pérez decreed that all public places should have bathroom attendant
s and that every elevator the country over should have an operator, although Venezuela had only had one or two hand-operated elevators before the Pérez Jiménez building euphoria. Contracts were handed out with abandon and Venezuelans applauded with gusto. Pérez proclaimed that the oil wealth would not be squandered and founded a huge fund for "productive investments". This fund was exhausted very quickly. Congress had surrendered its power of fiscal oversight, one of the historical bases of democracy. Corruption went up incalculably and there was even a case in which Venezuela bought a meat-freezing ship named the Sierra Nevada which was anchored to store part of the immense quantity of imports that were being handled. The commissioner's fee here was well known as well as its recipient, who was never even tried. Ferries were bought in Scandinavia for routes between Venezuelan and the offshore Dutch free ports. Their windows could not be opened and they were not equipped for the Venezuelan heat. On any given day, one could see dozens of ships queuing to unload in all Venezuelan ports, which meant that demurrage charges were huge and were obviously passed on to consumers. But consumerism was the whole point to it all. The bolivar, Venezuela's currency, was so over-valued that almost anybody in Venezuela with a minimum of initiative could go to Miami and bring a suitcase load of goods which were sold to customers, usually friends or neighbors. Even servant quarters were in the net of this informal import economy. In Miami, Venezuelans became known as "gimme two" (of anything, at any price).
Only in the television market did Pérez show scruples against rampant consumerism: possibly under pressure from retailers with large inventories of black-and-white sets, he refused to allow color TV sets until far into his administration, although one could buy them on the free-port island of Margarita and could see color TV in Caracas, where transmissions of color broadcasts had already started. Pérez also delayed the construction of the Caracas metro
politan underground, presumably because it had been initiated by Caldera. Crime in the streets was another by-product of the Venezuelan oil economy, although this could only partially be blamed on the new riches—obviously, with so much spending going on, thugs had easy marks any where—but mainly on the thousands of guns that had been put into circulation during the leftist insurgency which Pérez battled. But the government did nothing effective to address the problem, which still plagues Venezuela. Pérez simply ignored it.
The vulgarity and rot that was eating into Venezuelan society is difficult to describe in terms that would seem comprehensible, although foreign academics went on talking about Venezuelan society as if it were normal and not in the grasp of a collective frenzy. Yet Pérez's credentials as a nationalist leader were not soiled, in fact for many they were enhanced, because in 1975 he nationalized the iron industry and in 1976 he jumped further and nationalized the oil industry. As by that time Venezuela was equipped to manage it, not much harm was done by that in itself, but with all the new collaterals that the government could offer, Pérez, after having gone through the "surplus" for investments, started taking out international loans, and not small ones but sizable ones. Pérez "statized" the Venezuelan economy to such a degree that the load of paperwork to open a business was so heavy that a service branch was created called "permisologia" (approximately, the "science" of permits), to which businessmen had to recur as a matter of course if they wanted to get the necessary bureaucratic approval. Permisologia was not meant to deter foreigners and it was more burdensome on Venezuelan small entrepreneurs than on any other economic sector. Leftists were in a dazzled quandary, because, on one hand, they disliked Pérez, but, on the other, they couldn’t complain about the state's interference as that was part of their own social and economic agenda. Labor unions, which in Venezuela were corrupt and pervasive and AD-managed, stood solidly behind Pérez.
One thing that can be credited to Pérez is that he introduced legislation to protect the environment, whereas Caldera had tried to build a road into the vast southern area of Venezuela known as Amazonas which his government wanted to settle and exploit. As soils there are barren, all that could have been achieved would have been the destruction of forested areas where only Amerindian tribes and missionaries, both Catholic and Baptist, lived. By the time that Pérez was through with Venezuela, it was palpable that its society was more unequal than it ever had been: the pardos had been done in again, and as to economic diversification, there was essentially none. Even import-substitution in the automobile industry went down the drain when Pérez started importing Dodge Dart
s and selling them at subsidized prices.
. The latter did not have anything new to offer except rhetoric, but in the campaign he was like a charging boar. It really didn’t matter what he said, because the adecos were in a no-win situation
disillusioned as they were with Pérez and unexcited by Piñerua, and Herrera defeated his adeco adversary although not by a large majority. Venezuela had demonstrated once again that at the ballot level it was a working democracy. Few presidents had practiced winner-takes-all as Herrera Campins did. Even full-blooded Social Christians who had worked for the Pérez administration were fired. But Herrera did have in his cabinet a few figures that were not copeyanos
, among them Manuel Quijada, the former anti-democracy conspirator. (Later, Quijada was one of the political advisors of Chavez before the former paratrooper won the presidency.) For the Venezuelan Central Bank he named the economist Leopoldo Diaz Bruzual. The latter was a protégé of and advisor to Reinaldo Cervini, a very rich man who had life-time tenure at Pro-Venezuela, a kind of semi-official institute founded to promote Venezuelan industrialization. Cervini doubled as Maecenas to communist intellectuals, who would physically confront any one who dared criticize their patron. Herrera Campins toned down the showiness of his predecessor, even though his government had another windfall when oil prices rose dramatically again in 1983. Venezuela had increased its indebtedness beyond the levels attained by the Pérez government. There was much talk at the time of "bipolarity", the belief that Venezuela was stuck forever in the cycle of AD-COPEI ruling alternatively, but following the same policies of high-spending, high-bureaucracy, and a statized economy. Unknown to any one but themselves, a group of junior-grade officers had formed a clique called the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200
(MBR-200 in Spanish) and it was led by then Captain Hugo Chávez Frías. One brash foreign policy initiative taken by Herrera either should have gladdened or encouraged militarists in Venezuela. When the Argentine military dictator and "dirty war
" veteran, Leopoldo Galtieri
, had the Falklands invaded in 1982
, Venezuela officially, though not materially, backed the Argentine move, although most Venezuelans were not aware of Argentina's claim on the islands and weren’t even fully informed of the government's action.
When dollars flooded Venezuela again, economists began talking of "overheating", although it wasn't clear whether they knew what they were talking about. It was pseudo-technical jargon, but Díaz Bruzual was among the adherents to this idea, if not actually the economist who got the "overheated" ball rolling. In the USA, president Jimmy Carter
was fighting inflationary pressures and interests rates there, and in the industrialized nations generally, went up to unheard of levels. In Venezuela, a Canadian bank was offering interests as high as 21%. But because of the overheating thesis, Diaz Bruzual applied an old law whereby interest payments above 12% were considered usurious and illegal. Dollars started flowing out of Venezuela in the billions and the central bank, which had always been zealous about national reserves, took fright at their growing depletion, but instead of counter-acting with incentives to reverse the outward flow, the bolivar was officially devalued by over 50% on its previous 4.5 to the dollar. The government, in brief, was not going to subsidize the bolivar at its previous rate. But the measure encouraged a further massive flight of dollars and the government then clamped full currency control.
There had been a brief period of exchange controls during the early years of the Venezuelan democracy, but Venezuela had never seen anything like this before. It was the end of "prosperity", or what Venezuelans considered it to be. In Venezuela, statistics of unemployment are always used to show that the economy is or is not doing alright. The truth is that Venezuelan statistics were, and are, often meaningless, sometimes taken from development plans that did not materialize—such as saying that housing had gone up by such and such a percentage which was what the government had planned but not necessarily what it accomplished—and among the most flagrant fictions were employment indexes. Venezuela is an underdeveloped economy, and in all such economies, not just Venezuela's, employment includes sub-employment, which has never been officially recognized or defined, for there is no way that a country with a per capita GDP of around $5,000, or whatever below real economic development standards, can be said to have employment rates comparable to those in America or Europe. Nobody ever has known what the real, steady, and well-paid employment rate is, and "well-paid" only means near or slightly above the average national income per capita. It was in these conditions that the 1983 elections came about.
The adecos chose Jaime Lusinchi
and Caldera once more stood up for his party COPEI. The divided socialists offered Teodoro Petkoff
and José Vicente Rangel
. Petkoff had broken with the Communist Party and, with the veteran leader Pompeyo Marquez, had founded in 1971 the Movement for Socialsm
(MAS in Spanish), which was more or less inspired by the Prague Spring
, when Czech communists tried to liberalize their country in 1968. MAS was still Marxist but edging to left of center. Rangel was the son of a general during the Gómez autocracy, but he entered politics in 1958 as a moderate leftist. Rangel denounced the abuses of the adeco governments of Betancourt and Leoni—he accused them of allowing the secret police and the army to torture detainees—and he was the MAS presidential candidate in 1973 and 1978, both times doing badly. Teodoro was particularly disliked by adeco pardos. Teodoro was always trying to displace Rangel as his party's choice and finally, in 1983, the two men had a chance to test each other's popularity.
Much of the campaign was taken up by an "underground" debate about Lusinchi's mistress, Blanca Ibañez, and adecos insisted that his legal wife had simply "to bite the bullet". When the results were in, bipolarity worked and the adecos proved that they still had the pardos on their side by garnering 56% of the vote, the highest margin ever in a Venezuelan election. Caldera was down, but, as we shall see, definitely not out. But there were two novelties in the results: although Petkoff got more votes than Rangel, together they got 7% of the vote, which the left had never before achieved, although it is questionable whether Teodoro at that point was in any way the radical he had been before. Another result was that abstentions were 12% and this was significant because, as we saw, voting was compulsory in Venezuela and by and large Venezuelans had been very dutiful in this respect, and now they showed that not voting was catching on.
Corruption had always been an issue in Venezuela, but under Lusinchi it became the main issue and most Venezuelans considered that corruption, and not sheer incompetence, was the root of all of society's ills. Lusinchi had divorced his wife and married Blanca Ibañez, who was considered very influential behind the scene and was blamed for abuse of power and nepotism. The Venezuelan economy stagnated and the country at the end of Lusinchi's regime was reportedly bankrupt. It would be reasonable to surmise that this should have been the end of bipolarity in the next elections, but it would be wrong. In the 1988 elections
, the two ruling parties got a total of 93% of the vote. Petkoff fared very badly but abstentions went up to 18%. The winner was none other than Carlos Andres Pérez, for his second term. (In the Venezuelan constitution you could be re-elected as many times as you wanted as long as it wasn’t in successive elections.) The question was: how could a country whose descent into insolvency began with Pérez, who had botched so badly his first term, when corruption flourished as never before, have re-elected him with a majority that was barely less than the one Lusinchi got? This enigma has various explanations. That pardos were still adecos is an obvious one. The opposition to bipolarity did not have a leader. But especially, Venezuelans of all hues simply remembered that during Pérez's first term there had been a lot of money in circulation, things over-all had not been so dismal, and somehow they figured that Pérez could perform the miracle of making Venezuela "prosperous" again.
economists were "genocide workers in the pay of economic totalitarianism", he had become a closet liberalizer
and globalizer. His economic adviser was Moisés Naím
, today an influential journalist in the United States and the editor of the journal Foreign Policy
, and he defined the presidential economic agenda, which included no price controls, privatization
s, and laws, or their elimination, to attract foreign investment. Naím began at the lowest rung of economic liberalization, which was freeing controls on prices and a ten percent increase in that of gasoline, which in Venezuela is sacrosantly very low. The increase in petrol price fed into a 30 percent increase in fares for public transport In February 1989, barely into his second term, Pérez faced a popular uprising, which he had the army crush with a death toll of 276, according to government officials. It is known as the "caracazo
" (from "Caracas"), where the rioting and looting was on an unforeseen scale. Chávez then was working on a political science degree at the Simón Bolívar University.
Pérez and Naím went on with their reforms, which had the full backing of the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), and the Venezuelan economy started picking up, but only slightly and Venezuelans, who are not very keen on capitalist globalization, were resentful. Rightly or wrongly, Pérez, who after his first presidency was a rich man, was singled out as Mr. Corruption himself. The MBR officers started plotting seriously and on 4 February 1992 they struck. Chávez was a lieutenant-colonel, but generals were involved in the coup attempt. Its immediate objective was to capture Pérez, who had recently returned from a junket. They almost had him cornered in the presidential palace, but he managed to escape to the presidential residence and from there he got loyal troops to corner Chávez in turn and arrest him. In exchange for prompting his co-conspirators to lay down their arms, Chávez, fully uniformed and unbowed, was allowed to speak on television to the entire nation. A Venezuelan anti-corruption hero, and as pardo as they come, had been born.
On 27 November 1992, officers of higher rank than Chávez tried to overthrow Pérez but this time around the conspiracy was easily put down. Pérez's downfall came when a legal process was begun to force to him reveal how he had used a secret but legal presidential fund, which he resolutely resisted. With the supreme court and congress ranged against him, Pérez was imprisoned, for a while in a detention center, and then under house arrest. He handed the presidency in 1993 to Ramón J. Velásquez
, an adeco politician/historian who had been his presidential secretary. Though nobody has charged Velásquez with corruption, his son was involved in an illegal pardon for drug-traffickers, but was not charged. Velázquez oversaw the elections of 1993
, and these were at once familiar and unique.
. COPEI chose a mediocrity from within its ranks. The adecos chose the pardo Claudio Fermín
. Petkoff had seen the futility of trying again and backed Caldera. Even Velázquez got into the act. When the returns were in, Caldera won and in the process shattered the strict bipolarity thesis. Abstentions reached a record of 40%. The main reason Caldera, who was 86 years old, won was in essence the same as for Pérez's victory in 1973: everybody knew him and the middle classes, probably decisive for the only time in Venezuela's history, thought that he could do the miracle that had been expected of Pérez, that is, in some manner to get the country back on track to the "good old times".
Once back in the presidential palace, Caldera had to confront the Venezuelan banking crisis of 1994
. He re-imposed exchange controls, which Pérez's administration had lifted as part of a general financial liberalisation (unaccompanied by effective regulation, which contributed to the banking crisis). The economy had suffered under the falling oil price, which led to a collapse in government revenues. The steel corporation Sidor
was privatized, and the economy continued to plummet. Fulfilling an election promise, Caldera released Chávez and pardoned all the military and civilian conspirators during the Pérez regime. The economic crisis continued, and by the Venezuelan presidential election, 1998
the traditional political parties had become extremely unpopular; an initial front-runner for the presidency in late 1997 was Irene Saez. Ultimately Hugo Chávez Frías was elected President.
, a former paratroop lieutenant-colonel who led an unsuccessful coup d'état in 1992
, was elected President in December 1998 on a platform that called for the creation of a "Fifth Republic", a new constitution, a new name ("the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela"), and a new set of social relations between socioeconomic classes. In 1999, voters approved a referendum
on a new constitution, and in 2000, re-elected
Chávez, also placing many members of his Fifth Republic Movement
political party in the National Assembly. Supporters of Chávez call the process symbolised by him the Bolivarian Revolution
, and organise themselves in open, local, participatory assemblies called Bolivarian Circles
.
Chávez's policies have faced strong opposition from a vocal minority, whom took the streets of Caracas during many occasions in 2002 and 2003 in peaceful marches, it is estimated around 2 million people marched in Caracas on April 11th 2002, the day when Chavez ordered the military to activate the Plan Avila which is to forcefully put an end to protests however this order was not followed and Chavez was asked to resign by high ranking officials of the Venezuelan army, he accepted this petition, however a some Chavistas took the streets as well and opened fire on the opposition and there were many injured and a few dead. A business-labor general work stoppage was called in December 2001, which saw popular demonstrations from both sides and was followed by a Vacio de poder or an Lack of power due to Chavez's resignation, which he claims was a coup attempt (the general which received his resignation and has the letter was conveniently appointed the job as Consul of Venezuela in Portugal by Chavez upon his return to power) in April 2002. A lockout ensued in December 2002, shutting down the state oil company PDVSA for two months and crippling the Venezuelan economy.
In August, 2004, Chávez faced a recall referendum, but 59% of the voters voted to keep Chavez in office. During the run-up to the election, government deputy Luis Tascón
published on his web page the list and identity card numbers of those who had signed the petition to hold the referendum against Chávez. A statistical study by Roberto Rigobón and Ricardo Hausmann
said they had found statistical evidence that the electoral council had manipulated the electoral audit. The Organization of American States
and the Carter Center
certified the voting results as representative of the votes cast, and Jimmy Carter
stated that in his opinion it was fairer than the voting process in Florida
during the 2000 U.S. Presidential election.
Hugo Chávez won the presidential elections
on 3 December 2006. There were observers from different organizations, among them from the European Union.
In December 2007 in a constitutional referendum
, Chavez suffered his first electoral defeat when the voters rejected constitutional changes proposed by the president, some of which would have increased the power of the presidency. The referendum saw a very high level of abstention by the standards of recent polls in Venezuela.
However, in February 2009 Chavez called another referendum, proposing changes to the constitution such that he could run for as many presidential terms as he or anyone else wants to (previously, the constitution limited each president to two terms). The referendum took place on 15 February 2009. This time Chavez won the referendum: he can now run for as many presidential terms as he wants.
In 2010 Venezuela celebrated elections for Congress in which the opposition obtained 52% of the votes, however Chavez had introduced a new system based on giving more representation to the states with the more territory instead of basing it on population by this means Chavez was able to get higher representation in congress by obtaining a majority of votes in the sparsely-populated larger states.
In 2012 Venezuela takes what could possibly be one of the most important decisions in its history: to reelect Chavez for another 6 years or to bring forth a change. The MUD (Mesa de la Unidad Democratica) which is made up of all the opposition party will have primary elections during February 2012 to select the one candidate to oppose Chavez the most prominent candidates include Henrique Capriles Radonski (Governor of Miranda state, ex-mayor of the Caracas municipality of Baruta, and ex-congressman), Leopoldo Lopez, (Ex-mayor of Chacao, Caracas' most wealthy municipality), Maria Corina Machado (Congresswoman) and Pablo Perez (Governor of Zulia state). However, it is not sure that Lopez will run seeing as how the government has inabilitated him from running based on supposed corruption charges despite a court order from The Interamerican Court for Human Rights said that the charges were to be dropped and Lopez abilitated, Chavez has said that the court's ruling is worthless and that his haircut is worth more than that verdict. Venezuela's future remains uncertain.
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
. See also the history of South America
History of South America
The history of South America is the study of the past, particularly the written record, oral histories, and traditions, passed down from generation to generation on the continent in the Earth's western hemisphere and southern hemisphere. South America has a history that spans a wide range of human...
.
Pre-Columbian period
Archeologists have discovered evidence of the earliest known inhabitants of the Venezuelan area in the form of leafLeaf
A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....
-shaped flake
Lithic flake
In archaeology, a lithic flake is a "portion of rock removed from an objective piece by percussion or pressure," and may also be referred to as a chip or spall, or collectively as debitage. The objective piece, or the rock being reduced by the removal of flakes, is known as a core. Once the proper...
tool
Tool
A tool is a device that can be used to produce an item or achieve a task, but that is not consumed in the process. Informally the word is also used to describe a procedure or process with a specific purpose. Tools that are used in particular fields or activities may have different designations such...
s, together with chopping
Cutting
Cutting is the separation of a physical object, or a portion of a physical object, into two portions, through the application of an acutely directed force. An implement commonly used for cutting is the knife or in medical cases the scalpel...
and plano
Plane (tool)
A hand plane is a tool for shaping wood. When powered by electricity, the tool may be called a planer. Planes are used to flatten, reduce the thickness of, and impart a smooth surface to a rough piece of lumber or timber. Planing is used to produce horizontal, vertical, or inclined flat surfaces on...
–convex scraping
Scraper (archaeology)
In archaeology, scrapers are unifacial tools that were used either for hideworking or woodworking purposes. Whereas this term is often used for any unifacially flaked stone tool that defies classification, most lithic analysts maintain that the only true scrapers are defined on the base of...
implements exposed on the high riverine terraces of the Pedregal River in western Venezuela.
Late Pleistocene
Late Pleistocene
The Late Pleistocene is a stage of the Pleistocene Epoch. The beginning of the stage is defined by the base of the Eemian interglacial phase before the final glacial episode of the Pleistocene 126,000 ± 5,000 years ago. The end of the stage is defined exactly at 10,000 Carbon-14 years BP...
hunting artifacts, including spear
Spear
A spear is a pole weapon consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a pointed head.The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with bamboo spears, or it may be made of a more durable material fastened to the shaft, such as flint, obsidian, iron, steel or...
tips, come from a similar site in northwestern Venezuela known as El Jobo. According to radiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to estimate the age of carbon-bearing materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years. Raw, i.e. uncalibrated, radiocarbon ages are usually reported in radiocarbon years "Before Present" ,...
, these date from 13,000 to 7000 BC.
Taima-Taima, Muaco and El Jobo in Falcón are some of the sites that have yielded archeological material from these times. These groups co-existed with megafauna like megateriums
Megatherium
Megatherium was a genus of elephant-sized ground sloths endemic to Central America and South America that lived from the Pliocene through Pleistocene existing approximately...
, glyptodonts
Glyptodontidae
Glyptodonts were large, more heavily armored relatives of extinct pampatheres and modern armadillos.They first evolved during the Miocene in South America, which remained their center of species diversity...
and toxodon
Toxodon
Toxodon is an extinct mammal of the late Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs about 2.6 million to 16,500 years ago. It was indigenous to South America, and was probably the most common large-hoofed mammal in South America at the time of its existence....
ts.
Archaeologists identify a Meso-Indian period from 7000-5000 B.C.to 1000 A.C. In this period, hunters and gatherers of megafauna started to turn to other food sources and established the first tribal structures.
Beginning around 1000 A.C. archaeologists speak of the Neo-Indian period, which ends with the European Conquest and Colony period.
In the 16th century when Spanish colonization
Spanish colonization of the Americas
Colonial expansion under the Spanish Empire was initiated by the Spanish conquistadores and developed by the Monarchy of Spain through its administrators and missionaries. The motivations for colonial expansion were trade and the spread of the Christian faith through indigenous conversions...
began in Venezuelan territory, the population of several indigenous peoples such as the Mariches (descendants of the Caribes) declined. Historians have proposed many reasons for this decline, including exposure to European diseases and the systematic elimination of indigenous tribes for control of resources valued in Europe. Indian cacique
Cacique
Cacique is a title derived from the Taíno word for the pre-Columbian chiefs or leaders of tribes in the Bahamas, Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles...
s (leader
Leadership
Leadership has been described as the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task". Other in-depth definitions of leadership have also emerged.-Theories:...
s) such as Guaicaipuro
Guaicaipuro
Guaicaipuro was a native Venezuelan chief of both the Teques and Caracas tribes. Though known today as Guaicaipuro, in documents of the time his name was written Guacaipuro.-Life:...
(c. 1530–1568) and Tamanaco
Tamanaco
Tamanaco was a native Venezuelan chief, who as leader of the Mariches and Quiriquires tribes led during part of the 16th century the resistance against the Spanish conquest of Venezuelan territory in the central region of the country, specially in the Caracas valley...
(died 1573) attempted to resist Spanish incursions, but the newcomers ultimately subdued them. Historians agree that the founder of Caracas
Caracas
Caracas , officially Santiago de León de Caracas, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela; natives or residents are known as Caraquenians in English . It is located in the northern part of the country, following the contours of the narrow Caracas Valley on the Venezuelan coastal mountain range...
, Diego de Losada
Diego de Losada
Diego de Losada was a Spanish conquistador and the founder of Santiago de León de Caracas, the current capital of Venezuela.Losada was born in Rionegro del Puente, in what is now the province of Zamora. He reached Puerto Rico in 1533....
, ultimately put Tamanaco to death.
Spanish rule
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
sailed along the eastern coast of Venezuela on his third voyage in 1498, the only one of his four voyages to reach the South American mainland. This expedition discovered the so-called "Pearl Islands" of Cubagua
Cubagua
Cubagua or Isla de Cubagua is the smallest and least populated of the three islands constituting the Venezuelan state of Nueva Esparta, after Isla Margarita and Coche. It is located 16 km north of Araya Peninsula, the closest mainland area....
and Margarita
Isla Margarita
Margarita Island is the largest island of the state of Nueva Esparta in Venezuela, situated in the Caribbean Sea, off the northeastern coast of the country. The state also contains two other smaller islands: Coche and Cubagua. The capital city of Nueva Esparta is La Asunción, located in a river...
off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. Later Spanish expeditions returned to exploit these islands' once abundant pearl oysters, enslaving the indigenous people of the islands and harvesting the pearls so intensively that they became one of the most valuable resources of the incipient Spanish Empire in the Americas between 1508 and 1531, by which time both the local indigenous population and the pearl oysters had become devastated.
The Spanish expedition led by Alonso de Ojeda
Alonso de Ojeda
Alonso de Ojeda was a Spanish navigator, governor and conquistador. His name is sometimes spelled Alonzo and Oxeda.-Early life:...
, sailing along the length of the northern coast of South America in 1499, gave the name Venezuela ("little Venice" in Spanish) to the Gulf of Venezuela
Gulf of Venezuela
The Gulf of Venezuela is a gulf of the Caribbean Sea bounded by the Venezuelan states of Zulia and Falcón and by Guajira Department, Colombia...
— because of its imagined similarity to the Italian city
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
.
Spain's colonization of mainland Venezuela started in 1522. Spain established its first permanent South American settlement in the city of Cumaná
Cumaná
Cumaná is the capital of Venezuela's Sucre State. It is located 402 km east of Caracas. It was the first settlement founded by Europeans in the mainland America, in 1501 by Franciscan friars, but due to successful attacks by the indigenous people, it had to be refounded several times...
.
At the time of the Spanish arrival, indigenous people lived mainly in groups as agriculturists and hunters: along the coast, in the Andean mountain range, and along the Orinoco River.
An abortive plan for German settlement
German colonization of the Americas
The German colonization of the Americas consisted of failed attempts to settle Venezuela , St. Thomas, the Crab Island and Tertholen in the 16th and 17th centuries.-Klein-Venedig:...
from Habsburg
Habsburg
The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...
lands (1529–1556) (which the Fugger
Fugger
The Fugger family was a historically prominent group of European bankers, members of the fifteenth and sixteenth-century mercantile patriciate of Augsburg, international mercantile bankers, and venture capitalists like the Welser and the Höchstetter families. This banking family replaced the de'...
bankers would have financed) failed.
By the middle of the 16th century not many more than 2,000 Europeans lived in Venezuela. The opening of gold mines at Yaracuy
Yaracuy
Yaracuy State is one of the 23 states of Venezuela. It is bordered by Falcón in the north, in the west by Lara, in the south by Portuguesa and Cojedes and in the east by Cojedes and Carabobo....
led to the introduction of slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
, at first involving the indigenous population, then imported Africans. The first real economic success of the colony involved the raising of livestock, much helped by the grassy plains known as llanos
Llanos
The Llanos is a vast tropical grassland plain situated to the east of the Andes in Colombia and Venezuela, in northwestern South America. It is an ecoregion of the Flooded grasslands and savannas Biome....
. The society that developed as a result — a handful of Spanish landowners and widely-dispersed Indian herdsmen on Spanish-introduced horses — recalls primitive feudalism
Feudalism
Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...
, certainly a powerful concept in the 16th-century Spanish imagination, and (perhaps more fruitfully) bears comparison in economic terms with the latifundia
Latifundia
Latifundia are pieces of property covering very large land areas. The latifundia of Roman history were great landed estates, specializing in agriculture destined for export: grain, olive oil, or wine...
of antiquity.
During the 16th and 17th centuries the cities which constitute today's Venezuela suffered relative neglect. The Viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru
Viceroyalty of Peru
Created in 1542, the Viceroyalty of Peru was a Spanish colonial administrative district that originally contained most of Spanish-ruled South America, governed from the capital of Lima...
(located on the sites formerly occupied by the capital cities of the Aztec
Aztec
The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...
s and Incas respectively) showed more interest in their nearby gold- and silver-mines than in the remote agricultural societies of Venezuela. Responsibility for the Venezuelan territories shifted to and fro between the two Viceroyalties.
In the 18th century a second Venezuelan society formed along the coast with the establishment of cocoa plantations manned by much larger importations of African slaves. Quite a number of black slaves also worked in the hacienda
Hacienda
Hacienda is a Spanish word for an estate. Some haciendas were plantations, mines, or even business factories. Many haciendas combined these productive activities...
s of the grassy llanos. Most of the Amerindians who still survived had perforce migrated to the plains and jungles to the south, where only Spanish friars took an interest in them — especially the Franciscans or Capucins, who compiled grammars and small lexicon
Lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
s for some of their languages. The most important friar misión (the name for an area of friar activity) developed in San Tomé in the Guayana Region
Guayana Region
The Guayana Region is an administrative region of Venezuela.The region has a population of 1,383,297 inhabitants and a territory of 458,344 km². It borders the independent nation of Guyana which forms part of The Guyanas...
.
The Province of Venezuela came under the jurisdiction of the Viceroyalty of New Granada
Viceroyalty of New Granada
The Viceroyalty of New Granada was the name given on 27 May 1717, to a Spanish colonial jurisdiction in northern South America, corresponding mainly to modern Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela. The territory corresponding to Panama was incorporated later in 1739...
(established in 1717). The Province became the Captaincy General of Venezuela
Captaincy General of Venezuela
The Captaincy General of Venezuela was an administrative district of colonial Spain, created in 1777 to provide more autonomy for the provinces of Venezuela, previously under the jurisdiction of the Viceroyalty of New Granada and the Audiencia of Santo Domingo...
in 1777. The Compañía Guipuzcoana de Caracas
Guipuzcoana Company
The Real Compañía Guipuzcoana de Caracas was a Spanish trading company in the 18th century, operating from 1728 to 1785, which had a monopoly on Venezuelan trade...
held a close monopoly on trade with Europe. The Guipuzcoana company stimulated the Venezuelan economy, especially in fostering the cultivation of cacao beans, which became Venezuela's principal export. It opened Venezuelan ports to foreign commerce, but this recognized a fait accompli. Like no other Spanish American dependency, Venezuela had more contacts with Europe through the British and French islands in the Caribbean. In an almost surreptitious, though legal, manner, Caracas itself had become an intellectual powerhouse. From 1721 it had its own university, which taught Latin, medicine and engineering, apart (of course) from the humanities. Its most illustrious graduate, Andrés Bello
Andrés Bello
Andrés de Jesús María y José Bello López was a Venezuelan humanist, poet, lawmaker, philosopher, educator and philologist, whose political and literary works constitute an important part of Spanish American culture...
(1781–1865), became the greatest Spanish American polymath
Polymath
A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable...
of his time. In Chacao, a town to the east of Caracas, there flourished a school of music whose director José Ángel Lamas
José Ángel Lamas
José Ángel Lamas was a Venezuelan classical musician and composer born in Caracas. He was the main representative of the classical period in Venezuela....
(1775–1814) produced a few but impressive compositions according with the strictest 18th-century European canon
Canon (music)
In music, a canon is a contrapuntal composition that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration . The initial melody is called the leader , while the imitative melody, which is played in a different voice, is called the follower...
s.
Juntas and the First Republic
Creole peoples
The term Creole and its cognates in other languages — such as crioulo, criollo, créole, kriolu, criol, kreyol, kreol, kriulo, kriol, krio, etc. — have been applied to people in different countries and epochs, with rather different meanings...
elite) had access to a solid education. (Another name for the mantuanos class, grandes cacaos, reflected the source of their wealth. To in Venezuela the term can apply to a presumptuous person.) The mantuanos showed themselves presumptuous, overbearing and zealous in affirming their privileges against the pardo
Mulatto
Mulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent, or more broadly, a person of mixed black and white ancestry. Contemporary usage of the term varies greatly, and the broader sense of the term makes its application rather subjective, as not all people of mixed white and black...
(mixed-race) majority of the population.
The first organized conspiracy against the colonial regime in Venezuela occurred in 1797, organized by Manuel Gual and José María España It took direct inspiration from the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, but was put down with the collaboration of the "mantuanos" because it promoted radical social changes.
European events sowed the seeds of Venezuela's declaration of independence. The Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
in Europe not only weakened Spain's imperial power, but also put Britain (unofficially) on the side of the independence movement. In May 1808, Napoleon
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
demanded and received the abdication of Ferdinand VII of Spain and the confirmation of the abdication of Ferdinand's father Charles IV
Charles IV of Spain
Charles IV was King of Spain from 14 December 1788 until his abdication on 19 March 1808.-Early life:...
. Napoleon then appointed as King of Spain his own brother Joseph Bonaparte
Joseph Bonaparte
Joseph-Napoléon Bonaparte was the elder brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, who made him King of Naples and Sicily , and later King of Spain...
. That marked the beginning of Spain's own War of Independence
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War was a war between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war began when French and Spanish armies crossed Spain and invaded Portugal in 1807. Then, in 1808, France turned on its...
from French hegemony and partial occupation, before the Spanish American wars of independence even began. The focal point of Spanish political resistance, the Supreme Central Junta
Junta (Peninsular War)
In the Napoleonic era, junta was the name chosen by several local administrations formed in Spain during the Peninsular War as a patriotic alternative to the official administration toppled by the French invaders...
, formed to govern in the name of Ferdinand. The first major defeat that Napoleonic France suffered occurred at the Battle of Bailén
Battle of Bailén
The Battle of Bailén was contested in 1808 between the Spanish Army of Andalusia, led by Generals Francisco Castaños and Theodor von Reding, and the Imperial French Army's II corps d'observation de la Gironde under General Pierre Dupont de l'Étang...
, in Andalusia
Andalusia
Andalusia is the most populous and the second largest in area of the autonomous communities of Spain. The Andalusian autonomous community is officially recognised as a nationality of Spain. The territory is divided into eight provinces: Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, Córdoba, Málaga, Jaén, Granada and...
(July 1808). (At this battle Pablo Morillo
Pablo Morillo
Pablo Morillo y Morillo, Count of Cartagena and Marquess of La Puerta, aka El Pacificador was a Spanish general....
, future commander of the army that invaded New Granada and Venezuela; Emeterio Ureña, an anti-independence officer in Venezuela; and José de San Martín
José de San Martín
José Francisco de San Martín, known simply as Don José de San Martín , was an Argentine general and the prime leader of the southern part of South America's successful struggle for independence from Spain.Born in Yapeyú, Corrientes , he left his mother country at the...
, the future Liberator of Argentina and Chile, fought side-by-side against the French General Pierre Dupont
Pierre Dupont de l'Étang
Pierre-Antoine, comte Dupont de l'Étang was a French general of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, as well as a political figure of the Bourbon Restoration.-Revolutionary Wars:...
.) Despite this Spanish victory, the French soon regained the initiative and advanced into southern Spain. The Spanish government had to retreat to the island redoubt of Cádiz
Cádiz
Cadiz is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the homonymous province, one of eight which make up the autonomous community of Andalusia....
. Here the Supreme Central Junta dissolved itself and set up a five-person regency to handle the affairs of state until the Cortes Generales
Cádiz Cortes
The Cádiz Cortes were sessions of the national legislative body which met in the safe haven of Cádiz during the French occupation of Spain during the Napoleonic Wars...
could convene.
Word of these events soon reached Caracas, but only on 19 April 1810 did its "cabildo
Cabildo (council)
For a discussion of the contemporary Spanish and Latin American cabildo, see Ayuntamiento.A cabildo or ayuntamiento was a former Spanish, colonial administrative council that governed a municipality. Cabildos were sometimes appointed, sometimes elected, but were considered to be representative of...
" (city council) decide to follow the example set by the Spanish provinces two years earlier. Other provincial capitals — Barcelona
Barcelona, Anzoátegui
Barcelona is the capital of Anzoátegui State, Venezuela and was founded in 1671. Together with Puerto La Cruz, Lecheria and Guanta, Barcelona forms one of the most important urban areas of Venezuela with a population of approximately 950,000.-History:...
, Cumaná
Cumaná
Cumaná is the capital of Venezuela's Sucre State. It is located 402 km east of Caracas. It was the first settlement founded by Europeans in the mainland America, in 1501 by Franciscan friars, but due to successful attacks by the indigenous people, it had to be refounded several times...
, Mérida
Barcelona, Anzoátegui
Barcelona is the capital of Anzoátegui State, Venezuela and was founded in 1671. Together with Puerto La Cruz, Lecheria and Guanta, Barcelona forms one of the most important urban areas of Venezuela with a population of approximately 950,000.-History:...
, Trujillo
Trujillo, Trujillo
Trujillo is the capital city of Trujillo State in Venezuela. About 40,000 people live in this city.Founded by one the "Conquistadores de America", Diego García de Paredes, son of Diego Garcia de Paredes , , Spanish soldier and duellist, native of Trujillo in Extremadura, Spain. This city is...
, among them — followed suit. Although the new Junta of Caracas had self-appointed élite members who claimed to represent the pardos (free blacks and even slaves), the new government eventually faced the challenge of maintaining the alliance with the pardos. Given recent history these groups still had grievances against the mantuanos. A segment of the mantuanos (among them a 27-year-old Simón Bolívar
Simón Bolívar
Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios Ponte y Yeiter, commonly known as Simón Bolívar was a Venezuelan military and political leader...
, the future Liberator) saw the setting up of the Junta as a step toward outright independence.
The Venezuelan War of Independence
Venezuelan War of Independence
-The First Republic:Criollos resented the mercantilist policies of Spain. Trade was only allowed in Pacific ports which was a terrible burden for Argentina, Paraguay and the Caribbean colonies. This is significant as Cuba and Puerto Rico were forced to allow free trade in 1763 by Britain and...
ensued. It ran concurrently with that of New Granada.
On 17 December 1819 the Congress of Angostura declared Gran Colombia
Gran Colombia
Gran Colombia is a name used today for the state that encompassed much of northern South America and part of southern Central America from 1819 to 1831. This short-lived republic included the territories of present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, northern Peru and northwest Brazil. The...
an independent country. After two more years of war, which killed half of Venezuela's white population, the country achieved independence from Spain in 1821 under the leadership of its most famous son, Simón Bolívar
Simón Bolívar
Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios Ponte y Yeiter, commonly known as Simón Bolívar was a Venezuelan military and political leader...
. Venezuela, along with the countries of Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, Panama
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
, and Ecuador
Ecuador
Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...
, formed part of the Republic of Gran Colombia until 1830, when Venezuela separated and became a separate sovereign country.
The campaign of 1813 and the end of the Second Republic
In the viceroyalties of La PlataArgentine War of Independence
The Argentine War of Independence was fought from 1810 to 1818 by Argentine patriotic forces under Manuel Belgrano, Juan José Castelli and José de San Martín against royalist forces loyal to the Spanish crown...
and New Granada
Patria Boba
The period between 1810 and 1816 in the New Kingdom of Granada was marked by such intense conflicts over the nature of the new government or governments that it became known as la Patria Boba . Constant fighting between federalists and centralists gave rise to a prolonged period of instability...
the Creoles displaced the Spanish authorities with relative ease, as Caracas had done at first. The autonomous movement swept through New Granada, but the country remained politically disunited. Bogotá
Bogotá
Bogotá, Distrito Capital , from 1991 to 2000 called Santa Fé de Bogotá, is the capital, and largest city, of Colombia. It is also designated by the national constitution as the capital of the department of Cundinamarca, even though the city of Bogotá now comprises an independent Capital district...
inherited the role of capital from Spain, but the royalists were entrenched in southern Colombia (Popayán
Popayán
Popayán is the capital of the Colombian department of Cauca. It is located in southwestern Colombia between Colombia's Western Mountain Range and Central Mountain Range...
and Pasto
Pasto
Pasto, officially San Juan de Pasto, is the capital of the department of Nariño, located in southwest Colombia. The city is located in the "Atriz Valley", on the Andes cordillera, at the foot of the Galeras volcano, at an altitude of 8,290 feet above sea level...
). Cali
Calì
Calì, also written in English as Cali, is an Italian surname, widespread mainly in the Ionian side of Sicily.For the surname Calì is assumed the origin of the Greek word kalos , or from its Sanskrit root kali, "time."The surname refers to:...
was a bastion of the independence movement just north of royalist territory. Cartagena declared independence not only from Spain but also from Bogotá. Bolívar arrived in Cartagena and was well received, as he was later in Bogotá, where he joined the army of the United Provinces of New Granada
United Provinces of New Granada
The United Provinces of New Granada was a country in South America from 1811 to 1816, a period known in Colombian history as the Patria Boba. It was formed from areas of the New Kingdom of Granada. The government was a federation with a parliamentary system, consisting of a weak executive and...
. He recruited a force and invaded Venezuela
Admirable Campaign
The Admirable Campaign was a military action led by Simón Bolívar in which the provinces of Mérida, Barinas, Trujillo and Caracas were conquered by the independentists...
from the southwest, by crossing the Andes (1813). His chief lieutenant was the headstrong José Félix Ribas
José Félix Ribas
José Félix Ribas , was a Venezuelan independence leader and hero of the Venezuelan War of Independence.-Early life:Ribas was the last of eleven sons, born to a prominent Caracas family. In his early years, he received a quality education and attended the city's seminary. After finishing his...
. In Trujillo, an Andean province, Bolívar emitted his infamous Decree of War to the Death
Decreto de Guerra a Muerte
The Decree of War to the Death, in Spanish Decreto de Guerra a Muerte, was a decree issued by the South American separatist leader, Simón Bolívar, which permitted murder and any atrocities whatsoever to be committed against civilians born in Spain , other than those actively assisting South...
with which he hoped to get the pardos and any mantuano who was having second thoughts on his side. At the time that Bolívar was victorious in the west, Santiago Mariño
Santiago Mariño
Santiago Mariño , was a nineteenth-century Venezuelan revolutionary leader and hero in the Venezuelan War of Independence...
and Manuel Piar
Manuel Piar
Manuel Carlos Piar was General-in-Chief of the army fighting Spain during the Venezuelan War of Independence.-Heritage and early life:...
, a pardo from the Dutch island of Curaçao
Curaçao
Curaçao is an island in the southern Caribbean Sea, off the Venezuelan coast. The Country of Curaçao , which includes the main island plus the small, uninhabited island of Klein Curaçao , is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands...
, were successfully fighting royalists in eastern Venezuela. Quickly losing ground (much as Miranda had a year earlier) Monteverde took refuge in Puerto Cabello, and Bolívar occupied Caracas, re-establishing the Republic, with two "states", one in the west headed by Bolívar and one in the east headed by Mariño. But neither the successful invasions nor Bolívar's decree were provoking a massive enrollment of pardos in the cause of Independence. Rather it was the other way around. In the llanos
Llanos
The Llanos is a vast tropical grassland plain situated to the east of the Andes in Colombia and Venezuela, in northwestern South America. It is an ecoregion of the Flooded grasslands and savannas Biome....
, a populist Spanish immigrant caudillo, José Tomás Boves
José Tomás Boves
José Tomás Boves , royalist caudillo of the llanos during the Venezuelan War of Independence, particularly remembered for his use of brutality and atrocities against those who supported Venezuelan independence...
, initiated a widespread pardo movement against the restored Republic. Bolívar and Ribas held and defended the mantuano-controlled center of Venezuela. In the east, the royalists started recovering territory. After suffering a setback, Mariño and Bolívar joined their forces, but they were defeated by Boves in 1814. Republicans were forced to evacuate Caracas and flee to the east, where, in the port of Carúpano, Piar was still holding out. Piar, however, did not accept Bolívar's supreme command, and once again Bolívar left Venezuela and went to New Granada (1815). (See Bolívar in New Granada
Bolívar in New Granada
Bolívar's campaign to liberate New Granada of 1819-1820 was part of the Colombian and Venezuelan wars of independence and was one of the many military campaigns Simón Bolívar fought in them. Bolívar's victory in New Granada secured the eventual independence of northern South America...
). In Bogotá, he was given the task of reducing the independent state of Cartagena, which had not joined the United Provinces of New Granada
United Provinces of New Granada
The United Provinces of New Granada was a country in South America from 1811 to 1816, a period known in Colombian history as the Patria Boba. It was formed from areas of the New Kingdom of Granada. The government was a federation with a parliamentary system, consisting of a weak executive and...
. After failing to take the city or getting it to join him in a combined effort against neighboring royalist Santa Marta
Santa Marta
Santa Marta is the capital city of the Colombian department of Magdalena in the Caribbean Region. It was founded in July 29, 1525 by the Spanish conqueror Rodrigo de Bastidas, which makes it the oldest remaining city in Colombia...
, he abandoned the enterprise.
In Spain, anti-French forces had liberated the country, and the restored Ferdinand VII sent a large expeditionary force to Venezuela and New Granada under Pablo Morillo
Pablo Morillo
Pablo Morillo y Morillo, Count of Cartagena and Marquess of La Puerta, aka El Pacificador was a Spanish general....
, who had distinguished himself during Spain's War of Independence
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War was a war between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war began when French and Spanish armies crossed Spain and invaded Portugal in 1807. Then, in 1808, France turned on its...
. The traditional image of the Venezuelan llanos swarming with caudillos like Boves exaggeratets the situation. Boves was the only significant pro-Spain caudillo and he was acting in concert with Francisco Tomás Morales, who was a regular officer of Spain. In the Battle of Urica, Boves was killed and Morales took command and carried out mopping up operations against the remaining patriot resistance, which included the capture and execution of Ribas. As was still common in the early 19th century, Morales had his head boiled in oil (to preserve it) and sent to Caracas. (See the Execution of Miguel Hidalgo in Mexico.) Morillo arrived in Venezuela and began operations with Morales. Royalist forces under Morillo and Morales captured Cartagena and Bogotá in 1816. Before leaving for New Granada Morillo had decommissioned most of the irregular forces that had fought under Boves, except those that he took to New Granada. With little prospects, some pardos and llanero
Llanero
A llanero is a Venezuelan or Colombian herder. The name is taken from the Llanos grasslands occupying western Venezuela and eastern Colombia. The Llanero were originally part Spanish and Indian and have a strong culture including a distinctive form of music.During the wars of independence,...
s began to join the rebellions that were breaking out against Spanish rule in the broad plains of southern Venezuela. In the meantime, Bolívar chose to sail to Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
to enlist British aid, which was refused. From there, he went to Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
, which had been the first Latin American republic to become independent
Haitian Revolution
The Haitian Revolution was a period of conflict in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which culminated in the elimination of slavery there and the founding of the Haitian republic...
. With the support of the Haitian president Alexandre Pétion
Alexandre Pétion
Alexandre Sabès Pétion was President of the Republic of Haiti from 1806 until his death. He is considered as one of Haiti's founding fathers, together with Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and his rival Henri Christophe.-Early life:Pétion was born in Port-au-Prince to a Haitian...
and with the naval aid of Luis Brión
Luis Brión
Pedro Luis Brión was a military officer who fought in the Venezuelan War of Independence. He rose to the rank of admiral in the navies of Venezuela and the old Republic of Colombia.-Early career:...
, another émigré, who was a merchant from Curaçao, Bolívar returned to Margarita Island
Isla Margarita
Margarita Island is the largest island of the state of Nueva Esparta in Venezuela, situated in the Caribbean Sea, off the northeastern coast of the country. The state also contains two other smaller islands: Coche and Cubagua. The capital city of Nueva Esparta is La Asunción, located in a river...
, a secure republican redoubt, but his command of the republican forces was still not firm. Mariño, who had come back with Bolívar from Haiti, headed his own expeditions and succeeded in temporarily capturing Cumaná in 1817. With Brión supplying a small fleet, Bolívar sailed west along the Venezuelan coast to Ocumare de la Costa (the Expedition of Los Cayos), where, in fulfillment of Pétion's request, he officially proclaimed the end of slavery (although this went unheeded). Morales, back in Venezuela after subduing New Granada, attacked the republican expeditionary force with an army that vastly outnumbered the republicans. Bolívar fled, sailing once again to Haiti with Brión. However, Piar and Gregor MacGregor
Gregor MacGregor
Gregor MacGregor was a Scottish soldier, adventurer, land speculator, and colonizer who fought in the South American struggle for independence. Upon his return to England in 1820, he claimed to be cacique of Poyais...
, a Scottish soldier of fortune
Mercenary
A mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...
, who had previously been active in New Granada, managed to escape with their forces into the interior of the country, defeating Moreles at El Juncal in September 1816 before moving south to Guayana.
Stalemate in central Venezuela
Bolívar and Brión returned and tried in 1817 to capture Barcelona, where the Spaniards repulsed them. In the meantime, Piar and Mariño had occupied defenceless Angostura (a city at the narrowest and deepest part of the Orinoco River, hence its name, subsequently changed to Ciudad BolívarCiudad Bolívar
Ciudad Bolívar is the capital of Venezuela's southeastern Bolivar State. It was founded with the name Angostura in 1764, renamed in 1846, and, as of 2010, had an estimated population of 350,691....
), to where Bolívar headed and was chosen as supreme leader of the independence movement. (It was at this time that Bolívar ordered the addition of a new star for Guayana to the seven stars on the Venezuelan flag
Flag of Venezuela
The current flag of Venezuela was introduced in 2006.The basic design includes a horizontal tricolor of yellow, blue, and red, dating to the original flag introduced in 1811, in the Venezuelan War of Independence....
, which represented the number of provinces that originally had favored independence. Since Bolívar plays a central role in the symbolism of the current Venezuelan government led by Chávez
Hugo Chávez
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías is the 56th and current President of Venezuela, having held that position since 1999. He was formerly the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when he became the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela...
, this long-forgotten change was revived in the 2006 revision to the flag.) Once in Guayana, Bolívar quickly cashiered Piar, who had been trying (or was accused of trying—historians still debate this) to form a pardo
Mulatto
Mulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent, or more broadly, a person of mixed black and white ancestry. Contemporary usage of the term varies greatly, and the broader sense of the term makes its application rather subjective, as not all people of mixed white and black...
force of his own, by having him arrested and executed after a court martial in which Brión was one of the judges. British veterans of the Napoleonic wars began arriving in Venezuela, where they formed the nucleus of what later became known as the British Legion
British Legions
The British Legion or British Legions were foreign volunteer units that fought under Simón Bolívar against Spain for the independence of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru. The Venezuelans called them the Albion Legion...
. Morillo returned to Caracas and Morales was given troops to dominate eastern Venezuela, which he did successfully. Francisco de Paula Santander
Francisco de Paula Santander
Francisco José de Paula Santander y Omaña , was a Colombian military and political leader during the 1810–1819 independence war of the United Provinces of New Granada...
, a New Granadan who had retreated to the llanos after Morillo's invasion, met with Bolívar and agreed to join forces. Morillo's other lieutenant, the second in command of the expeditionary force, Miguel de la Torre
Miguel de la Torre
Miguel de la Torre y Pando, conde de Torrepando was a Spanish General, Governor and Captain General, who served in Spain, Venezuela, Colombia and Puerto Rico during the Spanish American wars of independence and after.At the age of fourteen he joined the Spanish Army as a soldier during the War of...
, was ordered to put down a significant rebellion in the llanos of Apure
Apure
Apure State is one of the 23 states into which Venezuela is divided. Its territory formed part of the provinces of Mérida, Maracaibo, and Barinas, in accordance with successive territorial ordinations pronounced by the colonial authorities. In 1824 the Department of Apure was created, under...
led by José Antonio Páez
José Antonio Páez
José Antonio Páez Herrera was General in Chief of the army fighting Spain during the Venezuelan Wars of Independence, in addition to becoming the President of Venezuela once it was independent of the Gran Colombia...
. At the time in the Southern Cone
Southern Cone
Southern Cone is a geographic region composed of the southernmost areas of South America, south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Although geographically this includes part of Southern and Southeast of Brazil, in terms of political geography the Southern cone has traditionally comprised Argentina,...
of South America, José de San Martín
José de San Martín
José Francisco de San Martín, known simply as Don José de San Martín , was an Argentine general and the prime leader of the southern part of South America's successful struggle for independence from Spain.Born in Yapeyú, Corrientes , he left his mother country at the...
had concluded the liberation of Chile with the essential support of the Chilean Bernardo O'Higgins
Bernardo O'Higgins
Bernardo O'Higgins Riquelme was a Chilean independence leader who, together with José de San Martín, freed Chile from Spanish rule in the Chilean War of Independence. Although he was the second Supreme Director of Chile , he is considered one of Chile's founding fathers, as he was the first holder...
.
The year 1818 saw a stalemate between the patriots based in Angostura (and free-wheeling in part of the llanos) and Morillo (entrenched in Caracas, triumphant in eastern Venezuela, and operating in the llanos as far as Apure). This is the time during which (according to Marx), Bolívar dilly-dallied and lost one skirmish after another, also saying that European officers in Angostura were egging him on to attack the center of Venezuela. (Bolívar did attempt to do so, but suffered defeat at La Puerta.) At the time James Rooke
James Rooke
James Rooke was a British career soldier in the Napoleonic wars. He became commander under Simon Bolivar of the British Legions during the South American wars of independence....
did in fact command over 1,000 European soldiers within Bolívar's army in Venezuela. But Morillo had larger forces, and not just of Spanish line troops but also of pardos still loyal to the Spanish crown.
In 1819 Bolívar proclaimed the republic of Great Colombia
Gran Colombia
Gran Colombia is a name used today for the state that encompassed much of northern South America and part of southern Central America from 1819 to 1831. This short-lived republic included the territories of present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, northern Peru and northwest Brazil. The...
, which included Venezuela and New Granada. New volunteers arrived in Venezuela, though most, like those that preceded them, were in essence mercenaries probably under the illusion that there were fortunes to be made in Venezuela, which was hardly the case. There is no evidence that the British government was backing them, but since Spain was no longer a British ally, it wasn’t hindering them either. In Europe, generally, Bolívar's name was known as was the Spanish American movement for independence, which had the sympathy of every liberal-minded person, as did the independence of Greece, then also in the process of emancipation
Greek War of Independence
The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution was a successful war of independence waged by the Greek revolutionaries between...
. Morillo had his hands full and pardos were starting to look towards patriot leaders. Campaigns in eastern Venezuela began turning the tide for independence and in the llanos Páez defeated Morillo and Morales in Apure. This cleared the way for Bolívar and Santander to invade New Granada, where, in Pantano de Vargas
Vargas Swamp Battle
Vargas Swamp Battle was an armed conflict that occurred near Paipa, on July 25, 1819. The joint Venezuelan and Neogranadan army commanded by Simón Bolívar was trying to prevent the Spanish forces from arriving at Santafe de Bogotá, which was lightly defended, before they did...
, the Spaniards were defeated in a battle in which the British Legion played a central role and its commander, Rooke, was killed in action. In the battle of Boyacá (1819), Spanish power was crushed in New Granada, except in the south. Páez occupied Barinas and, from New Granada, Bolívar invaded Venezuela.
The battle of Carabobo and the liberation of Quito
After a certain point, historians can scarcely disentangle the Venezuelan war of independenceVenezuelan War of Independence
-The First Republic:Criollos resented the mercantilist policies of Spain. Trade was only allowed in Pacific ports which was a terrible burden for Argentina, Paraguay and the Caribbean colonies. This is significant as Cuba and Puerto Rico were forced to allow free trade in 1763 by Britain and...
from the Argentine war of independence
Argentine War of Independence
The Argentine War of Independence was fought from 1810 to 1818 by Argentine patriotic forces under Manuel Belgrano, Juan José Castelli and José de San Martín against royalist forces loyal to the Spanish crown...
, even though they occurred through parallel but separate and distant political processes and only converged in Perú
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
. In Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, locals had established a junta similar to that of Caracas on 25 May 1810. But the interior of Argentina (still called La Plata
Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata
The Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, , was the last and most short-lived Viceroyalty of the Spanish Empire in America.The Viceroyalty was established in 1776 out of several former Viceroyalty of Perú dependencies that mainly extended over the Río de la Plata basin, roughly the present day...
— "silver" (the name "Argentina", from the Latin word for "silver", first won adoption in 1826)) — either out of royalism or from fear of the capital — remained fractious until General José de San Martín brought it to heel between 1814 and 1817.
In Spain in 1820, liberal sections of the military under Rafael del Riego
Rafael del Riego
Rafael del Riego y Nuñez was a Spanish general and liberal politician, who played a key role in the outbreak of the Liberal Triennium .-Early life and action in the Peninsular War:...
established a constitutional monarchy, which precluded new Spanish invasions of America. Before his recall to Spain, Morillo signed a truce with Bolívar. Morillo left Miguel de la Torre in command of the royalist forces.
The truce ended in 1821 and Bolívar had all available forces converge on Carabobo, a hilly plain near Valencia, to face de la Torre and Morales. The defeat of the Spanish right in the Battle of Carabobo
Battle of Carabobo
The Battle of Carabobo, 24 June 1821, was fought between independence fighters, led by Simón Bolívar, and the Royalist forces, led by Spanish Field Marshal Miguel de la Torre. Bolívar's decisive victory at Carabobo led to the independence of Venezuela....
, which is credited to the British Legions
British Legions
The British Legion or British Legions were foreign volunteer units that fought under Simón Bolívar against Spain for the independence of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru. The Venezuelans called them the Albion Legion...
whose commander Thomas Farrier fell, decided the battle. The remnants of the royalists tried to resist in Maracaibo and Puerto Cabello
Puerto Cabello
Puerto Cabello is a city on the north coast of Venezuela. It is located in Carabobo State about 75 km west of Caracas. As of 2001, the city has a population of around 154,000 people. The city is the home to the largest port in the country and is thus a vital cog in the country's vast oil...
but by 1824 all had been reduced by Mariano Montilla
Mariano Montilla
Mariano Montilla was a Major General of the Army of Venezuela in the Venezuelan War of Independence.-Youth:Montilla was born at Caracas.As a young man he went to Spain where he joined the American bodyguard company...
and Jose Prudencio Padilla
José Prudencio Padilla
Admiral José Prudencio Padilla López was a Colombian military leader who fought in the Spanish American wars of independence...
. After Carabobo, a congress met in Cúcuta
Cúcuta
Cúcuta is a Colombian city, capital of Norte de Santander, in the northeast of the country. Due to its proximity to the Colombian-Venezuelan border, Cúcuta is an important commercial center. The city has the constitutional category of Special District. It is located at the most active...
, Santander's birthplace, and approved a federalist
Federalist
The term federalist describes several political beliefs around the world. Also, it may refer to the concept of federalism or the type of government called a federation...
constitution
Constitution
A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...
for Great Colombia.
The liberation of Quito
Quito
San Francisco de Quito, most often called Quito , is the capital city of Ecuador in northwestern South America. It is located in north-central Ecuador in the Guayllabamba river basin, on the eastern slopes of Pichincha, an active stratovolcano in the Andes mountains...
followed both strategic and jurisdictional imperatives. A Quito-Pasto-Popayán royalist axis existed and had functioned as a thorn in the side of Great Colombia. Jurisdictionally, Quito remained a dependency of the viceroyalty of New Granada. Bolívar always believed that the new Spanish American nations should keep to the approximate borders they had under colonial jurisdiction, which was not a question so much of aggrandizing Great Colombia as of trying to prevent future border disputes. There was an additional factor and it was that Guayaquil
Guayaquil
Guayaquil , officially Santiago de Guayaquil , is the largest and the most populous city in Ecuador,with about 2.3 million inhabitants in the city and nearly 3.1 million in the metropolitan area, as well as that nation's main port...
, Quito's port, had declared its independence and needed support. Peruvian soldiers under orders from San Martin, then occupying Lima
Lima
Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...
, had arrived in Guayaquil. A young Venezuelan general, Antonio José de Sucre
Antonio José de Sucre
Antonio José de Sucre y Alcalá , known as the "Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho" , was a Venezuelan independence leader. Sucre was one of Simón Bolívar's closest friends, generals and statesmen.-Ancestry:...
, had shown his mettle in previous campaigns and Bolívar sent him with troops by sea to Guayaquil while he invaded from the north. Bolívar defeated the royalists early in 1822, but Pasto opposed his advance. After failing twice to march directly on Quito, Sucre occupied Cuenca
Cuenca, Ecuador
Cuenca is the capital of the Azuay Province. It is located in the highlands of Ecuador at about 2500 m above sea level...
and from there, leading a coalition army in which probably Colombians and British or Irish were a marginal majority—it must be kept in mind that most of both the patriot and royalist sides usually never concentrated above brigade size (5,000 men)—he marched on Quito and occupied the side of the Pinchincha volcano facing the city. The Spanish commander tried to outclimb him but the patriots in the end got the best of their enemies in hand to hand combat. Sucre entered Quito and then turned north and repressed the extremely recalcitrant Pasto royalists, making it possible for Bolívar to join forces with him.
The "summit of the Liberators" and the battle of Ayacucho
San Martin had not invaded the interior of Perú, where the Spanish viceroy José de la SernaJosé de la Serna e Hinojosa
José de la Serna e Hinojosa, 1st Count of los Andes was a Spanish general and colonial official. He was the last Spanish viceroy of Peru to exercise effective power .-Background:...
preserved his forces intact. When the Colombians had liberated Quito he sailed to Guayaquil for a "summit of Liberators" with Bolívar. The two leaders met in secret and there has been much speculation about what they talked about. Some believe that San Martin wanted to claim Quito; others that he sought Bolívar's help to defeat the Spaniards in Perú. San Martin was a strictly military man. He did not like intrigues and he was not prominent in the political infighting in Buenos Aires. As he was uncomfortable in the political world of Lima, which had not been especially keen on liberation, it is likely that he did ask Bolívar to finish the war in Perú, upon which both generals were agreed on its strategic necessity for the consolidation of South American independence. As the viceroyalty of La Plata, from which the independent United Provinces of La Plata had emerged, had once been the administrative center for Upper Perú (today's Bolivia
Bolivia
Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...
), and additionally there had been two previous Platean invasions of the region, it is also likely that he indicated his country's interest in Upper Perú. Be that as it may, San Martin left Lima, went back to Buenos Aires, and shortly later emigrated to London, where he spent the rest of his life.
Peruvians summoned Bolívar to Lima, possibly because Peruvian aristocrats by now knew that their loyalty to Spain could become a drawback once Perú had become independent. The Spaniards still occupied the port of Trujillo
Trujillo, Peru
Trujillo, in northwestern Peru, is the capital of the La Libertad Region, and the third largest city in Peru. The urban area has 811,979 inhabitants and is an economic hub in northern Peru...
in northern Perú, which Colombian forces secured (1823). Bolívar landed in El Callao, the port of Lima, but skirted the fort (where a Spanish force remained holed up and only surrendered in 1826). In Lima itself he was named dictator. Bolívar and Sucre went after the royalist forces which they beat in the battle of Junin
Battle of Junín
The Battle of Junín was a military engagement of the Peruvian War of Independence, fought in the highlands of the Junín Region on August 6, 1824. The preceding February the royalists had regained control of Lima, and having regrouped in Trujillo, Simón Bolívar in June led his rebel forces south to...
(1824). The battle consisted of cavalry charges on both sides. Bolívar went back to Lima and Sucre chased La Serna's army and defeated it in the battle of Ayacucho
Battle of Ayacucho
The Battle of Ayacucho was a decisive military encounter during the Peruvian War of Independence. It was the battle that sealed the independence of Peru, as well as the victory that ensured independence for the rest of South America...
, considered the landmark victory of South American independence for it involved the highest number of troops ever engaged in the wars of independence (possibly around 20,000 in all). While these events were going on in South America, in the USA, which already had 42 years as an independent state, president James Monroe
James Monroe
James Monroe was the fifth President of the United States . Monroe was the last president who was a Founding Father of the United States, and the last president from the Virginia dynasty and the Republican Generation...
enunciated in 1823 the doctrine that bears his name
Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine is a policy of the United States introduced on December 2, 1823. It stated that further efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in North or South America would be viewed as acts of aggression requiring U.S. intervention...
declaring the Western Hemisphere
Western Hemisphere
The Western Hemisphere or western hemisphere is mainly used as a geographical term for the half of the Earth that lies west of the Prime Meridian and east of the Antimeridian , the other half being called the Eastern Hemisphere.In this sense, the western hemisphere consists of the western portions...
, except Canada, its area of influence and warning European powers not to encroach on it. Bolívar's response to American claims of hegemony was the convocation of the Congress of Panamá
Congress of Panama
The Congress of Panama was a congress organized by Simón Bolívar in 1826 with the goal of bringing together the new republics of Latin America to develop a unified policy towards Spain...
, which was held in June–July 1826 and which the USA did not attend. Sucre went on to Upper Perú, apparently without Bolívar's authorization, and he defeated feeble local resistance and created the Republic of Bolivia (1825), named after Bolívar. Bolívar made public the letter in which he reprimanded Sucre, but he wrote the constitution for Bolivia, which he considered his legislative masterpiece. Sucre became president of Bolivia.
Bolívar's death and the disintegration of Great Colombia
Although Lima fêted Bolívar and nobody disputed his political ascendancy, neither Perú nor Bolivia welcomed the Colombians. Peruvians themselves probably formed a majority on each side in the battle of Ayacucho. Besides, in Venezuela, nominally a province of Great Colombia, Páez, backed by the former mantuanos (and now by the ruling clique in Caracas), tentatively initiated the separation of Venezuela in 1826. Bolívar returned post-haste to Bogotá, where vice-president Santander complained about Venezuelan insubordination. Bolívar traveled to Caracas and seemingly put Páez in his place (1827). Sucre left Bolivia the same year. Santander expressed disappointment and furthermore opposed Bolívar's plans to implant the Bolivian constitution in Great Colombia, for which a convention was convoked in the town of OcañaOcaña, Colombia
Ocaña is a town and municipality in the Colombian Department of Norte de Santander. Ocaña is the second largest populated center of this department. It played an important role during the Independence of Colombia from the Spanish monarchy.-History:...
. Thus began the rivalry between Santander and Bolívar. In 1828, in view of the political opposition he faced both in Venezuela and in New Granada and because his Great Colombia had started to disintegrate, Bolívar named himself dictator
Dictator
A dictator is a ruler who assumes sole and absolute power but without hereditary ascension such as an absolute monarch. When other states call the head of state of a particular state a dictator, that state is called a dictatorship...
. He escaped an assassination attempt with the help of his mistress, Manuelita Sanz, a pardo woman from Quito. Santander was exiled but Jose Prudencio Padilla, the pardo general who had helped corner Morales after Carabobo in Maracaibo, was executed instead. The emboldened Peruvians now invaded Guayaquil. Bolívar had to return to Quito in 1829 to repulse them, which didn't take much doing, for the invasion had petered out before Bolívar arrived. Back in Bogotá, Bolívar pleaded for unity and, though he had offered to resign various times during his career, this time, when Great Colombia had a new constitution (not Bolívar's Bolivian one) and a president, Joaquin Mosquera, Bolívar finally did resign in 1830. At that point, Páez not only had declared the second independence of Venezuela but promoted a campaign of vituperation against Bolívar. Seeing the state of things, Quito followed suit under Venezuelan general Juan José Flores
Juan José Flores
Juan José Flores y Aramburu was a Venezuelan military general who became Supreme Chief, and later the first President of the new Republic of Ecuador. He later served two more terms from 1839 to 1843 and from 1843 to 1845, and is often referred to as "The founder of the Republic".-Biography:Flores...
, and Sucre was assassinated while riding alone through a thick forest on his way to that city. A downcast Bolívar rode to the coast with the intention of leaving the country, but he was truly exhausted and very sick. He died near Santa Marta
Santa Marta
Santa Marta is the capital city of the Colombian department of Magdalena in the Caribbean Region. It was founded in July 29, 1525 by the Spanish conqueror Rodrigo de Bastidas, which makes it the oldest remaining city in Colombia...
in Colombia at the age of 47.
19th century
Contrary to popular belief, Venezuela in the 19th century following independence did not experience one continuous civil war during which one caudillo followed another without rhyme or reason, the victors liquidating the defeated as a matter of course.As in human affairs everywhere, patterns of political ascendancy, downfalls, and resurgences developed. The same geographical reasons that had made possible the formation of Venezuela as a distinct national entity separate from New Granada
Viceroyalty of New Granada
The Viceroyalty of New Granada was the name given on 27 May 1717, to a Spanish colonial jurisdiction in northern South America, corresponding mainly to modern Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela. The territory corresponding to Panama was incorporated later in 1739...
during the colonial period, also made Venezuela a country difficult to govern. Venezuela had various regions: the Andes, the plains that stretched from the borders with New Granada to the Orinoco delta, Guayana, the Maracaibo basin, the Coro region, the Barquisimeto
Barquisimeto
Barquisimeto is the capital city of the State of Lara located in west central Venezuela, halfway between Caracas and Maracaibo on the Turbio River.-Overview:...
region, and central Venezuela, formed by the Caracas-Valencia axis and its surrounding areas. The llanos themselves comprised different sub-regions: the eastern part which included the Cumaná
Cumaná
Cumaná is the capital of Venezuela's Sucre State. It is located 402 km east of Caracas. It was the first settlement founded by Europeans in the mainland America, in 1501 by Franciscan friars, but due to successful attacks by the indigenous people, it had to be refounded several times...
region (and the island of Margarita by extension), the Apure
Apure
Apure State is one of the 23 states into which Venezuela is divided. Its territory formed part of the provinces of Mérida, Maracaibo, and Barinas, in accordance with successive territorial ordinations pronounced by the colonial authorities. In 1824 the Department of Apure was created, under...
llanos, and the central and western llanos. Except for the llanos, where there were no geographical barriers between them, the other regions were separated from each other by either outright mountain ranges or rough mountainous terrains. The distinction between the eastern, central and western llanos was due to political precedents and circumstances. The eastern llanos and Guayana, had practically fought their own war of independence within the wider war of independence. They also had outlets to the sea. The central and western llanos, which politically were considered extensions of Caracas (except Barinas), had varying access to the central region. The Apure llanos were a prolongation of the central llanos. The western llanos, with the capital in Barinas, had been a province separate from Caracas, but they were in effect (the same as Apure) part of the same social, military, and political landscape.
Independence saw Venezuela possibly the most impoverished country in Spanish America. In 1800 the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt
Alexander von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt was a German naturalist and explorer, and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt...
had estimated the population of the province of Venezuela at around one million. A calculation made by Agustin Codazzi, an Italian officer and engineer who chose Venezuela as his homeland, put the population at 810,000 Whether these figures are reliable or not, it is undeniable that after over a decade of incessant warfare, Venezuela's population must have gone down, if not from the wars themselves, from the unstable social conditions they engendered. Venezuela had no means of communication outside of the caminos reales (royal roads) from the colonial period. There existed a stone-paved camino real from Caracas to La Guaira and there were earthen roads that crisscrossed central Venezuela from Caracas to Valencia and from the center to the llanos. In the llanos themselves, there were the trails made by cattle-herders from one town to another. In the rest of Venezuela, roads were no better than mule tracks that followed lines of least resistance. Caracas had started re-building itself when the war for independence ended, but by all measurable social standards the city had deteriorated from its colonial apogee. It had no public buildings of any note. Its cathedral would have been considered a minor church in México
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
. In terms of social organization, Venezuela had inherited the colonial distinctions between the minority ruling whites, the majority un-enfranchised pardos, and the slaves. Government was mostly a local affair. The country was 90% or more rural and the regional caudillos exerted their authority from their own large land holdings through the small towns that acted mostly in name as capitals in all the regions. Despite its relative insignificance as a city, Caracas was the symbol of political power and its control was considered to some extent legitimating. In brief, Venezuela was not a cohesive country, but the political forces that determined its history were not entirely arbitrary or chaotic.
In the seventy years from 1829 to 1899, by one official tally, Venezuela had thirty presidential terms, but this leaves out some transitional presidencies which would boost the figure to 41. In reality, a mere 16 presidents served a total of 28 non-transitional terms. One cannot regard Venezuela as stable during this period: at least thirty insurrections occurred, albeit most of them unsuccessful. The usual pattern was that some local, usually white, caudillo would "recruit" an "army" of 100 or more pardos and make a pompous "revolutionary" proclamation. If this caudillo had some measure of charisma, he could put other caudillos on his side and, with the other recruited pardos, march on Caracas. If he succeeded in seizing poqwer, his continued success depended on his getting other caudillos to put down the minor insurrections that cropped up here and there against him. There were other features of note. In Venezuela, as if the caudillos had a tacit understanding among themselves, there were no political executions with but one minor(?) exception. All a significant caudillo had to fear from failure was either jail, usually for a short term, or exile. However, these privileges did not extend to the pardos, who were easy to recruit, easy to punish, and easy to forget once a caudillo was in power.
Between 1830 and 1899 the series of caudillos who succeeded each other as president came mostly from the llanos, the Eastern region, and from the state of Falcón. From 1899 until 1958, chieftains from the Andean regions held the presidency.
Roughly, one can divide the history of Venezuela in the 19th century into the following periods:
- the ascendancy of José Antonio PáezJosé Antonio PáezJosé Antonio Páez Herrera was General in Chief of the army fighting Spain during the Venezuelan Wars of Independence, in addition to becoming the President of Venezuela once it was independent of the Gran Colombia...
(1829–1847), during which he had the support of Carlos SoubletteCarlos SoubletteCarlos Soublette was President of Venezuela 1837-1839 and 1843–1847, and a hero of the Venezuelan War of Independence....
; - the Monagas ascendancy (1847–1858)
- the Federal WarFederal WarThe Federal War - also known as the Great War or the Five Year War - was a civil war in Venezuela between the conservative party and the liberal party about the monopoly of the conservatives of the land and the government positions, and their reluctance to grant any reforms. This drove the...
(1858–1863) - the Federalist period (1863–1870)
- the Antonio Guzmán BlancoAntonio Guzmán BlancoAntonio Leocadio Guzmán Blanco was President of Venezuela for three separate terms, from 1870–1877, from 1879–1884, and from 1886–1887....
ascendancy, with Joaquin CrespoJoaquín CrespoJoaquín Sinforiano de Jesús Crespo Torres was a politician, soldier, a member of the Great Liberal Party of Venezuela and President of Venezuela from 1884 to 1886 and again from 1892 to 1898...
as its main caudillo supporter (1870–1887) - the civilian presidencies and the Crespo ascendancy (1887–1899)
Páez ascendant
Páez ruled either as president or as the man-behind-the-throne from 1830 to 1846; and later, from 1860 to 1863, as dictator.A distinguished military leader in the independence war and a colleague of Bolívar, Páez had a strong claim to the Presidency, especially as, despite his pardo origins, the white oligarchy in Caracas supported him enthusiastically.
Although the 1830 Constitution prescribed democracy, tradition and practical difficulties militated against the actual working of a republican form of government, and in practice an oligarchy governed the nation.
During his first year in office Páez created a three-man Office of Foreign Relations within the Ministry of Finance. It had little occasion to deal with war-related diplomacy between Venezuela and other states, because Venezuela had only small military forces and they had the primary function of protecting the presidency from internal threats and of maintaining order. (This has remained the essential role of the Venezuelan military to .) The Foreign Office dealt mostly with difficulties involving foreign citizens doing business in Venezuela: especially breaches of contract, damage to persons and property during civil strife, and acts of oppression such as illegal imprisonment of aliens.
Doctor José María Vargas
José María Vargas
José María Vargas was the 4th President of Venezuela from 1835–1836.-Life and career:...
, like Páez a member of the Conservative Party, became President in February 1835. As a civilian, he had the support of some who wanted an alternative to the independence-war military veterans who had predominated in Venezuelan politics. In July 1835 the Revolution of the Reforms led by José Tadeo Monagas
José Tadeo Monagas
José Tadeo Monagas Burgos was President of Venezuela 1847-1851 and 1855–1858, and a hero of the Venezuelan War of Independence...
outed Vargas, but he returned to power when Páez defeated the rebels. He resigned permanently in April 1836.
Monagas, the leader of the rebellion, had served as a distinguished independence-war general. Although defeated, he suffered few consequences because he had his base in the Eastern llanos, a region where Páez had no effective control. Besides, Monagas had as much right as Páez to count among the "liberators" of Venezuela and he had the additional credential that, whereas Páez had turned his back on Bolivar's Gran Columbia, he, at least in principle, had manifested his allegiance to it until its disintegration was irremediable.
Independence-war general Carlos Soublette, a Conservative, became president in 1837. Páez succeeded him in 1839, but Soublette took the rein
Rein
Reins are items of horse tack, used to direct a horse or other animal used for riding or driving. Reins can be made of leather, nylon, metal, or other materials, and attach to a bridle via either its bit or its noseband.-Use for riding:...
s from Páez again in 1843, and governed until 1847.
Monagas ascendancy
Soublette proved an honest but lackluster president, in some ways a foil to Páez, and he could not prevent the "election" of Monagas to the presidency in 1847. It is the accepted wisdom that all the "elections" that are mentioned as occurring in the Venezuelan 19th century were a sham or non-existent, but this is not exactly accurate. There were elections, but these were held at the municipal level and of course the pardos had no vote. This tradition of indirect elections through local councils would last in Venezuela until 1945.While President, Monagas broke with the Conservative Party. In 1848, his supporters assaulted parliament and he imposed personal rule and sent Páez into exile. His younger brother, José Gregorio Monagas
José Gregorio Monagas
José Gregorio Monagas was President of Venezuela 1851-1855 and brother of José Tadeo Monagas.General José Gregorio Monagas was born in Aragua de Barcelona, Venezuela, in 1795. His parents were Francisco José Monagas, a merchant from the Canary Islands, and Perfecta Burgos, a native of Cojedes...
, won election as President for the 1851–1855 term and also governed dictatorially. José Tadeo returned as President in 1855 but resigned in March 1858 in the face of an insurrection in Valencia which was led by Julián Castro
Julián Castro
- See also :*Venezuela*Presidents of Venezuela...
and included elite members of both the Conservative and Liberal Parties.
Both brothers governed as Liberals. José Gregorio abolished slavery in 1854, and José Tadeo abolished capital punishment.
The eastern llanos produced many caudillos because its economy was open to international trade and the exports from that region (cattle, hides, coffee) were staples of the Venezuelan economy.
Federal War
Three days after José Tadeo Monagas' resignation, Julian Castro seized the Presidency in a coup d'état.Castro became the first military President who had not fought in the War of Independence. Castro was a creature of the Caracas-Valencia oligarchy and not very effectual. During his presidency, there was a proliferation of aspiring caudillos in Caracas itself and he exiled them all. This was what provoked the Great War of the Caudillos, called in Venezuelan historiography the Guerra Federal or the Federalist War
Federal War
The Federal War - also known as the Great War or the Five Year War - was a civil war in Venezuela between the conservative party and the liberal party about the monopoly of the conservatives of the land and the government positions, and their reluctance to grant any reforms. This drove the...
, although federalism was not what these men really had in mind. Castro was not competent either as president or as soldier and he handed power to the civilians of the oligarchy, who were soon being overwhelmed by insurrections in the central and western llanos. Páez was called backed from exile in the USA, and ruled as dictator from 1861–1863; but he was no longer the caudillo he once was and he had to surrender to the leader of the federalists, Juan Crisóstomo Falcón
Juan Crisóstomo Falcón
Juan Crisóstomo Falcón y Zavarce , was the 20th President of Venezuela as well as military commander during the Federal War. Member of the Liberal party, first served as the supreme chief of a rebel movement in August 1859, but the rebellion was soon crushed. After the Coche treaty, is recognized...
. One result of the War of the Caudillos was that the official denomination of Venezuela was changed from "republic" to the "United States of Venezuela", a national name it had, as well as the motto "God and Federation", until a dictator in the mid-20th century changed it back to "republic".
Federalist period
Falcón had been an excellent caudillo, but he made a feckless president, especially as he was wont to spend a lot of time in his native Coro. He was succeeded by weak presidents from central Venezuela. Jose Ruperto Monagas tried to save the federalist government, but he was no match for the greatest of the guerrilla leaders, Antonio Guzmán BlancoAntonio Guzmán Blanco
Antonio Leocadio Guzmán Blanco was President of Venezuela for three separate terms, from 1870–1877, from 1879–1884, and from 1886–1887....
, who had spent much of his public life as Venezuelan ambassador at large. When he came to power, he did not do so in the name of federalism, which he once espoused, but as a liberal. Venezuela was a country of peripheral enclaves, defined by ports through which international commerce was carried on. These enclaves were the source of customs revenues, which, with some foreign loans, were the main fiscal resources of the Venezuelan government. Caracas had its port of La Guaira
La Guaira
La Guaira is the capital city of the Venezuelan state of Vargas and the country's chief port. It was founded in 1577 as an outlet for Caracas, to the southeast. The town and the port were badly damaged during the December 1999 floods and mudslides that affected much of the region...
, to which it had been connected by a railroad. Valencia was linked to Puerto Cabello. Maracaibo constituted an enclave in itself. It was the outlet for coffee, mostly by river and lake Maracaibo
Lake Maracaibo
Lake Maracaibo is a large brackish bay in Venezuela at . It is connected to the Gulf of Venezuela by Tablazo Strait at the northern end, and fed by numerous rivers, the largest being the Catatumbo. It is commonly considered a lake rather than a bay or lagoon, and at 13,210 km² it would be the...
from Táchira, in the Venezuelan Andes, and from Colombia. The eastern llanos had an excellent natural harbor near Lecherias, but its potential was not discovered until well into the 20th century with the rise of the oil industry. The telegraph had been introduced since the 1850s, but it went from Caracas to Valencia.
Guzmán Blanco ascendancy
Guzmán BlancoAntonio Guzmán Blanco
Antonio Leocadio Guzmán Blanco was President of Venezuela for three separate terms, from 1870–1877, from 1879–1884, and from 1886–1887....
, the most sophisticate
Sophistication
Sophistication is the quality of refinement — displaying good taste, wisdom and subtlety rather than crudeness, stupidity and vulgarity.In the perception of social class, sophistication can link with concepts such as status, privilege and superiority....
d Venezuelan president (in office three times between 1870 and 1887) of the 19th century, was also the most charismatic of the caudillos. He adeptly contracted loans for Venezuela, from which he amassed a small fortune. Guzmán Blanco had ambitious goals for Venezuela. He wanted to make Caracas a mini-Paris and he did build some theaters and a capitol, but these projects were on a very minor scale. He was also good at progressive legislation. He declared education free and obligatory for all Venezuelans, but Venezuela still had no roads, so his decree was wishful thinking. He did build the railroad from Caracas to Valencia and tried in other ways to modernize the country, but the facts were stacked against him in a country of over one million square kilometers with a wild and inhospitable topography and its some 1,200,000 inhabitants living mostly in rural areas. The political stability of Venezuela was principally the doing of his principal lieutenant.
Civilian presidencies and Crespo ascendancy
Guzmán Blanco decided to retire to Paris in 1887 at the age of 59. He died there in 1899. He had left behind statues of himself and other reminders of his prolonged direct and indirect rule. Also, he left a country in relative peace. His appointed successor, Hermógenes LópezHermógenes López
Hermógenes López was a Venezuelan soldier, farmer and acting president of his country between 1887 and 1888, after the resignation of General Antonio Guzmán Blanco as cause of his voluntary exile in Paris.There is no such information about his childhood, only that was limited to elementary...
, was a colorless caudillo, who inaugurated some of the projects Guzmán Blanco had started, among them a submarine cable to Curaçao, which linked Venezuela to the rest of the world, and the Valencia-Puerto Cabello railroad. López was replaced by the civilian Juan Pablo Rojas Paúl
Juan Pablo Rojas Paúl
Juan Pablo Rojas Paúl was President of Venezuela from 1888 to 1890. He was the first civilian president who was elected by constitutional procedures in 50 years, and the only one who could finish his term properly, until 74 years later.Elected by Antonio Guzmán like his successor, Rojas tried to...
with Guzmán Blanco's far-away blessing. Crespo, who thought he should have been chosen president, went into exile and started planning his own revolution. Rojas Paúl actively promoted an anti-Guzmán popular reaction in Caracas and other cities. He turned power over to another civilian, Raimundo Andueza Palacios
Raimundo Andueza Palacios
Raimundo Ignacio Andueza Palacio , was President of Venezuela , and member of the Liberal Party.-Early life and career:...
, who forgot the cardinal rule of relying on caudillos for support, a power vacuum which Crespo promptly filled in 1892. Ambitious but unassuming, Crespo ruled until 1898 and handed power to Ignacio Andrade, but Crespo was the military mainstay of the government. In suppressing a serious threat to the government he was killed in action and Andrade was left to fend for himself.
20th century
Castro and Gómez
Of all the regions of Venezuela, the Andes and Guayana had not participated actively in the many insurrections that had plagued the other parts of Venezuela. The llanos had been the great battleground of most of the confrontations between caudillos, whose struggles spilled over into Barquisimeto. Coro had been the favorite landing site for most of the rebellions, especially the Great War of the Caudillos. Maracaibo at one time tried to go autonomous and had to be taken by arms. Guayana was so under-populated it hardly counted. But the Andes was another story. It was the richest region of Venezuela through the export of coffee. It had a healthful, high-altitude climate. It probably accounted for perhaps half the total population of Venezuela. Malaria and yellow fever and other tropical scourges had become endemic in the llanos. A rebel from Trujillo, the Andean province closest to central Venezuela, had once tried and failed at rebellion. But in the 1890s the Andeans, especially in Táchira, started flexing their muscles. When Crespo was killed, Venezuela entered a period of uncertainty as Andrade was not himself a caudillo and he was Crespo's placeman. In 1899, the Tachirense Cipriano CastroCipriano Castro
José Cipriano Castro Ruiz was a high ranking member of the Venezuelan military, politician and the President of Venezuela from 1899 to 1908...
, a short-tempered and highly ambitious man, formed a real army with Andean recruits and the support of his friend Juan Vicente Gómez
Juan Vicente Gómez
Juan Vicente Gómez Chacón was a military general and de facto ruler of Venezuela from 1908 until his death in 1935. He was president on three occasions during this time, and ruled as an unelected military strongman for the rest of the era.-Early years:Gómez was a barely literate cattle herder and...
. Castro met practically no resistance on his march to Caracas. His forces were larger now under the command of Gómez. As was to be expected, the new government was like lighting not one but many fuses to many enterprising, aspiring caudillos. Castro was himself courageous, but he did not need to take the field: he had Gómez, who in two years of active campaigning with his Andean troops put down not only the on-going rebellions, but even made sure that there were not to be any more rebellions by placing Andean lieutenants and Andean troops in all the regional capitals of Venezuela.
Few would deny two things about Castro: he was a debauchee with an insatiable taste for cognac and he was a daredevil in foreign relations defying Europe as if he had a navy and adequate coastal defences. Many Venezuelans consider Castro a great patriot but in fact, when he got embroiled with his Venezuela's European creditors, he did not hesitate to invoke the Monroe Doctrine
Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine is a policy of the United States introduced on December 2, 1823. It stated that further efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in North or South America would be viewed as acts of aggression requiring U.S. intervention...
in defense of his country's sovereignty. Guzman Blanco had tried to have Britain recognize Venezuelan sovereignty to the Essequibo river, in modern terms over half of the state of Guyana. Britain ignored this claim but in 1887 in tried to extend the boundary far into the actual territory of Venezuela prompting the first Venezuelan appeal to the Monroe Doctrine. The USA in 1895 asked that Britain submit its claim to arbitration, which London refused at first creating tension with Washington. There was some eye-winking on the two sides and finally Britain accepted arbitration, which validated its rejection of the Essequibo river boundary, and accepted a broad interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. Castro had nothing to do with this affair, but he inherited from his predecessors a burden of foreign debt which he refused to honor. The resulting crisis of 1902–3
Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903
The Venezuela Crisis of 1902 was a naval blockade from December of 1902 to February of 1903 imposed against Venezuela by Britain, Germany and Italy over President Cipriano Castro's refusal to pay foreign debts and damages suffered by European citizens in a recent Venezuelan civil war...
saw an international fleet of European gunboats blockade Venezuela's coasts. With the Guiana border precedent in mind, Castro invoked again the Monroe Doctrine. Germany was aggressively pursuing its blockade in western Venezuela, where there was a large colony of German merchants in Maracaibo, and this preoccupied the Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...
administration, which told the Germans to back off. But at the same time it told Castro that the Monroe Doctrine did not apply to unpaid debts. The debt question was sent to the Hague Tribunal
Permanent Court of Arbitration
The Permanent Court of Arbitration , is an international organization based in The Hague in the Netherlands.-History:The court was established in 1899 as one of the acts of the first Hague Peace Conference, which makes it the oldest institution for international dispute resolution.The creation of...
which faulted Venezuela. Castro was reluctantly forced to start paying up, but the total cancellation of the overdue bills did not occur under his government. Another war, this time with the Netherlands
Dutch-Venezuela War
In 1908 a dispute broke out between the Netherlands and Cipriano Castro's Venezuela on the grounds of the harbouring of refugees in Curaçao. Venezuela expelled the Dutch ambassador, prompting a Dutch dispatch of three warships - a battleship, the Jacob van Heemskerk, and two cruisers, the...
, broke out in late 1908.
In 1908, Castro was too sick to be cured in Venezuela and he left for Germany leaving Gómez in charge. Castro had not gone further than the outer Antilles when Gómez took over the government and forbade Castro from returning. This was the beginning of a regime that lasted until 1935 and is interwoven with the early development of the oil industry, the greatest influence ever on the history of Venezuela. One of Gómez's first measures was to start canceling outstanding Venezuelan international debts, a goal which was soon achieved. Under Gómez, Venezuela acquired all the appurtenances of a regular national army staffed and officered almost entirely by Andeans. At the time, the country had a widespread telegraphic system. Under these circumstances, the possibility of caudillo uprisings was curtailed. The only armed threat against Gómez came from a disaffected former business partner to whom he had given a monopoly on all maritime and riverine commerce. Although there are many tales of Gómez's cruelty and ruthlessness, they are mostly exaggerations by his enemies. The man who had tried to overthrow him, Roman Delgado Chalbaud, spent fourteen years in jail. He later claimed that he was in ball and chains during all that time, but he was released by Gómez. His son, Carlos Delgado Chalbaud
Carlos Delgado Chalbaud
Carlos Román Delgado Chalbaud Gómez was a Venezuelan career military officer, and as leader of a military junta was President of Venezuela from 1948 to 1950. By 1945 he was a high-ranking officer and was among the leaders of a military coup which brought to power the mass membership party...
, would later become president of Venezuela. When university students staged a street demonstration in 1928, they were arrested but were soon released. But Gómez was indeed ruthless in throttling all opposition and he allowed a personality cult, but this was as much his doing as that of his sycophants, who were numerous all over Venezuela. Gómez, unlike Guzmán Blanco, never erected a statue of himself anywhere in Venezuela. He was a stickler for legal formalisms, which in essence meant that he introduced new constitutions any time it suited his political ends, although this was also the rule during the 19th century. During his dictatorship, Gómez appointed two figurehead presidents while he kept a tight hold on the armed forces from Maracay
Maracay
Maracay is a city in north-central Venezuela, near the Caribbean coast, and is the capital and most important city of the state of Aragua. Most of it falls under the jurisdiction of the Girardot Municipality. The population as per the 2001 census was 750,000...
, his favorite city, west of Caracas, which he embellished and made the main Venezuelan garrison, a status which it retained until at least the 1960s.
The discovery of oil
It did not take much geological expertise to know that Venezuela had large petroleum deposits, because the petroleum oozed out from seeps all over the country and an asphalt lake had formed naturally. Venezuelans themselves had tried to extract oil for a small hand-pumped refinery early in the 20th century. When word spread internationally of Venezuela's oil potential, representatives of large foreign companies came to the country and started lobbying for rights of exploration and exploitation, and Gómez established the concessionary system. Venezuela had inherited from Spain the law that the ground surface—presumably, as deep as a plow or a water well went—could belong to individuals but everything under the soil was state property. Thus, Gómez began to grant huge concessions to family and friends. Any one who was close to Gómez eventually would become rich in one way or another. Gómez himself accumulated immense expanses of grasslands for cattle-raising, which had been his original occupation and was a life-long passion. The Venezuelan concessionaires leased or sold their holdings to the highest foreign bidders. Gómez, who didn’t trust industrial workers or unionsTrade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
, refused to allow the oil companies to build refineries on Venezuelan soil, so these were built them in the Dutch islands of Aruba
Aruba
Aruba is a 33 km-long island of the Lesser Antilles in the southern Caribbean Sea, located 27 km north of the coast of Venezuela and 130 km east of Guajira Peninsula...
and Curaçao
Curaçao
Curaçao is an island in the southern Caribbean Sea, off the Venezuelan coast. The Country of Curaçao , which includes the main island plus the small, uninhabited island of Klein Curaçao , is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands...
. The one in Aruba was for a time the second largest in the world, after the one in Abadan
Abadan
Abadan is a city in and the capital of Abadan County, Khuzestan Province, Iran. It lies on Abadan Island , from the Persian Gulf, near the Iraqi-Iran border. The civilian population of the city dropped to near zero during the eight-years Iran–Iraq War. In 1992, only 84,774 had returned to live...
, Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
. Although the Venezuelan oil boom started around 1918, the year when oil first figured as an export commodity, it took off when an oil well called Barroso blew a 200 feet (61 m) spout that threw up an average of the equivalent to 100,000 barrels a day. It took five days to bring the flow under control. After that, there was no looking back. By 1927, oil was Venezuela's most valuable export and by 1929 Venezuela exported more oil than any other country in the world.
It has been said that Gómez did not tax the oil companies and that Venezuela did not benefit from oil production, but this is only a half-truth. The Venezuelan government derived considerable income from the concessions and from taxes of one sort of another, but the original fiscal laws which applied to the oil companies were hammered out between the government and American lawyers. The laws were relatively lenient, but Gómez, who had an acute business sense, understood that it was necessary to create incentives for investors in the Venezuelan oil fields, some of which were very accessible but others were deep in jungles. Oil income allowed Gómez to expand Venezuela's rudimentary infrastructure and the over all impact of the oil industry on Venezuela was a modernizing trend in the areas where it operated. But in a wider sense, the Venezuelan people, except for those who worked for the oil companies and lived badly but had a steady income, benefited little or not all from the country's oil riches.
Gómez took power in a very poor illiterate country. The white/pardos social divide was still very much in place. When Gómez died in his bed in 1935, Venezuela was still a poor illiterate country and if anything the social stratification had been accentuated. The population had grown from perhaps one million and a half to two million. Malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
was the greatest killer. Gómez himself probably had Amerindian ancestry, but he was overtly racist and he was much influenced by a historian, Laureano Vallenilla Lanz
Laureano Vallenilla Lanz
Laureano Vallenilla Lanz was a Venezuelan intellectual and sociologist. Vallenilla Lanz held a number of positions under the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez and is well-known as an apologist for his regime...
, who published a book claiming not inaccurately that the Venezuelan War of Independence was really a civil war with the dubious added argument that pardos were a menace to public order and Venezuela could only subsist as a nation ruled by white strongmen. Gómez, for instance, prohibited all immigration from black Caribbean islands. Even though Venezuela's population in his time was 80% pardo, passports, which were first issued under Gómez, identified carriers by the color of skin, which they still did until the 1980s. Venezuela did change considerably under Gómez. It had radio stations in all the important cities. There existed an incipient middle class. But it still had only two or three universities. An estimated 90% of families formed through common-law marriage
Common-law marriage
Common-law marriage, sometimes called sui juris marriage, informal marriage or marriage by habit and repute, is a form of interpersonal status that is legally recognized in limited jurisdictions as a marriage even though no legally recognized marriage ceremony is performed or civil marriage...
s. The social progress that did take place was through a spontaneous trend towards modernization in which oil played the central role.
Aborted road to gradual democracy
Gómez's minister of war, Eleazar López ContrerasEleazar López Contreras
José Eleazar López Contreras was President of Venezuela . López was a general and one of Juan Vicente Gómez's collaborators.Eleazar López was the only child of Col. Manuel Maria López and Catalina Contreras...
, succeeded him: a tall, thin, disciplined soldier with a solid education. Before arriving at his post, he served the Gomecista government loyally wherever he was sent, including at one time Venezuela's eastern land's end, a village called Cristobal Colón, across from Trinidad
Trinidad
Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of it is also the fifth largest in...
. In power, López Contreras allowed the pardo masses to vent for a few days before clamping down. He had Gómez's properties confiscated by the state, but the dictator's relatives, with some exceptions who left the country, were not harassed. Gómez never married but he had various illegitimate children. Initially, López Contreras permitted political parties to come into the open, but they tended to become rambunctious and he proscribed them, although he did not use strong repressive means (which weren’t necessary anyway) as the politicians that led them, called in Venezuelan historiography the "1928 Generation", did not yet have large popular followings. One of the reasons for this hard stance was that, during his first year as president, López Contreras was faced with a labor strike which paralyzed the oil industry in Zulia
Zulia
Zulia State is one of the 23 states of Venezuela. The state capital is Maracaibo. In June 30, 2010, it had an estimated population of 3,821,068, giving it the largest population among Venezuela's states. It is located in the northwestern part of the country...
state in western Venezuela, whose capital was Maracaibo, where the most productive fields were located.
López Contreras had created a labor ministry and his representative there, Carlos Ramírez MacGregor
Carlos Ramírez MacGregor
Carlos Ramírez MacGregor was a Venezuelan lawyer, politician, newspaperman, and diplomat. He obtained a doctorate in law at the University of Madrid, Spain....
, received orders to make a report of the situation, which confirmed the workers’ grievances. He also had instructions to declare the strike illegal, (which he did). Government forces made the workers return to their jobs, although after that incident the oil companies did start taking serious initiatives to improve conditions for Venezuelan workers. Among the notable goals of López Contreras was a campaign to eradicate malaria in the llanos. This task was finally accomplished during the following presidency through the use of DDT
DDT
DDT is one of the most well-known synthetic insecticides. It is a chemical with a long, unique, and controversial history....
.
Two communists led the oil strike: Rodolfo Quintero and the oil worker Jesús Faría. The history of Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
in Venezuela is rather complex, but a brief overview is that communism never sunk roots in Venezuela and its impact on mainstream politics was minimal. Even Chávez
Hugo Chávez
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías is the 56th and current President of Venezuela, having held that position since 1999. He was formerly the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when he became the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela...
today is not a Marxist. His sloganeering has communistic overtones but he has not carried out a systemic communist ordering of society as Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
did in Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
. López Contreras tried to create a political movement called Cruzadas Cívicas Bolivarianas (Civic Bolivarian Crusades), but it did not pan out, for whatever he did had the taint of his background as a pillar of the Gómez regime. Even the name "crusades
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...
" was suspect with its clerical
Clericalism
Clericalism is the application of the formal, church-based, leadership or opinion of ordained clergy in matters of either the church or broader political and sociocultural import...
overtones. Constitutionally, López Contreras finished Gómez's last term and in 1936 he was elected by the docile congress for the term ending in 1941.
After a vote in the same congress for the 1941–1946 term, López Contreras handed power to his war minister and personal friend, the Andean general Isaías Medina Angarita
Isaías Medina Angarita
Isaías Medina Angarita was a Venezuelan military and political leader, president of Venezuela from 1941 until 1945....
, who in many ways made a strong foil to his predecessor. He was stout and good natured and did not make excessive demands on himself. Medina Angarita legalized all political parties, including the divided communists
Communist Party of Venezuela
The Communist Party of Venezuela is a Marxist-Leninist political party, and the oldest continuously existing party in Venezuela...
: some were hard-line, such as the Machado brothers of a traditional Caracas family; and others, gradualists or conciliatory, led by Luis Miquilena
Luis Miquilena
Luis Manuel Miquilena Hernández is a Venezuelan politician. He was born on July 29, 1919 in Santa Ana de Coro, Falcón State. He was involved in politics in the 1940s, and again after the 1958 restoration of democracy, but retired from politics in 1964 until the early 1990s, pursuing a career in...
, a union leader who supported Medina's step-by-step approach and for a time was allied to one of the Machado brothers. Under Medina there was an indirect democracy, which followed the 19th century custom of elections at the municipal council level. But Medina was committed to a still restricted but wider national democratic election. For that he had officialdom in all the Venezuelan states form a pro-government party named Partido Democratico Venezolana or PDV (Venezuelan Democratic Party
Venezuelan Democratic Party
Venezuelan Democratic Party was a political party in Venezuela. It was launched in September 1943 by President Isaías Medina Angarita to organize supporters of the government. Its dominant role in the political system ended with the 1945 democratic revolution of Rómulo Betancourt....
). But the real genius at political organization was Rómulo Betancourt
Rómulo Betancourt
Rómulo Ernesto Betancourt Bello , known as "The Father of Venezuelan Democracy", was President of Venezuela from 1945 to 1948 and again from 1959 to 1964, as well as leader of Accion Democratica, Venezuela's dominant political party in the 20th century...
, who created from the bottom up what was in effect a pardo party with a strongly reformist, but not Marxist, agenda.
The October 1945 revolution
In exile Betancourt had flirted with communism but he came to believe that he wasn’t going to get very far along that path. Medina fostered the further professionalization of the Venezuelan officer corps. Among others, he sent Capt. Marcos Pérez JiménezMarcos Pérez Jiménez
Marcos Evangelista Pérez Jiménez was a soldier and Presidents of Venezuela from 1952 to 1958.-Career:Marcos Evangelista Pérez Jiménez was born in Michelena, Táchira State. His father, Juan Pérez Bustamante, was a farmer; his mother, Adela Jiménez, a schoolteacher...
to the Peruvian military academy, which was reputed in Latin America as being very efficient, where the young Andean officer had as professor Gen. Manuel Odria, later to become dictator of Perú. Another Peruvian influence on Venezuelan politics was Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre
Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre
Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre was a Peruvian political leader who founded the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance political movement.-Life:Haya de la Torre was born in the northern Peruvian city of Trujillo...
, who tried to create an inter-American alliance of leftist anti-imperialist parties, which vaguely fitted Betancourt's own program. Another up-and-coming officer was Carlos Delgado Chalbaud
Carlos Delgado Chalbaud
Carlos Román Delgado Chalbaud Gómez was a Venezuelan career military officer, and as leader of a military junta was President of Venezuela from 1948 to 1950. By 1945 he was a high-ranking officer and was among the leaders of a military coup which brought to power the mass membership party...
, the son of the anti-Gomez conspirator previously mentioned. Delgado Chalbaud had spent most of his life in France, where he studied engineering and later attended the St. Cyr military academy. He returned to Venezuela in 1939 and was promptly commissioned in the Venezuelan army by Lopez Contreras. Because of his background, Delgado was the undisputed leader of a group of conspirational officers, among whom the second most important was Pérez Jiménez.
As the 1945 elections approached, Betancourt, who knew how large his national political base was now, accepted Medina's invitation to participate in them on the tacit understanding that the official candidate, Diogenes Escalante, would win with the support of Acción Democrática (AD)
Democratic Action
Democratic Action is a centrist Venezuelan political party established in 1941. The party and its antecedents played an important role in the early years of Venezuelan democracy, and led the government during Venezuela's first democratic period...
, as Betancourt's party had been named. In exchange, the following elections would be totally democratic. Escalante was party to this agreement, but on his return to Venezuela from Washington, where he was ambassador, to participate in his own election, he started mumbling and making incoherent statements. The man was insane! Medina then made a mistake, which was to choose a substitute for Escalante without consulting AD. Betancourt was incensed and thus it was that the strongest political party in Venezuela and the military conspirators, none of which had a rank higher than major, made a deal whose consequences were to be long-lasting. In October 1945, the military declared themselves in open rebellion in Caracas and Betancourt called on the people to stage a civilian uprising. Medina resigned, but it is generally acknowledged that the army, except for the rebels, was on his side and could have put down the pardo adecos as well as arrest the insubordinate officers. This is believable because the army was the making of Gomez and Lopez Contreras and even Medina. It was a disciplined institution. But there was the other historical antecedent and that was the long history of violence in Venezuelan politics during the previous century and Medina did not want a bloody civil war on his hands.
A junta formed, headed by Betancourt and with Delgado as Minister of Defence. Fully democratic elections were held for congress, in which it was shown that AD under Betancourt had indeed become the party of the vast majority of Venezuelans. Two other parties were founded: COPEI
COPEI
Copei – Social Christian Party of Venezuela is a third way political party in Venezuela. The name stands for Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente...
(Independent Electoral Committee), by the pro-clerical Rafael Caldera
Rafael Caldera
Rafael Antonio Caldera Rodríguez was president of Venezuela from 1969 to 1974 and again from 1994 to 1999.Caldera taught sociology and law at various universities before entering politics. He was a founding member of COPEI, Venezuela's Christian Democratic party...
, whose party later was later re-baptized Social Christian COPEI; and URD (Republican Democratic Union), which was joined by Jóvito Villalba
Jóvito Villalba
Jóvito Villalba Gutiérrez , was a Venezuelan lawyer and politician, member of the Generation of 1928, founder of the party URD and signer of the Punto Fijo Pact.-Background:...
, considered one of the greatest orators in Venezuelan history, and made over practically into his personal party. Since the death of Gomez, the following governments had been gradually increasing oil taxes. In the junta, energy minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo
Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo
Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso , was a prominent Venezuelan diplomat, politician and lawyer primarily responsible for the inception and creation of OPEC.-Early career:...
decreed a 50-50 sharing agreement with the oil companies. The junta also took other daring measures. Catholic schools, which were the best in the country, were forced to close temporarily while a new national curriculum was elaborated. Agrarian reform
Agrarian reform
Agrarian reform can refer either, narrowly, to government-initiated or government-backed redistribution of agricultural land or, broadly, to an overall redirection of the agrarian system of the country, which often includes land reform measures. Agrarian reform can include credit measures,...
was approved. But most noticeable was that bureaucracy, which previously had been kept at the barest possible minimum, made a phenomenal forward leap, and not just because of all the reforming that had to be done but also because AD had to reward its more prominent backers
Clientelism
Clientelism is a term used to describe a political system at the heart of which is an assyemtric relationship between groups of political actors described as patrons and clients...
.
The white/pardo divide was in theory demolished although in practice not many pardos could fulfill even the lowest requirements for civil service, into which nevertheless many entered. A national educational campaign was inaugurated, but fundamentally, as the majority of Venezuelans were still illiterate, all this amounted to was that the few who could read would be teaching the many that could not. There was a national election for the presidency in 1947, which the adeco
Democratic Action
Democratic Action is a centrist Venezuelan political party established in 1941. The party and its antecedents played an important role in the early years of Venezuelan democracy, and led the government during Venezuela's first democratic period...
candidate, the talented novelist Romulo Gallegos
Rómulo Gallegos
Rómulo Ángel del Monte Carmelo Gallegos Freire was a Venezuelan novelist and politician. For a period of some nine months during 1948, he was the first cleanly elected president in his country's history....
, won, again by a huge margin. But at the time there was much discontent in the middle class, which was Caldera's base of support—he got 262,000 votes—not to speak of the upper crust; and of course the officers who had ushered AD into power were on the lookout for the main chance. There was no particular incident that set off the bloodless 1948 coup, which was led by Delgado Chalbaud. There was no popular opposition. This might have meant that the odds were too great or that the pardo masses had not noticed any particular improvement in their lives despite the incessant government propaganda. All prominent adecos were expelled. The other parties were allowed but muzzled.
Delgado Chalbaud was twice a betrayer, but Venezuelan historians tend to speak well of him, analogously as they argue in America that John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
would not have allowed the Vietnam War to escalate. But both positions are contrafactual, hence un-provable. What is often said is that Delgado Chalbaud was planning to restore Venezuelan democracy. If that was his intention, he did not get the chance to accomplish it. One day in November 1950, as he was being driven unescorted through a wooded part of Caracas towards the presidential palace, he was cut off by cars and kidnapped. His captors took him to an isolated house in southern Caracas. All versions of this incident are more or less agreed that someone's gun went off wounding the leader of the kidnappers, that Delgado was then hustled out of the car and he confronted his abductors, and that finally they shot him to death. The main kidnapper, who was bleeding badly, was soon captured and later, in the then official version, he was killed trying to flee. No one accepts this version, which is why it is widely believed that it was his political partner, Pérez Jiménez, who had Delgado Chalbaud assassinated.
Pérez Jiménez dictatorship
Delgado had formed a triumvirate with Pérez Jiménez and Luis Felipe Llovera Páez. With his death the remaining triumvirs chose a civilian president, Luis Germán Suárez FlamerichGermán Suárez Flamerich
Germán Suárez Flamerich was President of Venezuela from 1950 to 1952.Flamerich was a lawyer, college professor, diplomat, and politician. He was president of the "Junta de Gobierno" 1950-1952, after the assassination of Carlos Delgado Chalbaud. His parents were J.M. Suárez and Clorinda Flamerich...
, who was dismissed by the military in 1952, and the ambitious Pérez Jiménez became dictator with the consent of Llovera Páez, who was an obscene non-entity. The former majors, who had risen to colonels in the democracy, were now generals. Pérez Jiménez himself was physically not very impressive. He was short, balding, and tubby, and read speeches monotonously, although surely on the personal level he must have had some magnetism. He was a megalomaniac of much character that when a Time magazine interviewer asked him what Rome's greatest legacy was, he said, : "Its ruins", apparently wanting to give the impression that while the ruins of Rome were all that remained of its greatness, his own will surpass them with his grand-scale building projects. In some ways, this is understandable. Pérez Jiménez, unlike most Venezuelans, received a thorough education from the military academies he had attended and graduated from with highest honors.
By the time he came to power, Pérez Jiménez had developed a flair for fascist opulence and boasting about his projects in making Venezuela the major power of South America. The greatest of Venezuelan writers at the time (and for a long time after that) was Arturo Uslar Pietri
Arturo Uslar Pietri
Arturo Uslar Pietri , was a Venezuelan intellectual, lawyer, journalist, writer, television producer and politician.- Life :...
and he became famous on television with analytical biographies of great historical figures. Uslar Pietri had a felicitous phrase: "Sow the oil", which became a national slogan meaning that the state's oil income should be productively invested. But in Venezuela "sowing the oil" implied "sowers" and the country did not have too many of these. In fact, it was the undeclared understanding that "sowing the oil" really meant "give Venezuelans employment by creating government jobs".
The other reason for Pérez Jiménez's "ruins revelation" was that what he intended to do as president, apart from becoming rich, which he did, like Gomez, with his own military and civilian cronies, was to build and build and build, and here too he was undeniably successful. It is only fair to point out here that while Gomez did become immensely rich, he never had in his life a foreign bank account (as ignorant as he was, not to mention the time in which he was living), and even though Pérez Jiménez in relative terms was not as rich as Gomez, all the dollars he accumulated went offshore. Pérez Jiménez also had an efficient secret police, but the stories about tortures and killings were, like those about Gomez, mainly inventions by the frustrated adecos, although whoever in Venezuela tried to be active clandestinely was sure to be either imprisoned or shot if he resisted. Also like Gomez, Pérez Jiménez had a theoretician, Laureano Vallenilla Lanz, who happened to be the son of Gomez's own historian and had his father's persuasions. Like his father, this Vallenilla was also a racist. It was he who authored the immigration policy of the regime. By the time Pérez Jiménez had all the power in his hands, which despite his uninspiring qualities he did manage to do, Venezuela had around five million inhabitants. Depending on which measures you apply, the country can be said to have been under-populated. If you consider, for instance, that population density is not necessarily good, then it could be argued that Venezuela was not under-populated but under-educated. The idea that Vallenilla Lanz and Pérez Jiménez had was to open the doors of the country to as many Europeans as wanted to come, with which they, and many non-pardo Venezuelans, believed that two flies would be killed with one swat: the country's population would grow, but not with more ignorant pardos: with Europeans who brought with them, however lowly they might have been in their own countries, a higher average education than Venezuelans had. But this backfired for the immigrants were precisely from countries that had given rise to the existence of pardos—a euphemism for bastardy and ridiculous illiteracy.
Up to a point, this kind of social engineering might have been defensible, but the immigrants, who came from Spain, Portugal, and Italy on the rationale that they would adapt better to Venezuela and Venezuelans would adapt better to them (than, say, to Swedes), did not emigrate from their countries to give Venezuelans lessons in civics. They came for a better income and probably the majority of the some two million who did come started returning as soon as they had made enough to live better in their own lands. This counter-flow became massive during the 1980s, when Venezuela's economy started sliding down like a luge. It is possible that the proportion of the white population in Venezuela might have increased slightly. Many of the emigrants did make a lot of money and chose Venezuela as their country, but as to industrializing or increasing agricultural production, their effect was not and is not noticeable; and this for the simple reason that the Venezuelan government considered that diversified industrial development was its responsibility and private citizens of any nationality—in this sense, it can be said that Venezuela is perhaps the most un-discriminatory country in the world—were given ample rights in the areas of commerce, of services, and of other ancillary activities. Despite this insidious racism, it was under Pérez Jiménez that the mythification of the Amerindian caciques, who supposedly had resisted the conquistadors everywhere in Venezuela, was given a big boost, especially when an exchange house founded by an Italian immigrant brought out a series of souvenir gold coins in which each cacique was depicted with facial traits that were invented out of whole cloth by Pérez Jiménez's laureate painter, Pedro Francisco Vallenilla. Despite his rigorous Catholic upbringing, Pérez Jiménez also encouraged the underlying animism of Venezuelans when he erected in the middle of Caracas’ first speedway a statue of Maria Lionza, a sort of Amerindian goddess who sits atop a tapir and is much worshipped in a jungle sanctuary in Yaracuy
Yaracuy
Yaracuy State is one of the 23 states of Venezuela. It is bordered by Falcón in the north, in the west by Lara, in the south by Portuguesa and Cojedes and in the east by Cojedes and Carabobo....
in central Venezuela.
Pérez Jiménez, confident that he had done good work as dictator, scheduled elections for 1952
Venezuelan presidential election, 1952
Constitutional Assembly elections were held in Venezuela on 30 November 1952. After its election, the Assembly would nominate a provisional President and then draft a new constitution...
. His official party ran against COPEI and URD, which had only managed puny showings against AD in the presidential election of 1947. When the time came to vote, Venezuela's pardos wanted their adecos back and the exiled leadership of the party let it be known that it wanted URD to win. As the results started coming in showing that AD was still the political top dog in Venezuela, Pérez Jiménez shut down the polls, and the country, and after a few days, during which he probably was making sure that he counted with the loyalty of his generals, he published results that were so lopsidedly in his favor as to seem ludicrous. Pérez Jiménez thus inaugurated himself for another five years as president, and just as he had intended from the beginning. he went on spending on infrastructure and way beyond this to gigantic industrial, agricultural, and power-generating projects. In foreign affairs, Venezuela was a faithful ally of the American government, although servile would probably be more to the point. When the government of the socialist Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
was implementing real social reforms in a country that badly needed them, Venezuela was host to a conference of the OAS (Organization of American States
Organization of American States
The Organization of American States is a regional international organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States...
) in which Guatemala was ostracized. Shortly afterwards the CIA sponsored a coup in which Arbenz was overthrown. Pérez Jiménez also changed entirely the face of Caracas with a building program such as the city had not seen since Guzman Blanco, and compared to what Pérez Jiménez built, Guzman's buildings, one of which Pérez Jiménez had cut at the nose, were dwarfs. The author of this "face lifting" was Luis Malausena, whose taste was in all to Pérez Jiménez's sense of grandeur and went from the ultra-modern to a non-descript "neo-classicism". The Caracas that one sees today is, then, the unimaginative creation of a character whom no one remembers, and no one probably will as, after he made millions upon millions, he fled the country with Pérez Jiménez, never to be seen again. Caraqueños, incidentally, have never complained about the legacy of Malausena. (As a footnote, Hugo Chávez Frias
Hugo Chávez
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías is the 56th and current President of Venezuela, having held that position since 1999. He was formerly the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when he became the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela...
was born in 1954 in what he describes as a thatched hut.)
The next presidential election fell due by the end of 1957. Pérez Jiménez thought he had learned from the 1952 political debacle and instead of an election he decreed a plebiscite on his government. He probably knew he wasn’t going to win this one either, so the results were rigged. The people who queued to vote were civil servants and indirect employees of the government and its subordinate companies and institutions, who were instructed to show some proof that they had voted for the regime, usually by presenting the "no" card, although this was a silly ploy. All the government needed was a turnout, and that is what it got. Economically, Venezuela apparently was not doing so badly, but the signs of prosperity were mostly in the cities, and the countryside, where half of Venezuelans still lived, had social indexes way below what would have been expected from such a fiscally rich country.
Pérez Jiménez's illegitimacy was so patent that some officers conspired to overthrow him. There was also some cautious civilian clandestine agitation. On the last day of 1957, a military uprising coordinated by officers of air and tank forces struck, but the coordination was not that good. The air force rebels flew over Caracas and dropped randomly some bombs while a commander started out from Maracay
Maracay
Maracay is a city in north-central Venezuela, near the Caribbean coast, and is the capital and most important city of the state of Aragua. Most of it falls under the jurisdiction of the Girardot Municipality. The population as per the 2001 census was 750,000...
with a column of tanks. Somehow the signals got crossed, the tanks turned back, and the pilots fled the country. These officers probably thought that Pérez Jiménez would turn tail in the face of this demonstration, but the bulk of the armed forces remained loyal. However, this show of defiance did set off a sequence of events which eventually made Pérez Jiménez fear for his political survival. The underground civilian opponents started goading the people in Caracas, where they needed little goading and were out in the streets whenever and wherever they could. The repressive secret police rounded up all civilian suspects, but this was like trying to do the little Dutch boy trick
Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates
Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates is a novel by American author Mary Mapes Dodge, first published in 1865...
. The popular resistance to the government was not just a pardo thing and reached to all levels of society. The navy had taken a non-committal attitude in a situation where its guns were not of any service. It was not in on any conspiracy. There were signs of restiveness in the land forces with some officers working to rules, so to speak, but there was not at any time a military insurrection. But the crowds were getting bigger and bigger. Finally, with various suitcases stuffed with dollars, Pérez Jiménez took off in his private DC-3 and sought refuge in the Dominican Republic
Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries...
, where his resilient colleague, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo
Rafael Leónidas Trujillo
Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina , nicknamed El Jefe , ruled the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961. He officially served as president from 1930 to 1938 and again from 1942 to 1952, otherwise ruling as an unelected military strongman...
, had been ruling since 1930.
The flight of the dictator ushered in an amazing incident in the history of Venezuela. Pérez Jiménez had been unsure of whom to trust. He was arbitrary and authoritarian but there is no evidence that he was particularly courageous. Like Guzman Blanco, he possibly considered that hanging on to power was not worth the effort, especially considering that his fortune would allow him to live royally outside of Venezuela. When he fled, the country was for all practical purposes leaderless. The Caracas masses had no leader, because no one in the streets had the stature to be one, and any potential leader was in jail. For various days before his hasty departure, Pérez Jiménez had not been giving any inspiration or even orders to the army generals loyal to him, which were still a majority. There were junior officers here and there acting on their own. A military committee was functioning in the military academy. When these officers received word that Pérez Jiménez had left, they felt - reasonably enough - that it was up to them to exercise authority. Thus it was that Wolfgang Larrazábal
Wolfgang Larrazábal
Wolfgang Enrique Larrazábal Ugueto , commander of the Venezuelan Navy, became President of Venezuela following the overthrow of Marcos Pérez Jiménez on 23 January 1958....
, an admiral who owed to Pérez Jiménez his rise in the services and who had never manifested any disaffection to him, was chosen to lead the country solely because he outranked every one else. Had Pérez Jiménez ordered the commander of the Caracas garrison to arrest any officer not at his post and to put the fear of volleys into the crowds, he would have been obeyed, so in some way it redounds to his credit that, like Medina Angarita before him, he ran because he did not want bloodshed, although Medina had not run at all but had been imprisoned and released. As soon as it became unmistakable that Pérez Jiménez was out, the exiled politicians started streaming in. Larrazábal was made head of a civilian-military junta. Overnight, without having lifted a finger to deserve it, Larrazábal became the idol of Caracas, though in the rest of Venezuela the pardos were still adecos to the tip of their tails.
During the Cuban Revolution
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...
of the 1950s, a number of liberal organisations in Venezuela declared their support for Fidel Castro's guerrilla operations against Batista
Fulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar was the United States-aligned Cuban President, dictator and military leader who served as the leader of Cuba from 1933 to 1944 and from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown as a result of the Cuban Revolution....
. The Venezuelan government refrained from taking a position on the Cuban rebellion, but unofficially during Larrazábal's Presidency contributed 50,000 dollars to Castro's revolutionaries.
Arrival of full democracy
1958 marked a crucial year in Venezuelan contemporary history. Larrazábal was a fluke. He had no more legitimacy than Pérez Jiménez and no sooner was the new government installed, committed to democratic elections before the end of the year, than the question of who really had overthrown Pérez Jiménez, the military uprising or the Caracas masses, became a disquieting issue. The original rebellious officers felt that they were entitled to rule and started brewing their own conspiracies. But Larrazábal was generally accepted as the leader of the armed forces. Most importantly, the political parties, which were busily rebuilding their national organizations, gave him their total support, including the few but vociferous communists. As before, it was Betancourt who proved the master organizer through his revived AD party. Another source of support for Larrazábal was that he decreed demagogic measures to conciliate the discontented masses. These measures were being legislated in an ad hocAd hoc
Ad hoc is a Latin phrase meaning "for this". It generally signifies a solution designed for a specific problem or task, non-generalizable, and not intended to be able to be adapted to other purposes. Compare A priori....
manner and one in particular, the most influential, was completely irrational.
A so-called Emergency Plan gave hand-outs to those who could claim they were unemployed
Unemployment benefit
Unemployment benefits are payments made by the state or other authorized bodies to unemployed people. Benefits may be based on a compulsory para-governmental insurance system...
. These popular subsidies were far above what the average Venezuelan earned in the rural areas and there followed inevitably a flood of migrants to Caracas, a city that before had few shantytowns, and settled and built shacks on the hillsides on the eastern and western edges of the valley in which Caracas nestles. The population of the city soon doubled with these rural, barely educated newcomers, who were obviously strongly pro-Larrazábal but were also a potential source of political de-stabilization. The pardos in effect became a force to be reckoned with in the forthcoming elections. But before these took place many things were occurring. The officers who felt they had been cheated staged various insurrections, even to an "invasion" by one of them from Colombia who managed to take over San Cristobal
San Cristóbal, Táchira
San Cristóbal is the capital city of the Venezuelan state of Táchira. It is located in a mountainous region of Western Venezuela. The city is situated 818 m/2,625 ft above sea level in the northern Andes overlooking the Torbes River, 56 km/35 mi from the Colombian border. San...
, the capital of Táchira
Táchira (state)
Táchira State is one of the 23 states of Venezuela. The state capital is San Cristóbal.Táchira State covers a total surface area of 11,100 km² and, in 2007, had an estimated population of 1,177,300....
state. All these conspiracies were contained although some required drastic means and at one point the Larrazábal government was in real danger of being toppled. The armed forces were instrumental in quelling the revolts, but each time there was one, Caracas mobs went wild prodded by the politicians.
The most menacing of these popular riots took place in May 1958 when U.S. vice-president Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
and his wife Pat
Pat Nixon
Thelma Catherine "Pat" Ryan Nixon was the wife of Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States, and was First Lady of the United States from 1969 to 1974. She was commonly known as Patricia or Pat Nixon.Born in Nevada, Pat Ryan grew up in Los Angeles, California...
visited Venezuela. Nixon represented the Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
administration, which had conferred on Pérez Jiménez the Legion of Merit
Legion of Merit
The Legion of Merit is a military decoration of the United States armed forces that is awarded for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements...
. The Venezuelan government had not anticipated the raging public reaction to this emissary from Washington, possibly because it thought that it had assuaged public indignation by allowing the hysterical daily denigration of the former dictator. Venezuelans were not that versed in foreign affairs, but the communists were and it was at their instigation that crowds assaulted Nixon's motorcade along an avenue that ran close to where many shantytowns had grown, ironically not far from a huge apartment complex that Pérez Jiménez had built for workers. Before the Venezuelan army intervened—preventing a ready-to-go Marines intervention—Nixon's car had been rocked back and forth, its windows had been smashed, and the vice-president and his wife had been thoroughly drenched in spit. As would be expected, once safe in the American embassy residence, Nixon let loose with imprecations and he returned quickly to the U.S. It says well of him that when he reported on his trip, which was meant as a fact-finding and conciliatory gesture to Latin America, he stressed that his country was partly to blame for the unfriendly reception in Caracas.
As the elections approached, the three main parties, AD, COPEI and URD, initiated talks to form a united political front "in defence of democracy". This implied, if not a single candidate chosen among them, at least an understanding for future cooperation in ruling Venezuela. The pact, known as the puntofijismo remained essentially in place until Hugo Chávez' victory in 1998. Another significant pact that emerged during 1958 was the unspoken one by which, mainly Betancourt, agreed not to mess with the military in any way and let them run their own affairs. The military in their turn pledged that they would not to allow politicization within their ranks — to the extent that they even renounced their own right to vote (voting became compulsory for the rest of the Venezuelans). The wily Betancourt, who sometimes is referred to as the "father of Venezuelan democracy" (much less in than before), insisted that the communists were not to be included in the political talks, and excluded they were but took it very calmly. The chances of one candidate were slim and nothing came out of the negotiations except a well-meaning consensus that the parties would stick together in the defence of democracy from whatever threats might arise in the future. This meant that the electoral process was on and that each party had to look itself.
AD knew that it remained the most popular party all over Venezuela: it chose Betancourt as its candidate. Caldera had no rivals in COPEI, the party he founded, and he entered the political fray counting on the conservative middle class. Villalba and his URD party adopted an opportunistic strategy, which was practically an admission that they could not compete with the AD national pardo popular base. It was the pardo masses in Caracas that Villalba was targeting when, instead of postulating himself, he chose Larrazábal, who also had the communists with him, to be the URD candidate. Larrazábal turned over the provisional presidency to a civilian and he went on campaign. When the results were in, Betancourt was elected for the term that ended in 1964, but this time by a plurality and not the absolute majorities that AD had gotten in 1946 and 1947. Caracas was no longer an AD redoubt. The city from then on became a marginal that could swing in any unforeseen direction and this time it went all out for Larrazábal, who came in second. Caldera did not do badly in third place and received proportionally more votes than he had in 1947. But the Venezuelan panorama was cloudy at best. Part of the 1958 demagoguery was that the UCV (Central University of Venezuela
Central University of Venezuela
The Central University of Venezuela is a premier public University of Venezuela located in Caracas...
), which likes to style itself "casa primada" (first house of Venezuelan learning), was granted "autonomy", which meant that the police were barred from the University City; and starting in 1960 it became a bastion of an insurrection that leftists started to recoup the chance they thought they had missed when Caracas was so politicized that they could get crowds in the streets by snapping their fingers, although Larrazábal's showing with mainly URD votes should have taught them that they weren’t as popular as they thought, that they were not popular at all, to put it bluntly. Under its autonomy status, the UCV gave sanctuary to every leftist movement and its rectors were complicit with the communists or themselves Marxists. It got so bad that Caldera, when he finally got his shot at being president, was forced to close it for a year. But, as things in Venezuela have a way of taking surprising turns, when Chávez began to "revolutionize" Venezuela, the UCV was collectively, though mildly, opposing his regime.
The Betancourt administration
Betancourt started his presidency as a moderate, except on the issue of dictatorships. He instituted the idealistic foreign policy that Venezuela would not recognize dictatorial government anywhere, particularly in Latin America, but including the USSR, an interpretation that pleased the United States. The "Betancourt doctrine" proved unrealistic, for Venezuelan democratization occurred in the midst of a marked tendency in the rest of Latin America towards authoritarianism. He was also unrealistic in reviving Venezuela's claim on British Guiana to the Essequibo river and he had all maps of Venezuela show this large territory as part of the country albeit as disputed.The British allowed free elections in their dependency in 1961, but when a Marxist, Cheddi Jagan
Cheddi Jagan
Cheddi Berret Jagan was a Guyanese politician who was first elected Chief Minister in 1953 and later Premier of British Guiana from 1961 to 1964, prior to independence. He later served as President of Guyana from 1992 to 1997.- Biography :The son of ethnic Indian sugar plantation workers, Jagan...
, won them, it annulled the results and after three years permitted new ones which were won by a man, Forbes Burnham
Forbes Burnham
Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham was the leader of Guyana from 1964 until his death, first as Premier from 1964 to 1966, then as the Prime Minister from 1966 to 1980 and finally as President from 1980 to 1985....
, who turned out to be at least as leftist as Jagan. When British Guiana became independent Guyana
Guyana
Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...
in 1966, the Venezuelan claim became an undecipherable legal tangle, but Venezuelan maps to this day still look as Betancourt had them drawn. That the Venezuelan claim was bogus populism had its most perplexing demonstration when the Guyanese allowed Californian cult leader Jim Jones
Jim Jones
James Warren "Jim" Jones was the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple, which is best known for the November 18, 1978 mass suicide of 909 Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana along with the killings of five other people at a nearby airstrip.Jones was born in Indiana and started the Temple in...
, to establish a religious community right next to the Venezuelan border in 1977. The Venezuelan minister of foreign affairs at the time, Simon Alberto Consalvi, only found about the Guyanese sleight-of-hand when California representative Leo Ryan
Leo Ryan
Leo Joseph Ryan, Jr. was an American politician of the Democratic Party. He served as a U.S. Representative from California's 11th congressional district from 1973 until he was murdered in Guyana by members of the Peoples Temple shortly before the Jonestown Massacre in 1978.After the Watts Riots...
went to Jonestown
Jonestown
Jonestown was the informal name for the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, an intentional community in northwestern Guyana formed by the Peoples Temple led by Jim Jones. It became internationally notorious when, on November 18, 1978, 918 people died in the settlement as well as in a nearby...
to investigate complaints from constituents about missing relatives. When the congressman got there in November 1978, the suicidal followers of Jones, many of them blacks, first shot him dead and then 917 of them, including 276 children, committed suicide with cyanide-laced Kool Aid. Jones too killed himself.
In other things, Betancourt demonstrated a realistic approach. He respected the virtual autonomy of the armed forces and he did all he could to keep on the good side of Washington. Betancourt held two particular grudges: against Pérez Jiménez, for obvious reasons, and against Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, the Dominican dictator against whom in his youth, with José Figueres of Costa Rica, he had carried on an active subversive opposition. The first of these targets of his ire led him to undercut developmental projects which would have been beneficial to his country. His hatred for Trujillo almost cost him his life, although in the end it was Trujillo who lost his. Pérez Jiménez had left in place the basic plans and projects for the further modernization and for the heavy industrialization of Venezuela.
Guyana had large iron deposits. The infrastructure for exploiting them was laid as well as the complementary huge steelworks. Communications had been a priority and Venezuela was endowed with a network of roads and bridges that covered the territory where over 90% of the population lived. Half or more of these were improved surface and all they lacked was the asphalt paving. This system linked with the many blacktops that the oil companies had built in eastern and western Venezuela. These had been traced for exploration and exploitation, but they also served for the use of the general population and were now linked to the national highway system.
Pérez Jiménez had built motorways from Caracas to Valencia and from Caracas to the port at La Guaira. By 1955, one could drive from one end to the other of Venezuela in a matter of days where before it would have taken weeks, months if the rainy season hampered travel. Also, Pérez Jiménez had begun the construction of a coherent railway system, although he had not had time to do more than the railroad from Puerto Cabello to Barquisimeto. Pérez Jiménez had also created government subsidiaries, called "institutos autónomos" (autonomous institutes)—the "autonomous" was supposed to mean non-political, but its real function was to allow them to negotiate foreign loans—that were to build waterworks and electric power plants in all important urban centers. He thus had started the construction the huge Caroni river dam which in time was to provide the entire country with a reliable electric grid. Betancourt's government adopted the plans and the administrative system for carrying them out that the dictatorship had left in place.
But the politics of repudiation had to have its pound of flesh, and Betancourt and his cabinet also canceled some crucial public works merely because Pérez Jiménez had initiated them. The railroads were scrapped with the argument that Venezuela did not need them having so much asphalt it could expand the road network at a lower cost. Pérez Jiménez had built a large reservoir in the central llanos with the irrigation potential to make Venezuela an exporter of rice. The adecos in power built instead a small hydroelectric dam for Caracas upstream and effectively starved the rice-producing scheme which was only realized to a fraction of its planned area.
In time, most of the land that would have been irrigated was converted into cattle ranches, the traditional but at that point inessential llanos economic activity. In addition to the government–financed development projects, Pérez Jiménez was not averse to protectionism and incentives to local industries, but the Betancourt government made a fetish of import substitution and instead of allowing the free importation of industrial goods for which Venezuela did not have the training, it tried to force foreign suppliers to build plants in the country for the assembly or packaging of finished products that were allowed tariff-free into the country. The automobile "industry" was the import substitution model.
Venezuela still does not manufacture car engines and all that the Betancourt and successive governments achieved was to assemble cars, which did give some Venezuelans employment—some parts suppliers, like makers of windshields, also prospered—but made the cars more costly than if they had been imported whole from Detroit to feed Venezuela's car-mania. But economic nostrums and interventionism went beyond that. The government had opted for "guided planning" and what this meant was that businesses were strictly regulated through a system of controls that went from the permission to start one to limits on where and on how they should operate. The author of this "developmental strategy" was José Antonio Mayobre, a former communist and Betancourt's economic guru.
All of this required more government employees and again, as after 1945, the Venezuelan bureaucracy bloomed, as it would go on doing with each new president until it reached its height under Carlos Andres Pérez
Carlos Andrés Pérez
Carlos Andrés Pérez Rodríguez , also known as CAP and often referred to as El Gocho , was a Venezuelan politician, President of Venezuela from 1974 to 1979 and again from 1989 to 1993. His first presidency was known as the Saudi Venezuela due to its economic and social prosperity thanks to...
, Betancourt's personal secretary and future president. Another trusted Betancourt minister was Leopoldo Sucre Figarella
Leopoldo Sucre Figarella
Leopoldo Sucre Figarella , was a Venezuelan politician and engineer. A member of the Sucre family Sucre Figarella served as Governor, Minister and Senator during his long and eventful political career. He was nicknamed "The Builder" and "The Czar of Guayana".-Early career:He was born in Tumeremo in...
, who considered that a long bridge to complete the Caracas-Valencia motorway was unnecessarily expensive and he had the six-lane highway constructed along the mountain contour, but the ground beneath was not firm and this section of the motorway started sliding and during the following decades the cost of shoring it up was at least ten times what the bridge would have cost.
Pérez Jiménez had gone from the Dominican Republic to Miami, but Betancourt had him accused of filching in the state treasury (justifiably, although only circumstantial evidence existed) and the Venezuelan supreme court convicted him. Venezuela asked the John F. Kennedy administration for the extradition of Pérez Jiménez, and, to everyone's surprise, the USA complied, betraying an unconditional ally it had once bestowed a medal upon. Pérez Jiménez was first held in the Miami county jail and was finally sent to Venezuela to finish the term in a comfortable prison. In all he spent five years in prison.
"Alliance for Progress"
The Kennedy administration in the United States of America underwrote all the economic policies of the Betancourt government through the Alliance for ProgressAlliance for Progress
The Alliance for Progress initiated by U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1961 aimed to establish economic cooperation between the U.S. and South America.-Origin and goals:...
, which used Venezuela as the exemplar for all of Latin America. The ideology behind this came in a package called "development economics
Development economics
Development Economics is a branch of economics which deals with economic aspects of the development process in low-income countries. Its focus is not only on methods of promoting economic growth and structural change but also on improving the potential for the mass of the population, for example,...
" expressed in a work by the economist W.W. Rostow, who described economic progress with the "take-off metaphor": a developing economy was like an airplane which got its motors running, taxied to the head of the runway, then sped along until it took off, which was the historical moment of self-sustaining growth. There were many other ideas of this sort. Another was the "trickle down effect", which posited that, as an economy developed, its lower social strata would benefit from the achievements of free enterprise
Free enterprise
-Transport:* Free Enterprise I, a ferry in service with European Ferries between 1962 and 1980.* Free Enterprise II, a ferry in service with European Ferries between 1965 and 1982....
. But in Venezuela free enterprise was a very relative concept because of the proliferation of government regulations, not that Betancourt had anything like a "command economy" in mind, for the rights of private property were never meddled with. The trickle down effect took the form of political clientelism through which state hand-outs and local state-created posts, some purely nominal, were financed at the lower pardo levels. This was the rule in the Caracas shantytowns, but also in the rural and semi-rural areas where adeco loyalties were firm. The Betancourt government expanded educational facilities of all sorts on a large scale. New universities were created; vocational and craft schools were founded. Pérez Jiménez's immigration policy was halted. Paradoxically, Venezuelans were not doing basic jobs, such as plumbing and carpentry, and a new and larger wave of immigration swept over the country mainly from Colombia, much of it illegal. Venezuela became for its neighbor what the USA was for México. There was no pardo discrimination—as such this had never existed in Venezuela—but when it came to upper echelon positions in and out of the government, Venezuelan whites and foreigners were generally preferred to the average Venezuelan. With Betancourt, Venezuela started becoming a nation of social parasites. But Venezuelans themselves had no trouble with that.
But Betancourt in power primarily faced the problem of merely surviving, even in a personal sense. The underlying cause of the instability was that the 1958 elections had settled the issue of who had the right to govern democratically, but this was not as many disgruntled officers saw it, because they still felt very strongly that it was the armed forces and not the "people" who had overthrown Pérez Jiménez. This created an indescribable mélange of partisans of Pérez Jiménez, rightists who were calling Betancourt a communist in disguise, and new insubordinate officers who were clamoring for a "real revolution". During his first year in power Betancourt was the object of an assassination attempt through a remote-control car bomb. He suffered minor lesions. The Dominican dictator Trujillo, who himself was assassinated by his own disaffected officers in 1961, was blamed, but the actual perpetrators were Venezuelans. Then, military insurrections in Carúpano
Carúpano
Carúpano is a city in the eastern Venezuelan state of Sucre. It is located on the Venezuelan Caribbean coast at the opening of two valleys, some 120 km east of the capital of Sucre, Cumaná...
and in Puerto Cabello, which were supposed to take place simultaneously in 1962, instead followed upon each other. The promoter among the military of these rebellious movements was a then little-known personage called Manuel Quijada. The military held their part of the 1958 agreement with Betancourt and suppressed them. But the strangest of all the movements against Betancourt, and the least effectual—although Carúpano and Puerto Cabello can only be described as aberrations—came from the communist left.
Fidel Castro occupied Havana in Cuba in January 1959. He was considered a reformist compared with the unscrupulous mulatto dictator Fulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar was the United States-aligned Cuban President, dictator and military leader who served as the leader of Cuba from 1933 to 1944 and from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown as a result of the Cuban Revolution....
, a man who as a sergeant had carried out his first coup in Cuba back in 1936. The first sign that Castro was different from all the caudillos that Latin America had ever had, was that he ordered the public executions of over a hundred Batista army men and policemen, although he himself had benefited by a pardon from Batista when he had tried to take over a military barracks
Moncada Barracks
The Moncada Barracks was a military barracks in Santiago de Cuba, named after General Guillermón Moncada, a hero of the War of Independence. On July 26, 1953, the barracks was the site of an armed attack by a small group of revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro. This armed attack is widely accepted...
in 1953. Once in power, Castro never concealed his anti-Americanism and in 1961 he claimed that he was and had always been a Marxist-Leninist. Venezuelan leftists, and especially the communists, were watching, and they came to the unreasonable conclusion, not entirely unlike that of the rightist officers who had plotted against Betancourt, that the 1958 "revolution" had been hijacked at its most popular and effervescent and that they were going to attempt a repeat of Castro's real revolution. Urban guerrillas were formed even as in Congress leftists were clamoring against Betancourt. The subversive cells carried out some sensational acts, one being the daylight robbery of an exhibition of Impressionist painters sponsored by France at the Venezuelan art museum. In another more deadly action they shot and killed eight Venezuelan soldiers in the back to steal their weapons. Betancourt put his aide Pérez in charge of repression. The leftist deputies were arrested. The urban insurrection was brought under control, but the communists and their leftist allies took to the hills with the intention of repeating the pattern of Castro's rural guerrillas. Betancourt wanted to back the American proposal at an OAS conference in Costa Rica to expel Cuba from that body, which was achieved, but his own foreign minister, Ignacio Luis Arcaya, refused to obey and abstained in the final vote.
Leoni and first Caldera administrations
In the elections of 1963Venezuelan presidential election, 1963
General elections were held in Venezuela on 1 December 1963. The presidential elections were won by Raúl Leoni of Democratic Action, who received 32.8% of the vote, whilst his party won 66 of the 179 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 22 of the 47 seats in the Senate...
the adeco
Democratic Action
Democratic Action is a centrist Venezuelan political party established in 1941. The party and its antecedents played an important role in the early years of Venezuelan democracy, and led the government during Venezuela's first democratic period...
Raúl Leoni
Raúl Leoni
Raúl Leoni Otero was President of Venezuela from 1964 until 1969. He fought against the dictators Juan Vicente Gómez and Marcos Pérez Jiménez, and was a charter member of the Acción Democrática party....
, a long-time ally of Betancourt from the times of Gomez, won handily. Caldera came second. The Larrazábal political phenomenon was eclipsed and Villalba on his own did poorly. AD was still the pardo party par excellence, but Caracas was definitely lost. Leoni's government was unexceptional, but it was Leoni who had to liquidate the remnants of the communist insurrection, for which he put the army in charge of the country with carte blanche to be as ruthless as it had to. But in fact it was the communist guerrilleros themselves who brought about their own liquidation. They had no rural support whatsoever. Unlike guerrillas all over the world, they did not control villages and lived from hand to mouth. They knew they were no match for the army and avoided confrontations. Castro had been hoping that Venezuela would be the second act of the Latin American revolution and he tried to supply the Venezuelan guerrillas. This was in keeping with the theory of what could be called the "permanent agrarian revolution", which the French intellectual Régis Debray
Régis Debray
Jules Régis Debray is a French intellectual, journalist, government official and professor. He is known for his theorization of mediology, a critical theory of the long-term transmission of cultural meaning in human society; and for having fought in 1967 with Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in...
had expressed in the widely circulated book Revolution Inside the Revolution, and Ernesto "Che" Guevara
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
had been trying to carry out first in Africa and later, fatally for him, in Bolivia. Castro sent a trusted officer, Manuel Ochoa, to assess the Venezuelan guerrillas and the report that he brought was negative, which effectively ended Cuba's intervention in Venezuelan affairs. By then the Venezuelan leftists had given up on violence and were seeking legalization, but Leoni did not offer it. Ochoa was later tried and executed by Castro on an unlikely charge of drug-smuggling.
The elections of 1968
Venezuelan presidential election, 1968
General elections were held in Venezuela on 1 December 1968. The presidential elections were won by Rafael Caldera of Copei, who received 29.1% of the vote, whilst Democratic Action remained the largest party in the Chamber of Deputies and Senate...
proved conclusively that Venezuela had an indisputably working democracy. But a few caveats remained. During the Betancourt presidency AD had produced a radical offshoot led by Domingo Alberto Rangel, but as it was banned it could not participate in the 1963 elections. AD had a core of pardo leaders and still another offshoot was led by one of these, but they suffered a heavy defeat in the same elections. The rural clientelist system was definitely working. But during 1968, according to the "Buggins turn" rule that the party applied, a referendum was held in which the two rival adecos were Luis Beltran Prieto Figueroa
Luis Beltrán Prieto Figueroa
Luis Beltrán Prieto Figueroa , was a Venezuelan politician. A founder of Democratic Action and Minister of Education in its first government , he was a leader of Democratic Action after the restoration of democracy in 1958...
, the living symbol of the party's inter-racial credentials, and Gonzalo Barrios
Gonzalo Barrios
Gonzalo Barrios Bustillos , was a Venezuelan politician. Founding member of party Acción Democrática , and Minister of Foreign Affairs in the first AD government . Later Minister of Interior and Justice under Raúl Leoni ....
, a politician who was the leading light in the so-called "Parisian circle" within the party and whose turn it definitely wasn’t. As the vote was an internal party affair the true results are not really known. It is as likely that Prieto Figueroa won as that he didn’t, but the party hierarchy claimed that Barrios had and Barrios became the official candidate. Pietro Figueroa was incensed and he formed his own party whose secretary general was another pardo, Jesus Angel Paz Galarraga. Caldera was anything if not obstinate and he had been the losing Social Christian COPEI candidate in the elections of 1947, 1958
Venezuelan presidential election, 1958
General elections were held in Venezuela on 7 December 1958. The presidential elections were won by Rómulo Betancourt of Democratic Action, who received 49.2% of the vote, whilst his party won 73 of the 132 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 32 of the 51 seats in the Senate...
and 1963. This time (1968) Caldera's perseverance paid off and he won against runner up Barrios by the slim margin of 30,000. In another Latin American country this would have provoked turbulence, as even in America Bush's electoral margin in 2000 did in a legal sense, but not in Venezuela. Caldera thus became president by the skin of his teeth. Prieto Figueroa came in third, but amazingly a party that had been formed by nostalgic Pérezjimenistas and had no organization whatever obtained around a quarter of the vote for Congress, and this was happening less than ten years since the dictator's overthrow.
Democracy functioned, but did not fulfil everybody's expectations. Pérez Jiménez himself won election to a seat in the Senate, but when he returned in the belief that Venezuela would respect the election result, the adecos had already had their complaisant judges issue orders of arrest on one pretext or another and at the airport Pérez Jiménez was mobbed by adeco thugs. He fled Venezuela looking very scared, never to return from his Madrid mansion. This was a clear demonstration that elections in Venezuela had to be won by the right people or else. And not only that: the democratic Venezuelan government wasn’t even respectful of Venezuelan civil liberties as was shown when Caldera had a highly disrespectful magazine with a respectable circulation, called Reventon, shut down by the military with the unlikely charge that it had insulted the armed forces by saying that some soldiers were gay (statistically inevitable) . In his political past, Caldera had been pro-business, but in his incarnation as president
First Presidency of Rafael Caldera
The First Presidency of Rafael Caldera took place from 1969 to 1974. He was elected again in 1993 .- Presidency :...
he increased government intervention in the economy. He was hamstrung by Congress, which was controlled by the adecos, so bureaucracy was kept at the same level it had been, but the new government applied unabashedly the "to the victors belong the spoils" practice. The leftist parties, of which now there were many more than in 1958, were legalized. Towards the end of his government, oil prices increased sensationally but fiscal revenues came into the state's coffers too late for Caldera to use them to shape up his party's muscles. There was also an eye-popping building boom in Caracas but suspiciously the new constructions were going up but not into the market.
First Carlos Andrés Pérez administration
The reason for this situation was that polls, which in Venezuela usually are very accurate, had been showing that the adecos and their presidential candidate, Betancourt's enforcer, Carlos Andrés Pérez, were going to win the elections and a spike was sure to occur in the economy, which had been stagnating not so much because of anything that Caldera had done as because AD blocked him and government spending had not increased as much as he would have liked. Many people were skeptical that Venezuelans would choose such a controversial figure as Pérez, but when the results were in they showed he had won a clear a victory, but, what was even more important, AD had an absolute majority in Congress: the pardo masses were still adecos to the core (1973). Pérez's appeal was not only to the poor but also to the elite and the middle class, for, it was widely reported in political circles and the media, that his political advisor Diego ArriaDiego Arria
Diego Arria Salicetti is a Venezuelan politician, diplomat, former Venezuelan Permanent Representative of Venezuela to the United Nations and President of the Security Council . He was Governor of the Federal District of Caracas in the mid-1970s...
created his public persona as a well-tailored man and in general refurbished his "image". Diego Arria was a politician who served under Caldera and was appointed by Perez as mayor of Caracas where his constructive ideas did not prosper. Arria was investigated for corruption and there is an arrest warrant pending against in Venezuela. After serving a stint as Venezuelan ambassador to the UN under the second Perez administration, he settled in New York.
Congress gave Pérez a mandate to rule by decree for 100 days - and then for a further 100 days. He also had a fiscal fortune in his hands such as no Venezuelan president ever had. And Pérez didn’t lose time to start spending it. He commissioned a report on government which was prepared and carried out by Arnoldo Gabaldón. It contained a blueprint for further large scale bureaucratic expansion. Gabaldón himself was named to a super-ministry which combined public works and communications. As it was impossible to hire every Venezuelan, Pérez decreed that all public places should have bathroom attendant
Bathroom attendant
A washroom attendant, restroom attendant or bathroom attendant, is a Janitor for a public toilet. They maintain and clean the facilities, ensuring that toilet paper, soap, paper towels, and other necessary items are kept stocked...
s and that every elevator the country over should have an operator, although Venezuela had only had one or two hand-operated elevators before the Pérez Jiménez building euphoria. Contracts were handed out with abandon and Venezuelans applauded with gusto. Pérez proclaimed that the oil wealth would not be squandered and founded a huge fund for "productive investments". This fund was exhausted very quickly. Congress had surrendered its power of fiscal oversight, one of the historical bases of democracy. Corruption went up incalculably and there was even a case in which Venezuela bought a meat-freezing ship named the Sierra Nevada which was anchored to store part of the immense quantity of imports that were being handled. The commissioner's fee here was well known as well as its recipient, who was never even tried. Ferries were bought in Scandinavia for routes between Venezuelan and the offshore Dutch free ports. Their windows could not be opened and they were not equipped for the Venezuelan heat. On any given day, one could see dozens of ships queuing to unload in all Venezuelan ports, which meant that demurrage charges were huge and were obviously passed on to consumers. But consumerism was the whole point to it all. The bolivar, Venezuela's currency, was so over-valued that almost anybody in Venezuela with a minimum of initiative could go to Miami and bring a suitcase load of goods which were sold to customers, usually friends or neighbors. Even servant quarters were in the net of this informal import economy. In Miami, Venezuelans became known as "gimme two" (of anything, at any price).
Only in the television market did Pérez show scruples against rampant consumerism: possibly under pressure from retailers with large inventories of black-and-white sets, he refused to allow color TV sets until far into his administration, although one could buy them on the free-port island of Margarita and could see color TV in Caracas, where transmissions of color broadcasts had already started. Pérez also delayed the construction of the Caracas metro
Caracas Metro
The Caracas Metro is a mass rapid transit system serving Caracas, Venezuela. It is constructed and operated by Compañía Anónima Metro de Caracas, a government-owned company that was founded in 1977 by José González-Lander who headed the project for more than thirty years since the early planning...
politan underground, presumably because it had been initiated by Caldera. Crime in the streets was another by-product of the Venezuelan oil economy, although this could only partially be blamed on the new riches—obviously, with so much spending going on, thugs had easy marks any where—but mainly on the thousands of guns that had been put into circulation during the leftist insurgency which Pérez battled. But the government did nothing effective to address the problem, which still plagues Venezuela. Pérez simply ignored it.
The vulgarity and rot that was eating into Venezuelan society is difficult to describe in terms that would seem comprehensible, although foreign academics went on talking about Venezuelan society as if it were normal and not in the grasp of a collective frenzy. Yet Pérez's credentials as a nationalist leader were not soiled, in fact for many they were enhanced, because in 1975 he nationalized the iron industry and in 1976 he jumped further and nationalized the oil industry. As by that time Venezuela was equipped to manage it, not much harm was done by that in itself, but with all the new collaterals that the government could offer, Pérez, after having gone through the "surplus" for investments, started taking out international loans, and not small ones but sizable ones. Pérez "statized" the Venezuelan economy to such a degree that the load of paperwork to open a business was so heavy that a service branch was created called "permisologia" (approximately, the "science" of permits), to which businessmen had to recur as a matter of course if they wanted to get the necessary bureaucratic approval. Permisologia was not meant to deter foreigners and it was more burdensome on Venezuelan small entrepreneurs than on any other economic sector. Leftists were in a dazzled quandary, because, on one hand, they disliked Pérez, but, on the other, they couldn’t complain about the state's interference as that was part of their own social and economic agenda. Labor unions, which in Venezuela were corrupt and pervasive and AD-managed, stood solidly behind Pérez.
One thing that can be credited to Pérez is that he introduced legislation to protect the environment, whereas Caldera had tried to build a road into the vast southern area of Venezuela known as Amazonas which his government wanted to settle and exploit. As soils there are barren, all that could have been achieved would have been the destruction of forested areas where only Amerindian tribes and missionaries, both Catholic and Baptist, lived. By the time that Pérez was through with Venezuela, it was palpable that its society was more unequal than it ever had been: the pardos had been done in again, and as to economic diversification, there was essentially none. Even import-substitution in the automobile industry went down the drain when Pérez started importing Dodge Dart
Dodge Dart
The Dodge Dart is an automobile built by the Dodge division of the Chrysler Corporation from 1960-1976 in North America, with production extended to later years in various other markets. The Dart was introduced as a lower-priced, shorter wheelbase, full-size Dodge in 1960 and 1961, became a...
s and selling them at subsidized prices.
Herrera Campins and Lusinchi administrations
When the next elections came around in 1979—in Venezuela, presidents and congress were elected in the same election for five-year terms—AD fielded the unexciting Luis Piñerua Ordaz and the Social AND ORDALIZIZED Christians selected Luis Herrera CampinsLuis Herrera Campins
Luis Antonio Herrera Campins was President of Venezuela from 1979 to 1984. He was elected to one five-year term in 1978. He was a member of the COPEI party.- Early Life and career:...
. The latter did not have anything new to offer except rhetoric, but in the campaign he was like a charging boar. It really didn’t matter what he said, because the adecos were in a no-win situation
No-win situation
A no-win situation, also called a "lose-lose" situation, is one where a person has choices, but no choice leads to a net gain. For example, if an executioner offers the condemned the choice of dying by being hanged, shot, or poisoned, since all choices lead to death, the condemned is in a no-win...
disillusioned as they were with Pérez and unexcited by Piñerua, and Herrera defeated his adeco adversary although not by a large majority. Venezuela had demonstrated once again that at the ballot level it was a working democracy. Few presidents had practiced winner-takes-all as Herrera Campins did. Even full-blooded Social Christians who had worked for the Pérez administration were fired. But Herrera did have in his cabinet a few figures that were not copeyanos
COPEI
Copei – Social Christian Party of Venezuela is a third way political party in Venezuela. The name stands for Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente...
, among them Manuel Quijada, the former anti-democracy conspirator. (Later, Quijada was one of the political advisors of Chavez before the former paratrooper won the presidency.) For the Venezuelan Central Bank he named the economist Leopoldo Diaz Bruzual. The latter was a protégé of and advisor to Reinaldo Cervini, a very rich man who had life-time tenure at Pro-Venezuela, a kind of semi-official institute founded to promote Venezuelan industrialization. Cervini doubled as Maecenas to communist intellectuals, who would physically confront any one who dared criticize their patron. Herrera Campins toned down the showiness of his predecessor, even though his government had another windfall when oil prices rose dramatically again in 1983. Venezuela had increased its indebtedness beyond the levels attained by the Pérez government. There was much talk at the time of "bipolarity", the belief that Venezuela was stuck forever in the cycle of AD-COPEI ruling alternatively, but following the same policies of high-spending, high-bureaucracy, and a statized economy. Unknown to any one but themselves, a group of junior-grade officers had formed a clique called the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200
Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200
The Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 was the political and social movement that current Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez founded in 1982. It eventually planned and executed the February 4, 1992 attempted coup...
(MBR-200 in Spanish) and it was led by then Captain Hugo Chávez Frías. One brash foreign policy initiative taken by Herrera either should have gladdened or encouraged militarists in Venezuela. When the Argentine military dictator and "dirty war
Dirty War
The Dirty War was a period of state-sponsored violence in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. Victims of the violence included several thousand left-wing activists, including trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists, Peronist guerrillas and alleged sympathizers, either proved or suspected...
" veteran, Leopoldo Galtieri
Leopoldo Galtieri
Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri Castelli was an Argentine general and President of Argentina from December 22, 1981 to June 18, 1982, during the last military dictatorship . The death squad Intelligence Battalion 601 directly reported to him...
, had the Falklands invaded in 1982
Falklands War
The Falklands War , also called the Falklands Conflict or Falklands Crisis, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands...
, Venezuela officially, though not materially, backed the Argentine move, although most Venezuelans were not aware of Argentina's claim on the islands and weren’t even fully informed of the government's action.
When dollars flooded Venezuela again, economists began talking of "overheating", although it wasn't clear whether they knew what they were talking about. It was pseudo-technical jargon, but Díaz Bruzual was among the adherents to this idea, if not actually the economist who got the "overheated" ball rolling. In the USA, president Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
was fighting inflationary pressures and interests rates there, and in the industrialized nations generally, went up to unheard of levels. In Venezuela, a Canadian bank was offering interests as high as 21%. But because of the overheating thesis, Diaz Bruzual applied an old law whereby interest payments above 12% were considered usurious and illegal. Dollars started flowing out of Venezuela in the billions and the central bank, which had always been zealous about national reserves, took fright at their growing depletion, but instead of counter-acting with incentives to reverse the outward flow, the bolivar was officially devalued by over 50% on its previous 4.5 to the dollar. The government, in brief, was not going to subsidize the bolivar at its previous rate. But the measure encouraged a further massive flight of dollars and the government then clamped full currency control.
There had been a brief period of exchange controls during the early years of the Venezuelan democracy, but Venezuela had never seen anything like this before. It was the end of "prosperity", or what Venezuelans considered it to be. In Venezuela, statistics of unemployment are always used to show that the economy is or is not doing alright. The truth is that Venezuelan statistics were, and are, often meaningless, sometimes taken from development plans that did not materialize—such as saying that housing had gone up by such and such a percentage which was what the government had planned but not necessarily what it accomplished—and among the most flagrant fictions were employment indexes. Venezuela is an underdeveloped economy, and in all such economies, not just Venezuela's, employment includes sub-employment, which has never been officially recognized or defined, for there is no way that a country with a per capita GDP of around $5,000, or whatever below real economic development standards, can be said to have employment rates comparable to those in America or Europe. Nobody ever has known what the real, steady, and well-paid employment rate is, and "well-paid" only means near or slightly above the average national income per capita. It was in these conditions that the 1983 elections came about.
The adecos chose Jaime Lusinchi
Jaime Lusinchi
Jaime Ramón Lusinchi is a Venezuelan politician who was the President of Venezuela from 1984 to 1989. His term was characterized by an economic crisis, growth of the External debt, populist policies, currency depreciation, inflation and corruption that exacerbated the crisis of the political...
and Caldera once more stood up for his party COPEI. The divided socialists offered Teodoro Petkoff
Teodoro Petkoff
Teodoro Petkoff Malec is a Venezuelan politician, ex-guerrilla, journalist and economist. One of the most prominent politicians on the left in Venezuela, Petkoff began as a communist but gravitated towards liberalism in the 1990s. As Minister of Planning he oversaw President Rafael Caldera's...
and José Vicente Rangel
José Vicente Rangel
José Vicente Rangel Vale is a Venezuelan leftist politician. He ran for President three times in the 1970s and 1980s and later supported Hugo Chávez, successively becoming Foreign Minister, Defense Minister, and Vice President in Chávez's government.-Political activism:His political activism began...
. Petkoff had broken with the Communist Party and, with the veteran leader Pompeyo Marquez, had founded in 1971 the Movement for Socialsm
Movement for Socialism (Venezuela)
Movement for Socialism is a center-left political party in Venezuela.-History:The Movement for Socialism is a social-democratic political party in Venezuela. MAS was founded in 1971 by a faction of the Communist Party of Venezuela, with a view to emphasising a socialist message...
(MAS in Spanish), which was more or less inspired by the Prague Spring
Prague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...
, when Czech communists tried to liberalize their country in 1968. MAS was still Marxist but edging to left of center. Rangel was the son of a general during the Gómez autocracy, but he entered politics in 1958 as a moderate leftist. Rangel denounced the abuses of the adeco governments of Betancourt and Leoni—he accused them of allowing the secret police and the army to torture detainees—and he was the MAS presidential candidate in 1973 and 1978, both times doing badly. Teodoro was particularly disliked by adeco pardos. Teodoro was always trying to displace Rangel as his party's choice and finally, in 1983, the two men had a chance to test each other's popularity.
Much of the campaign was taken up by an "underground" debate about Lusinchi's mistress, Blanca Ibañez, and adecos insisted that his legal wife had simply "to bite the bullet". When the results were in, bipolarity worked and the adecos proved that they still had the pardos on their side by garnering 56% of the vote, the highest margin ever in a Venezuelan election. Caldera was down, but, as we shall see, definitely not out. But there were two novelties in the results: although Petkoff got more votes than Rangel, together they got 7% of the vote, which the left had never before achieved, although it is questionable whether Teodoro at that point was in any way the radical he had been before. Another result was that abstentions were 12% and this was significant because, as we saw, voting was compulsory in Venezuela and by and large Venezuelans had been very dutiful in this respect, and now they showed that not voting was catching on.
Corruption had always been an issue in Venezuela, but under Lusinchi it became the main issue and most Venezuelans considered that corruption, and not sheer incompetence, was the root of all of society's ills. Lusinchi had divorced his wife and married Blanca Ibañez, who was considered very influential behind the scene and was blamed for abuse of power and nepotism. The Venezuelan economy stagnated and the country at the end of Lusinchi's regime was reportedly bankrupt. It would be reasonable to surmise that this should have been the end of bipolarity in the next elections, but it would be wrong. In the 1988 elections
Venezuelan presidential election, 1988
General elections were held in Venezuela on 4 December 1988. The presidential elections were won by Carlos Andrés Pérez of Democratic Action, who received 52.9% of the vote, whilst his party won the most seats in the Chamber of Deputies and Senate...
, the two ruling parties got a total of 93% of the vote. Petkoff fared very badly but abstentions went up to 18%. The winner was none other than Carlos Andres Pérez, for his second term. (In the Venezuelan constitution you could be re-elected as many times as you wanted as long as it wasn’t in successive elections.) The question was: how could a country whose descent into insolvency began with Pérez, who had botched so badly his first term, when corruption flourished as never before, have re-elected him with a majority that was barely less than the one Lusinchi got? This enigma has various explanations. That pardos were still adecos is an obvious one. The opposition to bipolarity did not have a leader. But especially, Venezuelans of all hues simply remembered that during Pérez's first term there had been a lot of money in circulation, things over-all had not been so dismal, and somehow they figured that Pérez could perform the miracle of making Venezuela "prosperous" again.
Second Pérez administration
But Pérez proved less generous with hand-outs than previously. Despite being elected after a populist, anti-neoliberal campaign during which he described the IMF as "a neutron bomb that killed people, but left buildings standing" and said that World BankWorld Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
economists were "genocide workers in the pay of economic totalitarianism", he had become a closet liberalizer
Economic liberalism
Economic liberalism is the ideological belief in giving all people economic freedom, and as such granting people with more basis to control their own lives and make their own mistakes. It is an economic philosophy that supports and promotes individual liberty and choice in economic matters and...
and globalizer. His economic adviser was Moisés Naím
Moisés Naím
-External links:****...
, today an influential journalist in the United States and the editor of the journal Foreign Policy
Foreign Policy
Foreign Policy is a bimonthly American magazine founded in 1970 by Samuel P. Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel.Originally, the magazine was a quarterly...
, and he defined the presidential economic agenda, which included no price controls, privatization
Privatization
Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector to the private sector or to private non-profit organizations...
s, and laws, or their elimination, to attract foreign investment. Naím began at the lowest rung of economic liberalization, which was freeing controls on prices and a ten percent increase in that of gasoline, which in Venezuela is sacrosantly very low. The increase in petrol price fed into a 30 percent increase in fares for public transport In February 1989, barely into his second term, Pérez faced a popular uprising, which he had the army crush with a death toll of 276, according to government officials. It is known as the "caracazo
Caracazo
The Caracazo or sacudón is the name given to the wave of protests, riots and looting and ensuing massacre that occurred on 27 February 1989 in the Venezuelan capital Caracas and surrounding towns. The riots — the worst in Venezuelan history — resulted in a death toll of anywhere between...
" (from "Caracas"), where the rioting and looting was on an unforeseen scale. Chávez then was working on a political science degree at the Simón Bolívar University.
Pérez and Naím went on with their reforms, which had the full backing of the International Monetary Fund
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
(IMF), and the Venezuelan economy started picking up, but only slightly and Venezuelans, who are not very keen on capitalist globalization, were resentful. Rightly or wrongly, Pérez, who after his first presidency was a rich man, was singled out as Mr. Corruption himself. The MBR officers started plotting seriously and on 4 February 1992 they struck. Chávez was a lieutenant-colonel, but generals were involved in the coup attempt. Its immediate objective was to capture Pérez, who had recently returned from a junket. They almost had him cornered in the presidential palace, but he managed to escape to the presidential residence and from there he got loyal troops to corner Chávez in turn and arrest him. In exchange for prompting his co-conspirators to lay down their arms, Chávez, fully uniformed and unbowed, was allowed to speak on television to the entire nation. A Venezuelan anti-corruption hero, and as pardo as they come, had been born.
On 27 November 1992, officers of higher rank than Chávez tried to overthrow Pérez but this time around the conspiracy was easily put down. Pérez's downfall came when a legal process was begun to force to him reveal how he had used a secret but legal presidential fund, which he resolutely resisted. With the supreme court and congress ranged against him, Pérez was imprisoned, for a while in a detention center, and then under house arrest. He handed the presidency in 1993 to Ramón J. Velásquez
Ramón José Velásquez
Ramón José Velásquez Mujica is a Venezuelan political figure. He served as Acting president of Venezuela between 1993 and 1994. He is known as a historian, journalist, lawyer, politician and entertainer of companies for his knowledge of the "national life".Velásquez was born in Táchira,Venezuela...
, an adeco politician/historian who had been his presidential secretary. Though nobody has charged Velásquez with corruption, his son was involved in an illegal pardon for drug-traffickers, but was not charged. Velázquez oversaw the elections of 1993
Venezuelan presidential election, 1993
General elections were held in Venezuela on 5 December 1993. The presidential elections were won by Rafael Caldera of National Convergence, who received 30.5% of the vote. Democratic Action remained the largest party in the Chamber of Deputies and Senate, which were elected on separate ballots for...
, and these were at once familiar and unique.
Second Caldera administration
Caldera, who had been candidate for the presidency six times and won once, wanted to have another go, but COPEI this time resisted, led by Herrera Campins, and Caldera founded his own brand-new political movement, called ConvergenciaNational Convergence
The National Convergence is a conservative/Christian democratic political party in Venezuela. It was founded in 1993 by former President of Venezuela Rafael Caldera, successfully gaining a second term in the Venezuelan presidential election, 1993. From 1995 to 2004 Eduardo Lapi held the...
. COPEI chose a mediocrity from within its ranks. The adecos chose the pardo Claudio Fermín
Claudio Fermín
Claudio Eloy Fermín Maldonado is a Venezuelan politician. He was deputy minister of youth under Jaime Lusinchi, and subsequently Mayor of Libertador municipality, Caracas for Acción Democrática, narrowly missing out on re-election to La Causa Radical's Aristóbulo Istúriz...
. Petkoff had seen the futility of trying again and backed Caldera. Even Velázquez got into the act. When the returns were in, Caldera won and in the process shattered the strict bipolarity thesis. Abstentions reached a record of 40%. The main reason Caldera, who was 86 years old, won was in essence the same as for Pérez's victory in 1973: everybody knew him and the middle classes, probably decisive for the only time in Venezuela's history, thought that he could do the miracle that had been expected of Pérez, that is, in some manner to get the country back on track to the "good old times".
Once back in the presidential palace, Caldera had to confront the Venezuelan banking crisis of 1994
Venezuelan banking crisis of 1994
The 1994 banking crisis occurred in Venezuela when a number of the banks of Venezuela had to be taken over by the government. The first to fail, in January 1994, was Banco Latino, the country's second-largest bank. Later, two banks accounting for 18% of total deposits also failed...
. He re-imposed exchange controls, which Pérez's administration had lifted as part of a general financial liberalisation (unaccompanied by effective regulation, which contributed to the banking crisis). The economy had suffered under the falling oil price, which led to a collapse in government revenues. The steel corporation Sidor
Sidor
Siderúrgica de Orinoco C.A. "Alfredo Maneiro" is the biggest Venezuelan steel corporation. The company is situated in an industrial zone in Ciudad Guayana, Bolívar State, near the Orinoco River. Major iron deposits were found in the area in 1926 and 1947...
was privatized, and the economy continued to plummet. Fulfilling an election promise, Caldera released Chávez and pardoned all the military and civilian conspirators during the Pérez regime. The economic crisis continued, and by the Venezuelan presidential election, 1998
Venezuelan presidential election, 1998
In the Venezuelan presidential election of 1998, Hugo Chávez was elected to his first term as President of Venezuela with the largest percentage of the popular vote in four decades...
the traditional political parties had become extremely unpopular; an initial front-runner for the presidency in late 1997 was Irene Saez. Ultimately Hugo Chávez Frías was elected President.
Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution
Hugo ChávezHugo Chávez
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías is the 56th and current President of Venezuela, having held that position since 1999. He was formerly the leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when he became the leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela...
, a former paratroop lieutenant-colonel who led an unsuccessful coup d'état in 1992
Venezuelan coup attempts of 1992
The Venezuelan coup attempts of 1992 were an abortive coup d'état led by Hugo Chávez in February 1992, and a second attempted coup in November 1992, directed by others. The coups were directed against the Carlos Andrés Pérez government...
, was elected President in December 1998 on a platform that called for the creation of a "Fifth Republic", a new constitution, a new name ("the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela"), and a new set of social relations between socioeconomic classes. In 1999, voters approved a referendum
Referendum
A referendum is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal. This may result in the adoption of a new constitution, a constitutional amendment, a law, the recall of an elected official or simply a specific government policy. It is a form of...
on a new constitution, and in 2000, re-elected
Venezuelan presidential election, 2000
A presidential election was held in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela on July 30, 2000. This was the first election held under Venezuela's newly adopted 1999 constitution.-Results:...
Chávez, also placing many members of his Fifth Republic Movement
Fifth Republic Movement
The Fifth Republic Movement was a left-wing, Socialist political party in Venezuela. It was founded in July 1997, following a national congress of the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200, to support the candidacy of Hugo Chávez, the current President of Venezuela, in the Venezuelan presidential...
political party in the National Assembly. Supporters of Chávez call the process symbolised by him the Bolivarian Revolution
Bolivarian Revolution
The “Bolivarian Revolution” refers to a leftist social movement and political process in Venezuela led by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, the founder of the Fifth Republic Movement...
, and organise themselves in open, local, participatory assemblies called Bolivarian Circles
Bolivarian Circles
The Bolivarian Circles are a loosely-knit political and social organization of workers' councils in Venezuela originally begun by President Hugo Chávez in 2001. They are named in honor of Simón Bolívar, the leader who transformed most of South America from Spanish colonial outposts to the...
.
Chávez's policies have faced strong opposition from a vocal minority, whom took the streets of Caracas during many occasions in 2002 and 2003 in peaceful marches, it is estimated around 2 million people marched in Caracas on April 11th 2002, the day when Chavez ordered the military to activate the Plan Avila which is to forcefully put an end to protests however this order was not followed and Chavez was asked to resign by high ranking officials of the Venezuelan army, he accepted this petition, however a some Chavistas took the streets as well and opened fire on the opposition and there were many injured and a few dead. A business-labor general work stoppage was called in December 2001, which saw popular demonstrations from both sides and was followed by a Vacio de poder or an Lack of power due to Chavez's resignation, which he claims was a coup attempt (the general which received his resignation and has the letter was conveniently appointed the job as Consul of Venezuela in Portugal by Chavez upon his return to power) in April 2002. A lockout ensued in December 2002, shutting down the state oil company PDVSA for two months and crippling the Venezuelan economy.
In August, 2004, Chávez faced a recall referendum, but 59% of the voters voted to keep Chavez in office. During the run-up to the election, government deputy Luis Tascón
Luis Tascón
Luis Tascón Gutiérrez was a Venezuelan politician and member of the National Assembly. The son of Colombian-born parents, Tascón studied Electrical Engineering at the Universidad de los Andes in Mérida, Venezuela...
published on his web page the list and identity card numbers of those who had signed the petition to hold the referendum against Chávez. A statistical study by Roberto Rigobón and Ricardo Hausmann
Ricardo Hausmann
Ricardo Hausmann is a former Venezuelan Minister of Planning and Head of the "Presidential Office of Coordination and Planning" and current Director of Harvard's Center for International Development and a Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at John F...
said they had found statistical evidence that the electoral council had manipulated the electoral audit. The Organization of American States
Organization of American States
The Organization of American States is a regional international organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States...
and the Carter Center
Carter Center
The Carter Center is a nongovernmental, not-for-profit organization founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter. In partnership with Emory University, The Carter Center works to advance human rights and alleviate human suffering...
certified the voting results as representative of the votes cast, and Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
stated that in his opinion it was fairer than the voting process in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
during the 2000 U.S. Presidential election.
Hugo Chávez won the presidential elections
Venezuelan presidential election, 2006
The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela held presidential elections on 3 December 2006, to choose a president for the six-year term to begin on 10 January 2007...
on 3 December 2006. There were observers from different organizations, among them from the European Union.
In December 2007 in a constitutional referendum
Venezuelan constitutional referendum, 2007
A constitutional referendum was held in Venezuela on 2 December 2007 to amend 69 articles of the 1999 Constitution. Reform was needed, according to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, to implement his socialist agenda; detractors said he was using the reforms to become a dictator.The referendum was...
, Chavez suffered his first electoral defeat when the voters rejected constitutional changes proposed by the president, some of which would have increased the power of the presidency. The referendum saw a very high level of abstention by the standards of recent polls in Venezuela.
However, in February 2009 Chavez called another referendum, proposing changes to the constitution such that he could run for as many presidential terms as he or anyone else wants to (previously, the constitution limited each president to two terms). The referendum took place on 15 February 2009. This time Chavez won the referendum: he can now run for as many presidential terms as he wants.
In 2010 Venezuela celebrated elections for Congress in which the opposition obtained 52% of the votes, however Chavez had introduced a new system based on giving more representation to the states with the more territory instead of basing it on population by this means Chavez was able to get higher representation in congress by obtaining a majority of votes in the sparsely-populated larger states.
In 2012 Venezuela takes what could possibly be one of the most important decisions in its history: to reelect Chavez for another 6 years or to bring forth a change. The MUD (Mesa de la Unidad Democratica) which is made up of all the opposition party will have primary elections during February 2012 to select the one candidate to oppose Chavez the most prominent candidates include Henrique Capriles Radonski (Governor of Miranda state, ex-mayor of the Caracas municipality of Baruta, and ex-congressman), Leopoldo Lopez, (Ex-mayor of Chacao, Caracas' most wealthy municipality), Maria Corina Machado (Congresswoman) and Pablo Perez (Governor of Zulia state). However, it is not sure that Lopez will run seeing as how the government has inabilitated him from running based on supposed corruption charges despite a court order from The Interamerican Court for Human Rights said that the charges were to be dropped and Lopez abilitated, Chavez has said that the court's ruling is worthless and that his haircut is worth more than that verdict. Venezuela's future remains uncertain.
See also
- First Republic of Venezuela
- German colonization of the AmericasGerman colonization of the AmericasThe German colonization of the Americas consisted of failed attempts to settle Venezuela , St. Thomas, the Crab Island and Tertholen in the 16th and 17th centuries.-Klein-Venedig:...
- History of the AmericasHistory of the AmericasThe history of the Americas is the collective history of the American landmass, which includes North and South America, as well as Central America and the Caribbean. It begins with people migrating to these areas from Asia during the height of an Ice Age...
- History of Latin AmericaHistory of Latin AmericaLatin America refers to countries in the Americas where Romance languages are spoken. This definition, however, is not meant to include Canada, in spite of its large French-speaking population....
- History of South AmericaHistory of South AmericaThe history of South America is the study of the past, particularly the written record, oral histories, and traditions, passed down from generation to generation on the continent in the Earth's western hemisphere and southern hemisphere. South America has a history that spans a wide range of human...
- Politics of VenezuelaPolitics of Venezuela|The politics of Venezuela occurs in a framework explained in Government of Venezuela.There are currently two major blocs of political parties in Venezuela: the incumbent leftist bloc United Socialist Party of Venezuela , its major allies Fatherland for All and the Communist Party of Venezuela ,...
- Presidents of Venezuela
- Second Republic of Venezuela
- Spanish colonization of the AmericasSpanish colonization of the AmericasColonial expansion under the Spanish Empire was initiated by the Spanish conquistadores and developed by the Monarchy of Spain through its administrators and missionaries. The motivations for colonial expansion were trade and the spread of the Christian faith through indigenous conversions...
Further reading
- Alvarado, Lisandro, Historia de la Revolucion Federal en Venezuela, 1975
- Arcila Farias, Eduardo, 1928: Hablan sus protagonistas, 1990
- Betancourt, Romulo, Venezuela, oil and politics, 1979
- Bibliographies in the literary magazine Libros al dia (collection 1976–1979)
- Bibliographies in the literary magazine Libros al dia (collection 1976–1979)
- Brito Figueroa, Federico, Historia económica y social de Venezuela, vol I, 1966
- Codazzi, Agustin Resumen de la geografia de Venezuela, originally 1841
- Diario El Nacional (collection)
- Diario El Universal (collection)
- Duarte Parejo, Asdrubal, El caupanazo, 2005
- Gonzalez Guinan, Francisco, Historia Contemporanea de Venezuela, 15 vols. 1909
- Harvey, Robert. "Liberators: Latin America`s Struggle For Independence, 1810–1830". John Murray, London (2000). ISBN 0-7195-5566-3
- Herwig, Holger H., Germany's Vision of Empire in Venezuela, 1871–1914, c1985
- Lagoven, Venezuela and the Oil Pioneers, 1988
- Lieuwen, Edwin, Petroleum in Venezuela: a history, 1954
- Liss, Sheldon Diplomacy and Dependency: Venezuela, the United States, and the Americas. Salisbury, North Carolina, U.S.A., 1978.
- Lopez Contreras, Eleazar, Temas de historia bolivariana, 1954
- Martinez, Anibal, Chronology of Venezuelan Oil, 1969
- Martz, John D., Accion Democratica: evolution of a modern political party in Venezuela, 1966
- Martz, John D., and Myers, David J., Venezuela: the Democratic Experience, 1986
- Matthews, Robert Paul, Rural Violence in Venezuela, c1975
- McBeth, B. S., Gomez and the Oil Companies in Venezuela, 1908–1935, 1983
- Moron, Guillermo, A History of Venezuela, 1964
- Myers, David J., Democratic Campaigning in Venezuela: Caldera's victory, 1973
- Petkoff, Teodoro, Checoeslovaquia: el socialismo como problema, 1969
- Revisto Momento (collection 1958–1973)
- Revista Reventon (collection 1971–1973)
- Rostow, W.W., The Economics of Take-off into Sustained Growth, 1963
- Rourke, Thomas (pseud.), Gomez, Tyrant of the Andes, 1936
- Stewart, William S., Change and Bureaucracy. Public administration in Venezuela, 1978
- Schoult, Lars, A History of U.S. Policy towards Latin America, 1998
- Szulc, Tad, Castro: A Critical Portrait, 1986
- Vallenilla Lanz, Laureano, Cesarismo Democratico, 1920
- Zago, Angela, Aqui no ha pasado nada, 1972
- Ziems, Angel, El gomecismo y la formación del ejército nacional, 1979