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The Todd Duncan Affair: Acción Democrática and the Myth of Racial Democracy in Venezuela

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Winthrop R. Wright
Winthrop R. Wright*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland
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Extract

In June, 1945, Time Magazine informed its readers that the North American singer, Robert Todd Duncan, had been refused accomodations by three prominent hotels in Caracas, Venezuela. This news, came as a shock to many Venezuelans who had considered their nation a racial democracy in which discrimination and prejudice did not exist. They felt doubly disturbed because a North American news magazine charged that the hotels had refused to admit Duncan, his wife, and his accompanist, William Allen, because of their race. They resented the fact that representatives of the press in the most racist society of the Americas accused Venezuelans of practicing racial discrimination of the sort found in the United States.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , April 1988 , pp. 441 - 459
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1988

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References

1 For accounts of the Todd Duncan incident see: Ultimas Noticias (Caracas), June 6 and 7, 1945; Fantoches, June 8, 1945; El Vigilante (Mérida), June 9, 1945; El Nacional (Caracas), May 24 and 29, 1945 and June 3, 1945; Ahora (Caracas), June 11, 1945; and El País (Caracas), June 2, 1945.1 am also indebted to Robert Todd Duncan and his wife for information they gave me during an interview on November 27, 1973 at their home in Washington, D.C.

2 I have developed these themes elsewhere. See “Café con Leche: A Brief Look at Race Relations in Twentieth Century Venezuela,” The Maryland Historian, 1:1 (Spring, 1970), 13–22; “Elitist Attitudes Toward Race in Twentieth-Century Venezuela,” in Toplin, Robert B., ed., Slavery and Race Relations in Latin America (Westport: 1974), pp. 325–347 Google Scholar; and “Race, Nationality, and Immigration in Venezuelan Thought, 1890 to 1937,” Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, 6:1 (Spring 1979), 1–12.

3 Ahora (Caracas), October 13, 1943.

4 Pardo, Alfredo, El Luchador (Ciudad Bolívar), January 18, 1936.Google Scholar

5 Briceño, Olga, Cocks and Bulls in Caracas: How We Live in Venezuela (Boston, 1945), pp. 110–111.Google Scholar

6 “Folklore venezolano,” Cultura venezolana, 12:96 (August, 1929), 427–429.

7 Prieto Figueroa, Luis Beltrán, De una educación de castas a una educación de masas (Havana, 1951), p. 181.Google Scholar

8 Among the historians who interpreted Venezuelan history in this manner were Lisandro Al varado, José Santiago Rodríguez, José Gil Fortoul, Francisco González Guiñan, and Laureano Vallenilla Lanz. Guillermo Morón later incorporated this theory into his treatment of the nineteenth century.

9 Gil Fortoul, José, El Cojo Ilustrado, 4:73 (January 1, 1895), 15.Google Scholar

10 See Vallenilla Lanz, Laureano, Cesarismo democrático: estudio sobre los bases sociológicas de la constitución efectiva de Venezuela (Caracas, 1919)Google Scholar; Críticas de sinceredady exactitud (Caracas, 1921); and La rehabilitación de Venezuela: campanas políticas de El Nuevo Diario (1915 a 1926), 2 vol. (Caracas, 1926–1928); Pedro Manuel Arcaya, Estudios de sociologia venezolano (Caracas, 1917); Picón-Salas, Mariano, “De la raza y de las razas,” Cultura venezolana, 5 (November, 1922), 141–146 Google Scholar; Adriani, Alberto, Labor venezolanista (Caracas, 1937)Google Scholar; Pietri, Arturo Uslar, “Venezuela necesita inmigración,” Boletín de la Cámara de Comercio de Caracas, 26:284 (July, 1937), 6940–6947 Google Scholar; and Liscano, Juan, Apuntes para la investigación del negro en Venezuela: sus instrumentos de musica (Caracas, 1950).Google Scholar

11 Aurelio, and Galvarino, de Vivanco y Villegas, , Venezuela al dia/Venezuela up to Date, l (Caracas, 1928), 36.Google Scholar

12 de Diputados, Cámara, Diario de debates, 3:23 (June 21, 1943), 8–9.Google Scholar

13 Duncan interview, November 27, 1973, Washington, D.C., and El Nacional, May 24, 1945.

14 Duncan interview, November 27, 1973.

15 El Nacional, May 29, 1945.

16 For details see Consejo Municipal (Caracas), Actas (January-June, 1945), “Acta de la sesion or-dinaria celebrada el dia Martes 29 de Mayo de 1945,” 11–12, and Senado, , Diario de debates, 2:19 (June 9, 1945), 8–11.Google Scholar

17 Consejo Municipal (Caracas), op. cit., pp. 11–12.

18 Senado, , Diario de debates, 2:19 (June 9, 1945), 10.Google Scholar

19 Ellner, Steven, “Populism in Venezuela, 1935–48: Betancourt and the Acción Democrática,” in Latin American Populism in Comparative Perspective, Conniff, Michael L., ed., (Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1981), pp. 135–149.Google Scholar

20 Ultimas Noticias, June 6, 1945.

21 El Nacional, June 3, 1945.

22 Ahora, June 11, 1945.

23 Fantoches, June 8, 1945.

24 Ultimas Noticias, June 5 and 6, 1945.

25 For the clearest statement of this view see Vallenilla Lanz, Cesarismo democrático. Written in 1919, this book became a classic. Later authors, including Albert Adriani, Arturo Uslar Pietri, and Guillermo Morón, repeated its basic arguments.

26 Temas y apuntes afroveneiolanos (Caracas, 1943), 11.

27 El Nacional, August 14, 1946.

28 Temas y apuntes afrovenezolanos, p. 33.

29 Hernández, Alfredo Machado, “La función económica de las razas de color en la formación del estado venezolano,” Revista de Hacienda, 9:16, (June 1944), 11.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., 14.

31 El Nacional, June 3, 1945.

32 La Esfera, June 2, 1945.

33 First Venezuelan Congress of Journalists to President Medina, March 1, 1944, Miraflores, Presidential Archives, Carpeta March 1944, pp. 1–9. An extensive search of the presidential papers at Miraflores failed to turn up any indication that Medina reacted in any way to the Duncan incident. He made no public statements on the matter, and except for a statement by one of his party's members on the Municipal Council of Caracas his party remained silent.

34 Senado, , Diario de debates, 2:19 (June 9, 1945), 10.Google Scholar

35 Venezuela 1945 (Caracas, 1945), p. 542, and Padrón, Julian, Obras completas (Caracas, 1951), pp. 139–140.Google Scholar

36 For details see Ultimas Noticias, July 14, 1944, September 10, 1944, and December 8, 1944; El Nacional, September 8, 1944, December 2, 1945, and February 8, 1946; and El Pais, November 29, 1945. Also see Betancourt, Rómulo, Venezuela: Oil and Politics, translated by Bauman, Everett (Boston, 1979), 213.Google Scholar

37 Betancourt, , op. cit., pp. 222–224.Google Scholar

38 See de Caldera, Elizabeth Yabour, La población de Venezuela: un analisis demográfico (Cumaná, 1967), p. 71 Google Scholar for an estimate of the racial distribution of Venezuela’s population.

39 Betancourt, , op. cit., pp. 223–224.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., pp. 207–224, and 244–247.

41 Silva Michelena, José A., “Conflict and Consensus,” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, M.I.T., 1968), pp. 138–139.Google Scholar A review of the society pages of the conservative newspaper El Nacional during the trienio (1945–1948) shows photographs of many more mulattoes and blacks than during any previous period. Events covered included birthday parties, confirmations, marriages, graduation festivities, family gatherings, as well as public functions.

42 Vallenilla Lanz, Laureano (hijo), Escrito de memoria (Mexico City, 1961), p. 109.Google Scholar

43 El Nacional, October 20, 1948.