A CENTURY OF CAUDILLISMO
Two decades of warfare had cost the lives of between one-
fourth and one-third of Venezuela's population, which by 1830
was estimated at about 800,000. Furthermore, the cocoa-based
export economy lay in ruins, a victim of physical destruction,
neglect, and the disruption of trade. As a result, it was
relatively simple for the young nation to shift its agricultural
export activity to the production of coffee, a commodity whose
price was booming in the North Atlantic nations with which
Venezuela was now free to trade. The production of coffee for
export would, along with subsistence agriculture, dominate
Venezuela's economic life until the initiation of the petroleum
boom well into the twentieth century. Venezuela's century-long
post-independence era of caudillismo is perhaps best understood
as a competition among various social and regional factions for
the control of the Caracas-based bureaucracy that served the
trade with the North Atlantic nations.
The century of the caudillo started auspiciously, with
sixteen relatively peaceful and prosperous years under the
authority of General Páez. Twice elected president under the
1830 constitution, Páez, on the one hand, consolidated the young
republic by putting down a number of armed challenges by
regional chieftains. On the other hand, Páez usually respected
the civil rights of his legitimate political opponents. Using
funds earned during the coffee-induced economic boom, he oversaw
the building of fledgling social and economic infrastructures.
Generally considered second only to Bolívar as a national hero,
Páez ruled in conjunction with the criollo elite, which
maintained its unity around the mestizo caudillo as long as
coffee prices remained high.
In the 1840s, however, coffee prices plunged, and the elite
divided into two factions: those who remained with Páez called
themselves Conservatives, while his rivals called themselves
Liberals. The Liberals first came to prominence in 1846 with
Páez's surprising selection of General José Tadeo Monagas as his
successor. Two years later, Monagas ousted all the Conservatives
from his government and sent Páez into exile, precipitating a
decade of dictatorial rule shared with his brother, José
Gregorio. The abolition of slavery in 1854 was the only
noteworthy act by the Monagas brothers. In 1857 they introduced
a new constitution in an obvious attempt to install a Monagas
family dynasty. The regime was ousted the following year in a
revolt that included elite members of both parties.
The elite factions failed to agree on a replacement for
Monagas, however, precipitating twelve years of intermittent
civil war so chaotic that few history texts bother to chronicle
the details. Between 1858 and 1863, local caudillos engaged in a
chaotic power struggle known as the Federal War, because the
Liberals favored federalism. In the end, the Liberals triumphed
and General Juan C. Falcón was named president. In practice,
federalism was a disaster. Falcón's general lack of interest in
ruling and his failure to exert strong leadership allowed local
caudillos to exert oppressive authoritarian control over their
fiefdoms even while they continued to pay lip service to the
concept of federalism. Central government authority was finally
restored in 1870 by Falcón's chief aide, Antonio Guzmán Blanco,
who established a dictatorship that endured for eighteen years.
Unlike his former boss, Guzmán understood the politics of
federalism. After removing disloyal Conservative regional
caudillos by force, he installed a loyal group of Liberal
caudillos in their place. Thanks to a rapid expansion of both
coffee production and foreign loans, Guzmán had access to
considerable resources to maintain his supporters with generous
subventions, backed up, if necessary, by federal troops. This
formula brought nearly two decades of much-welcomed peace to the
Venezuelan countryside.
Guzmán used the increased revenue for additional activities
that contributed to Venezuela's national development. Education
advanced notably, while the development of a modern governmental
bureaucracy, and infrastructures for communications and
transportation--roads, railroads, port facilities, and telegraph
lines--provided vital support for expanding export agriculture.
Caracas especially benefited from public works and grew into one
of South America's premier cities. The vainglorious Guzmán, who
liked to be referred to as the "Illustrious American," dedicated
as many of these projects to himself as possible.
Although Guzmán demanded honesty from his subordinates, he
amassed a personal fortune that allowed him to live in the
kingly luxury he felt he deserved, both in Caracas and in Paris
during the intervals when he deemed it prudent to leave the
presidency in the hands of a puppet. During one such period in
1888, civil unrest marked by anti-Guzmán rioting by university
students in Caracas convinced the "Illustrious American" to
remain in Paris on a permanent basis.
The four chaotic years that followed Guzmán's rule were
marked by several failed attempts to consolidate a civilian
government. A colorless military regime, led by General Joaquín
Crespo, spent most of its energies between 1892 and 1898
fighting to remain in power. Crespo was killed in 1898; in 1899
General Cipriano Castro, the first of four military rulers from
the Andean state of Táchira, marched on Caracas with a private
army that became a strong naitonal army and assumed the vacant
presidency. Castro was characterized as "a crazy brute" by
United States secretary of state Elihu Root and as "probably the
worst of [Venezuela's] many dictators" by historian Edwin
Lieuwen. His nine years of despotic and dissolute rule are best
known for having provoked numerous foreign interventions,
including blockades and bombardments by British, German, and
Italian naval units seeking to enforce the claims of their
citizens against Castro's government. The subsequent appearance
of United States warships in 1902 convinced Castro to acquiesce
to a financial settlement. Five years later, however, he again
incited foreign naval intervention, this time by the Dutch, who
seized a port and destroyed part of Venezuela's tiny navy. In
1908 Castro traveled to Europe for medical treatment; his chief
military aide and fellow tachirense (native of the
state of Táchira), Juan Vicente Gómez, took this opportunity to
overthrow the dictator and assume power.
Gómez was the consummate Venezuelan caudillo. He retained
absolute power from 1908 to 1935, alternating between the posts
of president and minister of war. A series of puppet
legislatures drafted and promulgated six new constitutions at
the bidding of the dictator, while the judiciary enforced the
will of the "Tyrant of the Andes" within the courts.
The dictator's principal power base was the army.
Disproportionately staffed with tachirense personnel,
the army was used to destroy all of Gómez's regional foes. This
"national" army was prudently provided with high salaries and
generous benefits, the most modern weapons, and instruction from
the Prussian-trained Chilean military. But Gómez's most
important means of eliminating political foes was his ubiquitous
secret police force. Although some opponents escaped with a
simple reprimand, many thousands of others, those who did not
manage to escape into exile, were locked up--rarely with the
benefit of a trial--in prisons where death by starvation or at
the hands of torturers was commonplace.
Gómez justified his harsh dictatorship as the form of
government preferred by the primitive, mixed-race Venezuelans.
He based his theories in part on the racist notions of the book
Democratic Caesarism by Gómez supporter Laureano
Vallenilla Lanz that became official regime doctrine. In accord
with these theories, Gómez believed that national development
could be undertaken successfully only by foreigners who enjoyed
technological superiority to Venezuelans. Moreover, the climate
of stability required for this externally directed development
process could only be provided--according to Gómez's
doctrine--by strong authoritarian rule.
The Gómez regime coincided with a protracted period favorable
to Venezuelan exports. Coffee exports boomed, both in volume and
price, during the early years of his rule. Most important,
however, the foreign exploitation of Venezuela's petroleum
reserves began in 1918, augmenting government revenues to a
degree previously unknown and allowing Gómez to pay off the
nation's entire foreign debt and to institute a public works
program. The beginnings of an urban middle class were also
evident in the bureaucracy that grew up around the nascent
Venezuelan oil industry. The provision of required local
services to the oil industry further expanded this new middle
class.
The true beneficiaries of the petroleum boom, however, were
Gómez, the army, and the dictator's associates from Táchira. For
the vast majority of Venezuelans, the petroleum era brought
reduced employment (oil being a capital-intensive industry) and
high food prices stemming from a decline in domestic
agricultural activity and an increase in imports. Inflation
increased and real wages declined. Little improvement took place
in public education and health care, and although the
capital-intensive petroleum industry grew impressively,
oil-derived revenue was not applied to labor-intensive efforts
such as agricultural diversification or the promotion of
small-scale industry.
Subsequent events recast the students at the Central
University of Venezuela, in Caracas, into the most significant
opposition to the Gómez regime. Having closely observed the
Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the Russian Revolution of 1917,
the students launched a struggle in 1928 to liberate Venezuela
from Gómez's grip. The revolt began in February, when Jóvito
Villalba and two other students were arrested for making
antigovernment speeches. In protest, other students then
challenged the dictator to jail them as well, and Gómez complied
by arresting 200 student activists. A popular demonstration
followed. Police dispersed the demonstrators with firearms,
killing and wounding many participants. With the assistance of a
few young military officers, the rebels then stormed the
presidential palace, which they managed to occupy briefly before
being overwhelmed by Gómez's troops. Gómez then closed the
university and rounded up the students, many of whom ended up
laboring on road gangs. Some of the movement's leadership
languished or died in prison; those of "the generation of 1928"
who managed to escape into exile, like Rómulo Betancourt, Rafael
Caldena Rodríguez, and Raúl Leoni, were later to become the
nation's principal political leaders.
Two subsequent efforts to overthrow Gómez--executed by long-
exiled caudillo rivals who believed that their landings on the
Venezuelan coast would trigger popular insurrections--ended in
failure. The "Tyrant of the Andes" ruled until his death, by
natural causes, in December 1935 at age seventy-nine. The event
precipitated widespread looting, property destruction, and the
slaughter of Gómez family members and collaborators by angry
mobs in Caracas and Maracaibo. Gómez's twenty-seven years in
power brought to a close Venezuela's century of caudillismo and,
according to many historical accounts, his demise marked the
beginning of Venezuela's modern period.
Although he was not the last of Venezuela's dictators,
analysts of contemporary Venezuelan society commonly cite
Gómez's lengthy rule as the true line of demarcation between
Venezuela's democratic present and its authoritarian past.
Although the nation's post-1958 democratic leaders received
their political baptism of fire in Venezuela in 1928, their
principal political, social, and economic perceptions were
formed in exile in Europe, Mexico, or the United States. During
the transition years from 1935 to 1958, the outlines of a
national democratic political culture, including the
configuration of Venezuela's modern political party system, at
last began to take shape. |
