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Dictatorship and Politics: Intrigue, Betrayal, and Survival in Venezuela, 1908 – 1935

2010; Duke University Press; Volume: 90; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-2009-115

1527-1900

Daniel H. Levine,

Politics and Society in Latin America

This is a well written, richly detailed, and very traditional history of Venezuelan politics during the rule of el benemérito Juan Vicente Gómez. The author’s central thesis is that Venezuelan historiography exaggerates in depicting the Gómez regime as a totally ruthless and effective tyranny. The author believes that the dictator’s political skills have been underrated, and that although Gómez was widely reviled as the “Tyrant of the Andes” and the “Shame of America,” “it is debatable whether his modus operandi was more extreme than those of his contemporaries” (p. 378).There was hardly a year of his rule (1908 – 35) in which some kind of antigovernment conspiracy was not being hatched. McBeth counts 25 movements, including 12 invasions, typically overland from Colombia, often paired with major seaborne expeditions like the Odin Harrier (1919), the Angelita (1924), and the Falke (1929). The financing and organization of these movements are described in great detail. Financing typically combined mortgages on leaders’ properties in Venezuela and abroad, funds from foreign groups seeking favors from the new regime (rights to customs revenues, control of river navigation, mining and petroleum concessions), and backing from the Mexican government. Although Gómez controlled the army personally, he never trusted regional garrisons enough to give them control of large stocks of modern weapons and ammunition. To combat conspiracies, he depended on a network of agents and on loyal state presidents, reinforced as needed.In this unending succession of movements, the same set of caudillos appears again and again, to the point that when the organizers of the last great expedition (1929 on the Falke) met in Paris, “The powerful erstwhile caudillos, with a sprinkling of intellectuals, resembled more a geriatric convention than a revolutionary force. Some of the fellow conspirators had not set eyes on each other for more than twenty years, so it came as a shock to see how they had all aged during those long years in exile” (p. 269).The author carries the narrative from the moment when Gómez assumed power in the absence of his jefe and mentor Cipriano Castro (1908) to his death in his own bed in December 1935. There is much detail on the jockeying for power and succession in the last period of the regime (1929 – 35) between the Gómez family and those grouped around Eleazar López Contreras, head of the army and the dictator’s chosen successor. López Contreras took control after a short period of turmoil and opened what, in hindsight, was a 10-year period of transition with tentative political openings, which terminated in the civil military rebellion of 1945 that brought Acción Democrática to power and mass politics to the national scene.The long rule of Juan Vicente Gómez marked the definitive end of the regional caudillos who had dominated Venezuela in the late nineteenth century. Gómez also swept away the political parties of the period, leaving only two real parties: government and revolutionaries. The regime’s well-known slogan, “Gómez unico,” reflected the reality of personal control. Gómez also laid the foundations of the modern state and economy, building roads and railroads along with a central army and a stable currency and banking system.The author is so focused on the struggles of caudillos and conspirators that relatively little attention goes to emerging forces, although there is a nod to the importance of petroleum, to the 1928 student movement, and to the exiles who created the Communist Party and other groups that later formed the basis of the major political party of the twentieth century, Acción Democrática. Speaking of the student movement, the author states, “It remains a mystery as to who was the puppeteer pulling the strings of the events that shook Venezuela in 1928” (p. 239). He suggests possible sponsorship by elements in the regime, but perhaps there was no puppeteer. These were young students, aware of events in the region including the Mexican revolution and the Sandino movement (which they repeatedly cited in slogans and pamphlets) and looking for liberty. There is little attention to the ideas of students and others who finally concluded that the solution to Gómez was not to be found in coups and expeditions (which would only produce another dictator) but rather in a different kind of politics.There are two appendixes: biographical information on key political actors of the period along with a record of cabinet ministers and state presidents and how many positions each held; and currency and exchange rate information of the period. Given the importance of regional issues and the detail on all the invasions and expeditions, some maps would have been welcome.