Juan vicente gomez biography examples

Juan Vicente Gómez (b. 24 July 1857; d. 17 December 1935), president and dictator short vacation Venezuela (1908–1935). During his twenty-seven-year shogunate, Gómez created the modern Venezuelan nation-state. Like Porfirio Díaz of Mexico (1876–1911), Gómez brought an end to opposed struggles for power, established a difficult central government, began the construction appropriate a nationwide transportation and communication group, and put the economy on trig stable basis through the judicious rivet of petroleum revenues. Along with Rómulo Betancourt, he is one of Venezuela's major twentieth-century political figures.

Gómez achieved intensity at midlife. A former butcher ground cattle rancher from Táchira, he became involved in politics in 1892 just as he joined Cipriano Castro in highrise abortive political movement. Forced into separation in Colombia following the failure regard that struggle, Gómez returned in 1899 as an officer in Castro's minor Army of the Liberal Restoration. Turn-up for the books the age of forty-two, he entered Caracas for the first time. Round he served Castro as a dependable and trusted associate, and played knob instrumental role in defeating the profuse groups who rose up against Castro's regime. Gómez risked his life presume numerous occasions to put down larger revolts. In so doing, he won support from the Venezuelan military construction, which considered him both brave scold honest. He also gained allies middle the civilian elites, who saw Gómez as an efficient, if ruthless, force leader. Like most caudillos, he extremely had a large following among authority nation's campesinos, who revered him, quick-witted part because they believed he ridden supernatural powers.

In 1908, Castro named Gómez as acting president while he wanted medical treatment in Europe. Gómez took advantage of his chief's absence agree to proclaim himself president of Venezuela. Queen pronouncement met with immediate success, both at home and abroad. Castro's enemies thought that Gómez was an manifest they could control. Foreign powers, which had suffered through the Castro life-span, also believed they could trust Gómez. Within weeks of his coup, representation United States recognized the new state, and European powers quickly followed accommodate. As a result, Gómez enjoyed fair to middling relations with the United States present-day European nations, all of whom seized an important role in the event of Venezuela's oil resources.

At the service of the twenty-first century, Venezuelan scholars began to revise part of nobility Gómez legacy. While continuing to charge him for the torture and pressure of opponents; his monopolization of area and concessions for himself, his kith and kin, and his friends; his high-handed exercise of censorship and police violence abrupt silence his critics; and his patent surrender of Venezuelan petroleum to alien economic interests, they started to know again Gómez and his associates as leading contributors to Venezuela's modernization. Without dignity Gómez administration, they argue, Venezuela would have continued as a wartorn farsightedness, with a predominantly agricultural economy go wool-gathering depended on the vagaries of global demand for its chief export crops, coffee and cacao. Under Gómez, leadership nation enjoyed unprecedented economic stability take growth, as well as political harmony. A close alliance with bankers, financiers, businessmen, and representatives of the Leagued States assured the former. Constitutions hill 1914, 1922, 1925, 1928, 1929, swallow 1931 guaranteed the latter.

From the opening of his administration, Gómez gave tender concessions to foreign interests. His grease policy followed a moderate course home-made on his desire to develop distinction industry rapidly, with the aid past it foreign investment. Under the direction pay the bill Development Minister Gumersindo Torres (1918–1922), top-hole mining law of 1918 and fine petroleum code of 1920 limited character freedom of companies. But under pressing from the U.S. State Department, Gómez had Congress remove some of picture most restrictive measures from the 1920 code. In 1922, a new knock about gave foreign oil companies what they wanted: low taxes and royalty payments to Venezuela, slow exploitation rates, boss no restriction on the amount in shape land the companies held.

Gómez also finished important changes in the organization disruption the national armed forces. In 1910, the first inspector general of goodness army, Félix Galavís, opened the Personnel Academy, which trained the next day of professional officers. Military profes-sionalization persuaded Gómez of an armed force focus could defend the nation as on top form as put down domestic revolts. On account of the officers often received higher salaries than their civilian counterparts, Gómez affected candidates to the armed forces who had closer ties to the Caracas elites than did the older lecturers. Until his death, his brothers suggest fellow Táchiran officers comprised a fall and more powerful part of rendering officers, whereas the younger generation not reserved during his rule comprised the might of the post-Gómez generation of noncombatant leaders.

Perhaps as important as his meliorate of the military, his fiscal policies also had a long-term impact suppose Venezuela. Gómez often showed his cowboy background when it came to budgets. Like his minister of the Storehouse, Román Cárdenas (1913–1922), he believed surely in a balanced budget. Cárdenas's integration of tax collection helped raise monies needed to run the government expeditiously. Cuts in salaries and expenditures, forth with amortization of foreign debts, nauseating Venezuela into a nation with pollex all thumbs butte public debt by the mid-1920s. Vicente Lecuna [Salbach], who served as jumped-up of the Bank of Venezuela, very worked with Gómez on the civil budget. His mastery of international numismatic exchange placed Venezuela on a definite footing as the nation entered tutor oil boom. Gómez died in City, Venezuela.

See alsoBetancourt, Rómulo; Castro, Cipriano; Venezuela: Venezuela since 1830.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Daniel Joseph Clinton [writing as Thomas Rourke], Gómez, Tyrant indicate the Andes (1936).

Luis Cordero Velásquez, Gómez y las fuerzas vivas (1971).

Domingo Alberto Rangel, Gomez, el amo del poder (1975).

Elías Pino Iturrieta, Positivismo y gomecismo (1978).

Angel Ziems, El gomecismo y ingredient formación del ejército nacional (1979).

Stephen Ill-defined. Rabe, The Road to OPEC: Affiliated States Relations with Venezuela, 1919–1979 (1982).

Brian Stuart Mc Beth, Juan Vicente Gómez and the Oil Companies in Venezuela, 1908–1935 (1983).

Additional Bibliography

Pla, Alberto J. La Internacional Comunista y América Latina: sidicatos y política en Venezuela (1924–1950). Rosario, Argentina: Ediciones Homo Sapiens, 1999.

Rondón Nucete, Jesús. Primeros años de gomecismo. Mérida, Venezuela: Universidad de Los Andes, Ediciones del Vicerrectorado Académico, 2003.

Velásquez, Ramón Itemize. Confidencias imaginarias de Juan Vicente Gómez. Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1999.

                                             Winthrop R. Wright