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Andeanism and Anti-Andeanism in Twentieth-Century Venezuela
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Extract
A significant but largely overlooked phenomenon in twentieth-century Latin America has been the extended dominance of a single region over an entire nation. To one degree or another this type of regionalism has existed in several countries, including revolutionary Mexico, with the rise of the North and the Sonora Dynasty, and Brazil, with the control of national politics by the São Paulo-Minas Gerais axis from the 1890’s to 1930, followed by the rise of Rio Grande do Sul. In the following pages I will examine this type of regionalism as it occurred in Venezuela, in the form of Táchiran dominance over the government and armed forces for the first forty-five years of this century. My purpose is to explain how the men of one small agricultural state could maintain such long-term mastery over the country, what sort of reaction this “hegemony” produced, what the limits of regional control were, and, finally, when Táchiran rule definitively ended.
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- Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1975
References
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10 Based on interviews with the following Táchirans: Horacio Cárdenas Becerra, May 5, 1965; Ramón J. Velásquez, Caracas, March 23, 1965; and Rafael María Rosales, San Cristóbal, June 19, 1965. Velásquez, a historian and journalist, has been editor of two Caracas newspapers, Secretary General of the Presidency (1959–1964) and Minister of Communications (1969– ). Rosales, a San Cristóbal, Táchira, businessman and intellectual, is a nationally known writer and leading regional historian.
To illustrate the point, Cipriano Castro’s first cabinet did not include a single Táchiran. Moreover, of Gómez’ cabinet members over a twenty-seven year period, sixty-five per cent were non-Andean, and thirty per cent were caraqueños.
11 Arturo Cardozo, Proceso de la historia de los Andes (Caracas, 1965), 108; Betancourt Sosa, 45–46; and interviews with the following Tachirans: Horacio Cárdenas Becerra, San Cristóbal, June 18, 1965; Rafael María Rosales, June 19, 1965; and Aurelio Ferrero Tamayo, San Cristóbal, June 22, 1965. Ferrero Tamayo, former governor of Aragua State, is a San Cristóbal attorney and regional historian.
12 Rangel, 184–185.
13 Ibid., 258–260.
14 Ibid., 263–264.
15 Ibid., 267–274; Cardozo, 109; and Eleazar López Contreras, Proceso político-social: 1928–1936 (2d ed.; Caracas, 1955), 3.
16 Vicente Fuentes, “La ficción del regionalismo y su lógica solución en el país,” El Universal (Caracas), February 12,1936.
17 Widespread anti-Andean sentiment in the immediate post-Gómez period was noted in U. S. diplomatic dispatches. See Decimal Files, Department of State, 831.00/1547, Nicholson to Secretary of State, Caracas, December 21, 1935, and 831.00/1557, Nicholson to Secretary of State, Caracas, December 30, 1935.
18 E. Urdaneta Aubert, “Los prejuicios regionalistas,” La Esfera, February 3, 1936.
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31 Based on interviews with Horacio Cárdenas Becerra, May 5, 1965; Aurelio Ferrero Tamayo, June 22, 1965; Rafael María Rosales, June 19, 1965; and Ramón J. Veláquez, Caracas, July 7,1965.
32 See Así se fraguó la insurrección: documentos clandestinos, 1956–1958 (Caracas, 1958), and José Umaña Bernal, Testimonio de la revolución en Venezuela (Caracas, 1958).
33 Cardozo, 110.
34 This decline was chronicled in an exhaustive study prepared by the Pérez Jiménez government: Venezuela, Consejo de Bienestar Rural, Problemas económicos y sociales de los Andes venezolanos (2 vols.; Caracas, 1955–1956 [?]).