Carlos Delgado Chalbaud
Carlos Román Delgado Chalbaud Gómez (Caracas, Venezuela, January 20, 1909 - Ibidem, November 13, 1950) was a Venezuelan soldier, engineer, and politician. He was president of the military junta of the government of the United States of Venezuela until his death during a kidnapping in Caracas. He has been the only president of Venezuela who has been the victim of an assassination.
Life
Youth and family
His father was Román Delgado Chalbaud, who participated in the Liberating Revolution against Cipriano Castro and, likewise, was part of the government of Juan Vicente Gómez. Later, Román distanced himself from Gómez because of the latter's intention to perpetuate himself in power. Known as Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, he used the surnames of his father Román Delgado Chalbaud as a form of homage to his memory. Meanwhile, his mother was Luisa Elena Gómez Velutini from Merida, granddaughter of the banker Eleuterio Gómez, who had previously financed Cipriano Castro.
His cousin Flor María Chalbaud was the wife of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez, with whom he would later share a military triumvirate.
When he was four years old, his father was imprisoned in La Rotunda on the orders of General Juan Vicente Gómez, who was his godfather. As a security measure, his family went into exile in Paris, France.
Military career
In Paris (France) Delgado Chalbaud completed his secondary studies at the Lycée Lakanal. During his stay in France, he first establishes a romantic relationship with Juliette Jomeau, a social sciences student from the Parisian upper class with ancestry in the nobility of Tsarist Russia, who was a right-wing activist at the University of Paris (The Sorbonne). With Jomeau he conceived the twins Carlos Román and Román Carlos. However, Jomeau decides not to have a married life with Delgado.
At just 20 years old, he boarded the cruise ship Falke in the port of Gdynia (Poland), which disembarked on the coast of Cumaná on August 11, 1929, with the aim of overthrowing General Juan Vicente Gómez. In this failed operation, his father, Román, who was in command of the expeditionaries, died. After this event, Carlos Delgado Chalbaud went into exile first on the island of Granada and then in Martinique where he met Rómulo Betancourt.
Later, he decided to return to Paris where he completed his civil engineering studies at the École des Travaux Publics. During this time, in 1933, he married a student of Romanian-Jewish origin, Lucía Devine, of communist affiliation, in addition to frequenting radical Parisian university circles and establishing contacts with practically all the groups of exiles, both European and Latin American, who resided in the French capital. With Devine their first daughter is born: Elena.
He tries, without much success, to lead a new plan to invade Venezuela and to do so he contacts his father's friends and travels to Barcelona (Spain) where he establishes friendships with the writer Rómulo Gallegos in whose house he hosts with his wife Devine.
After the death of General Gómez in 1935, he returned to Venezuela. President Eleazar López Contreras then considered the possibility of incorporating him into the Armed Forces, but before sending him back to France so that he could complete his studies. Graduated as an engineer in 1937, he attended the Versailles War College and upon returning to Venezuela in 1939 he was incorporated into the army as a captain (assimilated) attached to the Military Engineering service in Caracas and later as captain commander of the second company of the Battalion. of Engineers Francisco Avendaño (1941).
Foray into politics
As one of the brightest officers of the Armed Forces is associated with the Castrenses group that overtholes General Isaías Medina Angarita, in the coup d'etat of 1945 and is appointed Minister of the Defense of the Revolutionary Board of Government that replaces it in power which was chaired by Romulo Betancourt. Ratified in the position by Rómulo Gallegos, first Venezuelan president elected by the universal, direct and secret vote, is part of the group that overthrew it in the coup d'etat of 1948, apparently more for fear and obligation than by conviction.
GOVERNMENT
Delgado Chalbaud had lived in Gallegos' house while he was in his Spanish exile and who said he felt a "subsidiary affection for the military," and is then appointed president of the triumvirate of the Military Board that happens, together with Marcos Pérez Jiménez and Luis Llovera Páez.
His distancing with Pérez Jiménez is increasing as the alternatives to institutionalize the new regime are discussed, he also had to face the 1950 oil strike and some attempts to raise the part of the democratic action, the communist party of Venezuela and Confederation of Workers of Venezuela. In early 1950, an agreement is discussed to convene elections, dissolve the Military Board and deliver the presidency to a candidate of understanding between the political parties and the armed forces that Delgado Chalbaud himself would be, who was emerging as a first -century political personality, but his candidacy was interrupted by the assassination of November 13, 1950.
Assassination
The murder of Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, executed by Rafael Simón Urbina constitutes the only presidential assassination in Venezuelan's republican history. On Monday, November 13, 1950, in the morning, Delgado Chalbaud was kidnapped by a group headed by Urbina, and subsequently killed in a house in the Las Mercedes de Caracas urbanization, owned by Antonio Aranguren. The circumstances that surrounded the death of Carlos Delgado Chalbaud raised numerous speculations, being the most common, the one that points to Marcos Pérez Jiménez as alleged intellectual author of his kidnapping and murder. However, this is unlikely because his wife, Flor María Chalbaud Cardona, was a blood cousin of Colonel Carlos Delgado Chalbaud. His murder seems rather oriented towards an unfortunate outcome of a kidnapping made motu proprio by Urbina to promote that Pérez Jiménez was president, according to reasons of Urbina, Delgado Chalbaud had despised him on several occasions and had denied him The reimbursement of his assets, of which he had been stripped after a trial for peculation in the time of the Government of General Eleazar López Contreras, Urbina had been prosecuted for illicit enrichment. The day after his capture he was killed by members of the National Security Department.
Chalabaud's assassination caused a national political crisis and forced the reorganization of the Military Board. It was decided to turn it into an " Governing Board " and several notable civilians such as Dr. Arnoldo Gabaldón were consulted, who had acquired fame for the antimalaric struggle in the country, as one of the candidates to replace the newly murdered president of the Republic. They finally decided by Germán Suárez Flamerich, At that time ambassador to Peru, who was immediately in charge of the presidency of the Board.
Tributes
- At the birth of the river Orinoco is the hill Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, 1,047 meters above sea level. This hill was baptized with its name two years after its death, during the Franco-Venezuelan expedition that removed and explored the upper course of the Orinoco and discovered its sources, headed by the Venezuelan official Frank Risquez Iribarren.
- There is currently a non-profit organization called "Fundación Delgado-Chalbaud", whose social function is to spread life and work on this character and that of his family.
- In the populous parish of Coche Located south of Caracas in the 1960s it was founded in the educational unit Coronel Carlos Delgado Chalbaud.
- There is also Carlos Delgado Chalbaud College in Av. Guzmán Blanco de Caracas.
Contenido relacionado
118
85
58