Marcos Perez Jimenez – The Pull Of The Land

Ranchitos VI — Land Reform and Ranchitos

March 5, 2020March 5, 2020 Richard Barnes

The first 5 posts in this series on ranchitos, looked at the centuries-old history of land ownership in Venezuela (and in much of Spanish colonial America, including parts of what became the United States). One aspect of landholding, consistent throughout the centuries, up to the late 1950s, was a respect for private property, whether it belonged to small landholders or large.

This changed dramatically with the first democratically-elected president of Venezuela, Rómulo Betancourt. (For more on Betancourt, see here and here.)

In 1958, Venezuela had the 4th highest per capita GDP in the world, despite being governed by military governments since the turn of the century. Its monetary policy was stable and property rights were respected and honored.

Marcos Pérez Jiménez went into exile in early 1958, and a new democratic regime was installed under Mr. Betancourt. His government, and that of his successors, completely overthrew the mostly non-interventionist political order that, with fits and starts, had ruled the day for over a century. This is not the place to discuss the Punto Fijo Pact, which, in effect, ultimately centralized political control in two major parties. But it is necessary to note that both parties were socialistic and interventionist.

To quote a Venezuelan writer: “In 1958, Venezuela became a democracy when the dictatorship was overthrown. With that came all the usual benefits of democracy such as freedom of the press, universal suffrage, and other civil rights. Unfortunately, these reforms came along with … destruction of our economic freedom.”

In the matter of landholdings, the land reform launched by Betancourt, with the support of the Punto Fijo Pact signatories, redistributed property holdings. Although the state compensated the owners for the expropriations, it was a “taking” nonetheless. The recipients of the parceled out land did not have actual title to their land, but only the right to work it. Or, in those cases where they were given title, they lacked the expertise, technical know-how, and the necessary infrastructure to make a go of it. In fact, 90% of distributed lands were transferred without title. It was actually a transfer of tenancy, not ownership. In other words, from being working tenants of large, productive haciendas, the peasants became failing tenants of small parcels owned by the state.

To put it simply: in most cases, ownership of land was transferred from private citizens to the state.

To get an idea of the radical nature of these actions in Venezuela’s history, consider: no tax had ever been imposed on land until the latter half of the 20th century.

As we have seen in earlier posts on ranchitos, historically, land was often ceded, or sold for nominal price, by hacendados to men, or families, or widows, who had lived and worked it. These cessions or sales were duly notarized and recorded in municipal or city records. In many other cases, records reflected men who claimed ownership on the basis of decades having lived and worked on sections of land whose original owners and families had been killed or dispossessed during the great bloodlettings of the 19th century.

Excerpts of one such record reads, “….Carlos Durán, citizen of the State and neighbor of the San Juan Parish, I direct myself to you [governor of the state] to justify my right to title: I have lived and worked a small part of the land called “La Angosturita” in my Parish where, with great effort and sacrifice, I have built an inheritance on which I depend for the sustenance of my family. I am now aged and infirm as a result of the vicissitudes and desolation of the federal revolution [one of many 19th century uprisings] to which I contributed with my insignificant personal efforts in the army….”

The excerpt goes on to describe and delineate the parcel, including its boundaries, “[bordered to the east by land owned] by Juan Manuel Durán, to the north and west by Carlos Herrera, to the south by Mrs. Carmen Betancourt de Otero….” On this basis, which, however pitiful, is very detailed and straightforward, title was granted.

In the case of land reform, as with any socialistic endeavor, the impulse was not only to “take”, but also to somehow modify behavior. For example, to quote an Acción Democrática (Betancourt’s political party) technician who, thirteen years later, analyzed land reform’s unkept promises, wrote with a measure of despondency: “It was necessary to create technicians who would understand [agricultural] processes, it was necessary to prepare administrative and managerial personnel, and to educate and equip the laborer in new disciplines with which he had never had any experience. These are some of the elements that hindered the success of our agrarian reform.”

Necessary to create…necessary to prepare…. How? Ex nihilo? Wasn’t this what the former landholders hacendados had been doing for centuries? What gargantuan conceit made the Socialists think they’d do a better job of this than the prior owners? The state rails against the evil landowners. But is the state composed of heavenly angels? Fifty years later, land reform had become a weapon with which to punish the state’s enemies and reward its acolytes. Hacendados were not known to do that.

Part of the problem is that the state (any state) does not like competition. In its view, the greatest Competition, of course, is God. Hence the state’s animosity. However, large landowners are also a form of competition and so must be opposed as well.

What typical “land reform” fails to take into account are the eternal verities. If the state would merely begin with a half-serious consideration of the Ten Commandments, it would hesitate before taking anyone’s land. Naboth’s vineyard comes to mind.

Almost overnight, Venezuela’s agriculture went from 22% of GDP to 5% and its agricultural labor force went from 60% to less than 10%. Only 4% of the land in Venezuela is under cultivation and food must be imported.

Peasants had been given the right to farm land when they knew not how. Or they had been given land they knew little about. They had also been given loans to buy equipment and infrastructure, much of which was defaulted. Knowing there was food and patronage in Caracas, they did what most folks who are averse to starving would do: they abandoned the land and fled to the capital. And not having housing there, they built their own ranchitos.

And they are there still.

Signatories of the Punto Fijo Pact, 1958. From left to right: Rómulo Betancourt, Jóvito Villalba, and Rafael Caldera

The reality of land reform which disregards eternal verities: *ranchitos* near Caracas

Ranchitos V — Last of The Andinos

March 2, 2020March 2, 2020 Richard Barnes

With this, the second to last post on the provenance of the Venezuelan ranchitos, we are now circling the airfield.

We’ve looked at the encomienda and hacienda systems, the latter of which predominated well into the mid-20th century, after which ranchitos began to sprout like wild mushrooms along the Caracas mountainsides.

Despite real poverty in prior centuries, ranchitos in Venezuela were mostly a 20-century phenomenon which persists into the 21st.

What gave rise to them?

The usual answer, which you see in Wikipedia, magazine articles, and books, is the oil boom, which drew folks from difficult, farm labor to easier work in the cities. However, there’s something facile and unsatisfactory in that reply.

In our last post we looked at the first four of the five Andinos who ruled Venezuela in the first half of the past century, the most consequential of whom was General Juan Vicente Gómez, in office from 1908 to his death in December, 1935. He and those who followed him created an environment of stability such as had not been seen or experienced in Venezuela in well over a century. See here for more.

The last of the “pre-democracy” Andinos was the almost equally consequential General Marcos Pérez Jiménez in office from 1951 to his abdication/overthrow in 1958.

Pérez Jiménez sought to enhance Venezuela’s independence by promoting oil and ore concessions and improving or expanding the transit infrastructure. The country was further catapulted onto modernity. Caracas was modernized with skyscrapers, including the symbolic Humboldt Hotel overlooking the capital city. Construction projects were launched to build large public housing projects, bridges, and South America’s finest highway system, most of which are still in use into the 21st century, including the then-spectacular La Guira-Caracas expressway in 1953 and the Tejerías-Caracas expressway in 1954.

Furthermore, his tenure saw the creation, in 1956, of cable car transport to the 6,000 ft. Mt. Ávila, which stands like an imposing sentinel over Caracas. He also commissioned the building of the even more remarkable cable car system to the 20,000 ft. Pico Bolivar in the Andes in the western state of Mérida (Mérida). Both systems were built by Swiss engineers and materiel. During his presidency, Venezuela was transformed into the most modern nation in South America: “modern” defined as excellent infrastructure, breathtaking skylines, and a rapidly growing middle class.

A telling but quickly forgotten change imposed by Pérez Jiménez was the revision of the official name of the nation. Since 1864 the country’s name was “United States of Venezuela”, a name favored by José Antonio Páez (see Ranchitos III) and officialized by a successor in 1864. This name reflected Simón Bolivar’s admiration for the United States, but not his conviction that South America should not seek to emulate a similar type government because, as he put it, “the United States form of government will only work for saints, which is what they are [and what we are not]”; Marcos Pérez Jiménez, apparently understanding Bolivar’s admonition, changed the name to “Republic of Venezuela”, a name which stuck until the 21st century, when another authoritarian politician changed the name yet again, but left Venezuela’s 20 states intact.

A plebiscite was held in December, 1957, which he won by a wide margin, but which opponents insisted was a rigged exercise. He went into self-imposed exile in Miami Beach, in 1959, only to be deported later by the Kennedy administration, which vainly believed it could afford to break, for the first time in its history, the United States’ promise of asylum in exchange for the applause of Venezuelan politicians: honor out; applause in.

But, as often happens with asymmetrical swaps, Kennedy succeed with the former, weightier matter, and failed with the latter, transitory one.

Unbelievably, Jiménez was, in 1968, elected to the Senate, even though he ran in absentia from Spain; however, the Venezuelan politicians, who were known to have too much time on their hands, succeeded in overturning his election on technicalities. In 1973, his supporters nominated him for the presidency; however, the political parties amended the constitution, in effect prohibiting him from running for office again.

He never returned to Venezuela. Nevertheless, love him or hate him, his administration’s negotiations with the petroleum industries brought matchless prosperity to the country. This promise of future increase and liberality was reversed by the overturning of his economic policies which tended to favor free enterprise locally, coupled with pragmatic agreements with foreign companies, within a low tax and regulatory environment. Our next post, the last in this series, will report on this in more detail.

Amazingly, all major projects undertaken by Pérez Jiménez still stand, unsurpassed: either still in use, such as in the case of the magnificent, now barely maintained, and, therefore, in many places, dangerous expressways, or as silent, empty monuments of a long past era, such as the Humboldt Hotel, alone and padlocked, alternating between stints as a reflector of countless brilliant sparkles of sunlight or as a lone sentry shrouded in clouds atop Mr. Ávila, reminding all who look and wonder, that historical eras ought not to be simplistically catalogued as bright or dark, evil or good. Much depends on who tells the story, how it’s told, of whom it is told, and, of course, by whom it is told.

At the end of his rule, Venezuela was by far the largest supplier of iron ore to the United States and one of its primary suppliers of petroleum. The ore was ultimately incorporated in America’s magnificent bridges, skyscrapers, monuments, homes, and automobiles.

Although some of his policies did genuflect to politicians who demanded state interventions, these were limited and, most importantly, he honored private property thereby maintaining a centuries’ old tradition in Venezuela.

We now approach the threshold of the birth and growth of the ranchitos, where we will see that tradition of respect for private property assailed.

Marcos Pérez Jiménez, last of The Andinos (1914-2001)

Cable car to the 20,000 ft. Pico Bolivar in the Andes Mountains in Estado Mérida

Envy

June 7, 2019June 7, 2019 Richard Barnes

“He was the greatest Argentine since San Martín. But two things can never be forgiven him. He created class hatred in a country that had never had it, and he ruined agriculture by siphoning off labor into the towns.” — Inside South America, p. 184

“Los débiles invocan la justicia: déseles la justicia: déseles la fuerza, y serán tan injustos como sus opresores.” [The weak invoke justice. Give them justice; give them force, and they will be as unjust as their oppressors.] — Andrés Bello, Estudios de Crítica Histórica

The former quote was spoken by an Argentine when asked for his opinion about Juan Perón. The quote is most perceptive and applies not only to Perón but to a majority of western 20th and 21st century politicians. Like the more successful ones, Perón was — to Peronistas — charismatic, with big teeth and a wide, easy smile. His method was to preach unity while inciting class hatred. In this regard, class includes wealth, race, religion, sex, fill-in-the-blank. The method also requires perpetuating a permanent sense of guilt for events that may have taken place long before the current generation was a twinkle in its parents’ eyes. Guilt weakens a people and also destroys their love for their country. It makes a people more easily manipulated by politicians. The unscrupulous know this. It would behoove the rest of us to know it too.

Have you noticed that this “method”, the inciting of class envy (although it is rarely, if ever, reported as envy), is intensely promoted by Socialist and Communist politicians? Those ideologies cannot survive without an incentive to “get even” or to create discord among a people. That alone ought to warn us to be wary of non-Socialist politicians who labor along the same path.

In the case of Venezuela, as alluded in prior posts, the country’s problems did not begin with Chavez. That gives him too much credit. The issues predated him by generations by men and women who prepared the way for him.

Venezuela was one of the most prosperous South American countries. Refer to the earlier post, Chile vs. Venezuela, for a 2-minute précis on this. She enjoyed great economic freedom, and this, under military dictatorships. I was born under one of those, the Pérez Jimenez regime. I remember in childhood rubbing shoulders with friends from all social and economic strata of society. I do not recall folks fomenting class warfare or envy.

Later in life I came to realize that under the dictatorship, we did not enjoy a free press nor did we have universal suffrage. However, we did enjoy high levels of freedom, including freedom of mobility, freedom of commerce, freedom in society, and, certainly, freedom in our homes. We had nowhere near the restrictions the peoples of Eastern Europe or Mao’s China, both atheistic regimes, were struggling under.

In the first half of the 20th century Venezuela became an economic powerhouse. As the petroleum, and later the iron ore, industries surged, Venezuela ensured it remained in private hands. The dictators understood that the state did not have the expertise to manage such vast, far flung operations; they left them in the hands of the international companies but did charge royalties and obtained other concessions in return. This arrangement ensured increasing prosperity for her people as well as great advances in local technology and culture. This was a period of phenomenal progress in research and discovery. To cite just one example, the diamond knife (or scalpel) was invented in the 1950’s by Venezuelan Humberto Fernández-Morán Villalobos (1924-1999). This “significantly advanced the development of electromagnetic lenses for electron microscopy based on superconductor technology and many other scientific contributions.”

As for state spending, it was mostly focused on the country’s roads, airports, schools, and universities. The Caracas skyline and the country’s expressways became the envy of South America. State-owned companies were few.

Nevertheless, the state began to encroach in the early 50’s, expropriating the telephone and other companies. This was very limited, but the seeds of intervention were sown and when Venezuela became a democracy, the whirlwind began to be reaped. Rómulo Betancourt, Venezuela’s first democratically elected president, one who is revered in Venezuela, was first a Communist who then forsook Communism and became a Socialist, although he spurned that label. Folks do not like to recall that he founded the Communist Party in Costa Rica when in exile there and had a hand in founding the Communist Party in Colombia as well.

We should not be surprised that he immediately proposed, and the legislature approved, price and rent controls, something previously unheard of in Venezuela; a solution seeking for a problem. He worked to create a new constitution which was not friendly to private property.

It’s easy to forget all of that because we had so much more economic and other freedoms back then than what is the case today. But it is necessary to remember that the process began generations ago. Hugo Chavez merely took it to the next level. Speaking philosophically, he was epistemologically consistent, unafraid to take his faith to its logical conclusion.

And his successor, Nicolás Maduro (or his regime’s philosophy) will remain in power so long as his “opponents” refuse to honestly declare their own complicity in what has happened to that stricken land. And an ugly manifestation of that power is the murdering of youth who are resisting what is happening to their homes and country.

A new regime will not arise so long as the opposition refuses to denounce its own love affair with Socialism and its accompanying appeal to envy.

During my last visit to Venezuela, in 2005, I conversed with a taxi driver who expressed satisfaction that the Chavez government had expropriated property that belonged to the Roman Catholic Church. The taxi driver was a protestant and was pleased with Chavez’ denunciation of that Church. I asked him whether Protestants did not care for the Ten Commandments. “Of course we do!” he replied.

“Well, I am also a Protestant. However, theft is wrong, regardless whether the state steals from atheists, or Protestants, or even Roman Catholics. Don’t you agree?”

He, of course, saw the point. But the fact I had to point it out to him, was ominous. Chavez, with a wide smile and ingratiating style, was superb in fomenting envy and class hatred, even among the religious.

The country of my birth needs to re-discover its Christian roots and look beyond politics to the Creator and Redeemer God, to whom all allegiance belongs. She must, once again, see that salvation is not in the State or, heaven forbid(!), in politicians, who, like little Caesars, revel in usurping what belongs to God.

Meanwhile, we are left with the unhappy fact that Venezuelans struggle every single day. “The collapse of Venezuela has been the worst recorded for any nation in nearly 50 years, outside of war.”

Andrés Bello (see blog post “Simón Bolivar III — Influences”), was prescient when he wrote the above quoted citation, circa 1830, decades before the publication of Das Kapital and eighteen years before that of The Communist Manifesto. He understood the human heart and its wickedness and he knew that the politics of envy would never satisfy but rather foment anger and discontent. No ideology will fix man’s heart, which is the source of all human misery.

My heart yearns for and is pained for the land of my birth.

Rómulo Betancourt (center), Venezuela’s first democratically elected president after Marcos Pérez Jimenez, meets with Fidel Castro in 1959, also the first year of Castro’s dictatorship. He later denounced Castro, who, true to form, had betrayed Betancourt by fomenting guerrilla activities in Venezuela. Presciently, Pérez Jimenez, in 1958, had declared, when asked about Castro, “If that gentleman enters our land with his ideas and opprobrium and misery, ideas which can only come from a Communist, you will detain him and you will try him and, if convicted, you will execute him….”

Juan Perón of Argentina (also of Evita Perón “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina” fame).

Andrés Bello as a young man and shortly before his death in 1865. Refer to post, *Simón Bolivar III — Influences*.

El Rosal neighborhood in Caracas, 1950. Venezuela boasted a rapidly growing middle class

Grocery shopping in Caracas, circa 1950. This is not to deny there was very real poverty in areas of the country’s interior. Future posts will address this dichotomy.

Construction of Centro Simón Bolivar (Torres del Silencio) in 1952.

Opened to the public in 1954. Functionalist architecture, suspended in air on stilts allowing the public to travel underneath unhindered.

Life in an American Camp

May 18, 2019May 18, 2019 Richard Barnes

In the initial euforia of concessions by the Venezuelan government to American oil and iron ore companies, was any thought given to where these companies’ employees, many of whom would come from countries other than Venezuela, would live?

As it turns out, President Marcos Pérez Jimenez had given it much thought and had requested such companies establish “open cities” wherever possible. Puerto Ordaz, the crown jewel of Ciudad Guayana, whose impetus was The US Steel Company, was one result of the open city policy.

El Pao, where I was born, was more of what most folks think of when they conjure up images of an “American Camp.”

Jimenez understood that not all camps could be open cities. El Pao was deep in the Venezuelan jungle, relatively shut off from potential commercial centers, such as a major river, highway, airport, railway, etc.

On the other hand, the future Puerto Ordaz was situated at the confluence of two major rivers, one of which is the mighty Orinoco, the third or fourth largest in the world, measured by average discharge, meaning the river’s flow rate. I had to look this up and, from a layman’s perspective, this is probably the best illustration: “The volume of an Olympic-size swimming pool is 2,500 cubic meters. So the flow rate at the mouth of the Amazon [the world’s largest] is sufficient to fill more than 83 such pools each second.”

The flow rate at the mouth of the Congo and the Orinoco (second and third largest rivers) would each fill 16 such pools per second.

By the way, of the 10 largest rivers in the world, 5 are in South America.

As for El Pao, this area was explored by the Spanish 5 centuries ago. The Indians told them about a mountain which, when struck by lightning, would give off bright flashes. The Spanish investigated for themselves and confirmed the tales. They named the mountain, El Florero, meaning, Flower Pot, since the flashes looked like flowers on the mountain peak.

Actually, the area was rich in orchids and also an abundance of “purguo”, a tree which yielded very high quality rubber. In fact, the era in which the ore was discovered, was known as “la fiebre del balatá” (the balatá fever). Balatá refers to a natural gum of high quality found in the purguo. Mr. Aturo Vera, whom, years later, my father would often contract to drive us to fishing spots on the Caroní River, explored that area with his own father in the 1920’s. On one such journey, father and son espied a splendid ore specimen and took it with them to their home near the Caroní.

Word spread quickly and a miner, Simón Piñero, accompanied by his boss, entrepreneur Eduardo Boccardo, also explored and contracted an engineer, Frank Paglucci, to stake a claim. Mr. Vera, seeing all the excitement, also staked his claim, and rightfully so.

The ore was analyzed by American laboratories, found to be of extraordinary quality, and the Bethlehem Steel Company assigned their geologist, Earl H. Nixon, to the site.

On June 3, 1944 (3 days before D Day) , The New York Times reported, “The Bethlehem Steel Corporation’s big Venezuelan iron ore development, first disclosed as a prospect a few weeks ago, is now under way. Twenty American engineers and technicians are in charge, with some 600 native Venezuelans, skilled and unskilled, at work on the big project.” This project represented capital investments of $50 million ($1 billion in today’s money) and more in Puerto de Hierro (Iron Port), their deep sea port on the Atlantic.

By July, 1950, the first train load of ore was transported from El Pao to Palúa, the company’s river port on the Orinoco for transshipment to Puerto de Hierro. And in 1951, the seaport yielded its first shipment to the United States. The March 23 New York Times headline read: “First Cargo of Venezuela Iron Ore Arrives for Bethlehem Steel Plant; Sparrows Point Pier in Maryland Is Scene of Significant Ceremony Marking Start of 3,000,000-Ton-a-Year Shipments.” The article’s lead sentence read, “Vessels laden with iron ore have docked here for decades, but special significance attached to the arrival of an ore boat this morning.”

We’ll speak more of life in an American camp in future posts. For now, I’ll end this post by quoting some recent comments by folks who, when children, lived in Puerto de Hierro. This will give an idea of life in an American camp in Venezuela and also the pull of the land.

“That is the place of enchantment and he who has lived or even visited it will remember it for all of life. And I had the fortune of having been born there. Those good years of the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s…. The best …?”

“My! All those wonderful people who worked there are beautiful I tell you! I salute that wonderful and dear place and people!”

“The best town and the most beautiful place in Venezuela; the only beach with a diving board in the ocean. I developed my life there along with my parents and siblings. Eternal memories and the best times of my childhood and my youth. My best friends of my life were from there.”

“My beautiful town. I can never forget you, although all is different now.”

“What wonderful memories of my childhood, of my parents, of my siblings, of my neighbors who once lived and those who still live. I embrace you all!”

“My beautiful town. Now, it is not even the shadow of what it once was. How much sadness it brings me to see the ruin that it is now!”

“My town! I was born there in 1961. How I long to go and run there again. My adored land. Venezuela, how much sadness you bring me now! My dear Lord!”

“I could not have asked for a better childhood.”

Neither could I.

Puerto de Hierro on the Atlantic coast, in the state of Sucre. The Bethlehem Steel ceded this to the Venezuelan government and it is now a Venezuelan navy base.

The loading bridge over the Orinoco in the company port of Palúa. My father used to dive off that into the river. Folks called him Tarzan.

El Pao under construction in the 1940’s. Men carved a modern road and railroad out of this jungle.

Above is a 1940’s map. You’ll not see Puerto Ordaz thereon. It would grow across the Caroní from San Félix, at the spot between the Caroní and the Orinoco (the Caroní is that river which runs into the Orinoco at San Félix). El Pao is the spot denoted as “Iron Mining Area”.

The confluence of the Caroní and the Orinoco rivers. Yes, at this point, the Orinoco is carrying much soil as it continues its journey to the Atlantic. It clears up again miles downriver. Puerto Ordaz grew on the right. Notice the ore ships on the right. Before the bridges were built, we’d cross by ferry.

As the Caroní approaches the Orinoco the change in topography yields several series of rapids and falls. Above are the Cachamay Falls. An Intercontinental hotel was built here in the 1970’s.

Ciudad Guayana. Foreground is San Felix (Old Town); background, across the Caroní, is Puerto Ordaz (New Town).

Arturo Vera, second from right, accompanies Bethlehem Steel engineers arriving in 1934, in Ciudad Bolivar, the closest major city. Photo source: El Pao Yacimiento Pionero.

Arturo Vera. Died in 1990, age 88. I vividly remember him. As a child, I used to think he was a great driver as he’d drive us over seemingly impassable paths to places I could never find again, even if my life depended on it. My father would often remind me that Mr. Vera owned part of the area which became El Pao. He was an unassuming and kindly man. And a great driver!

Santiago Smith: The camp had many men like him: unusual backgrounds, hard workers, colorful, sometimes mysterious. I was privileged to know them in my childhood. Mr. Smith was born of English parents in the gold mining area. In the late 40’s that area began to be shut down and he and some companions had to look elsewhere for work. They came to El Pao. He worked and lived there until his death in 2010. He was close to a century by most estimates. Photo Source: El Pao Yacimiento Pionero.

Mining II

April 20, 2019April 24, 2019 Richard Barnes

To add to the prior post, I thought it good to tell a bit more about El Pao’s background and impetus as something of a microcosm of the myriad mining and petroleum camps dotting Venezuela in the 1950’s.

As noted in the Time Magazine article cited in the previous post, El Pao was a Bethlehem Steel iron ore mining camp built in the 1940’s in the Venezuelan southeastern interior, within a low and gentle mountain range in an area of dense, seemingly infinite jungles, just beyond the Gran Sabana prairies and plains whose boundaries seemed to melt with the sky.

The company, along with US Steel had negotiated concessions with the government of Marcos Pérez Jimenez, the shortest-lived of the numberless military dictatorships in Venezuela’s history. Actually, these concessions were signed prior to Jimenez’s official assumption of the presidency, but “everybody knew” he was actually in charge a few years before his official ascension in 1952. Perez Jimenez sought to enhance Venezuela’s independence by promoting oil and ore concessions and improving and expanding the transit infrastructure. He insisted, wherever possible, the companies build “open cities” as opposed to closed camps. US Steel did just that, which impelled the phenomenal growth of the thriving metropolis of Puerto Ordaz, at the confluence of the Orinoco and Caroní rivers. As for Caracas, it was modernized with skyscrapers, including the symbolic Humboldt Hotel, overlooking the capital city from atop Mt. Ávila. The hotel was named after the famous naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt, who explored and studied much of Venezuela in the late 18th century. We’ll be seeing more of him in later posts. Construction projects were launched to build large public housing projects, bridges, and South America’s finest highway system, most of which would still be in use into the 21^stcentury, including the then spectacular La Guira – Caracas expressway in 1953 and the Tejerías – Caracas expressway in 1954.

Furthermore, his tenure saw the creation, in 1956, of cable car transport to the 6,000 ft., Mt. Avila, which stands like an imposing sentinel over Caracas. He also commissioned the building of the even more remarkable cable car system to the 20,000 ft. Pico Bolivar in the Andes in the western state of Mérida. Both systems were built by Swiss engineers and materiel. Venezuela was transformed into the most modern nation of South America: “modern” defined as excellent infrastructure, breathtaking skylines, and a rapidly growing middle class. Today, some old timers say it was the Dubai of the 1950’s.

A telling but quickly forgotten change imposed by Perez Jimenez was the revision of the official name of the nation. Since 1864 the country’s name was “United States of Venezuela”, reflecting Simón Bolivar’s admiration for the United States, but not his conviction that South America should not seek to emulate a similar type government because, as he put it, “the United States form of government will only work for saints, which is what they are [and what we are not]”; Marcos Pérez Jimenez, apparently understanding Bolivar’s admonition, changed the name to “Republic of Venezuela”, a name which stuck until, in the 21^stcentury, another authoritarian politician changed the name yet again, but left Venezuela’s 20 states intact. El Pao was in the large state of Bolivar, to the southeast of the country, bordering on Brazil to the south and British Guiana to the east.

Marcos Perez Jimenez ruled from December, 1952 to 1958, but his following persisted even after his death five decades later, in 2001.

A plebiscite was held in December, 1957 which Jimenez won by a wide margin, but which opponents insisted was a rigged exercise. He went into self-imposed exile in Miami Beach, in 1959, only to be deported later by the Kennedy administration, which vainly believed it could afford to break the United States’ promise of asylum in exchange for the applause of Venezuelan politicians: honor out; applause, in. But, as often happens with asymmetrical swaps, Kennedy succeeded with the former, weightier matter; and failed with the latter, transitory one.

Unbelievably, Jimenez was, in 1968, elected to the Senate, even though he ran in absentia from Spain; however, the Venezuelan politicians succeeded in overturning his election on technicalities. In 1973 his supporters nominated him for the presidency of Venezuela; however, the political parties amended the constitution, in effect prohibiting him from running for president again.

He never returned to Venezuela. Nevertheless, love him or hate him, his administration’s negotiations with the American steel and petroleum industries brought matchless prosperity to the country. This promise of future increase and liberality was reversed by the overturning of his economic policies, which tended to favor free enterprise locally coupled with pragmatic agreements with foreign companies, within a low tax and regulatory environment.

Amazingly, all major projects undertaken by the Perez Jimenez administration still stand, unsurpassed: either still in use, such as in the case of the magnificent, now barely maintained, and, therefore, in some places dangerous expressways, or as silent, empty monuments of a long past era, such as the Humboldt Hotel, alone and padlocked, alternating between stints as a reflector of countless brilliant sparkles of sunlight or as a lone sentry shrouded in clouds atop Mt. Ávila, reminding all who look and wonder, that historical eras ought not be facilely catalogued as bright or dark, evil or good. Much depends on who tells the story, how it’s told, of whom it is told, and, of course, by whom it is told.

But the foregoing was yet in the future. Most, if not all, Americans who came to Venezuela when Pérez Jimenez was either in power or was the power behind the throne, that is, from the late 1940’s through the 1950’s, were quite apolitical and gave little thought to the country’s civil government. Streets were safe, people were courteous, Americans were respected and admired, and work was abundant for both Americans and Venezuelans. What mattered to them, and to their companies, was that Venezuela became their largest supplier of iron ore, by far – ore ultimately incorporated in America’s magnificent bridges, skyscrapers, monuments, homes, and automobiles.

For those of you interested in Marcos Pérez Jimenez, you might want to check out the series of interviews (in Spanish) he granted not too long before his death. The link below is for the sixth of the series.

For those of you interested in the Humboldt Hotel, you might find the documentary linked below to be worth your while