John Vincent Gomez
Juan Vicente Gómez Chacón (Hacienda La Mulera, Táchira, July 24, 1857 - Maracay, Aragua, December 17, 1935) was a Venezuelan dictator, politician, and soldier who ruled in an authoritarian manner. his country from 1908 until his death in 1935. His most notorious achievement was the formation of the modern State in Venezuela, the elimination of the Creole caudillos and almost a century of civil wars, in addition to achieving the cancellation of the nation's debts. His detractors called him "the catfish", nickname of the Tachirenses locals.
During his dictatorship important public works were carried out. He created the first airlines in the country, the Aeropostal and the Venezuelan Air Force. He commissioned the construction of the first Venezuelan airports: "Grano de Oro" International Airport in Maracaibo, La Fría, Encontrados, Sucre Base (today, Florencio Gómez National Airport in Maracay, Aragua state), the Aragua Meteorological Air Base (cradle and birth of aviation Venezuela, later transformed into the Aeronautical Museum), Porlamar (today, headquarters of the municipal police and replaced by Del Caribe International Airport), Leonardo Chirinos International Airport in Coro, San Antonio del Táchira International Airport, Alberto Carnevalli Airport in Mérida. Likewise, bridges, customs buildings (such as the Main Land Customs of San Antonio del Táchira) were built, the first passenger terminals for extra-urban bus lines and, with this, the first extra-urban bus line called Aerobuses was created. of Venezuela or Aeropostal Buses of Venezuela. The famous Trasandina Highway was also built, a route that began in Las Adjuntas (near the Caracas Metro station) and ended at the Main Land Customs of San Antonio del Táchira. Gómez modernized, professionalized and institutionalized the Armed Forces as the organization that it is today.
His government always sought to maintain a constitutional and democratic façade, using short puppet presidencies such as those of Victorino Márquez Bustillos and Juan Bautista Pérez, and successive amendments to the constitution that allowed him to stay in power directly or indirectly and control the administration of the country at will.
Biography
Early Years
Juan Vicente Gómez was born into a large family. His parents were Pedro Cornelio Gómez (1835-1883) and Hermenegilda Chacón Alarcón (1836-1918).
In 1880, he met what would be his great comrade in arms and friend, Colonel Cipriano Castro. Together with him, Juan Vicente Gómez trained as a soldier in three important campaigns. The first of these occurred in the context of the so-called Legalist Revolution (1892) led by Joaquín Crespo against President Raimundo Andueza Palacio, during which Gómez joined the General Staff of Castro's army as colonel and in charge of logistics in the fight against the revolutionaries. With their triumph, both were exiled to Colombia.
In 1899, Juan Vicente Gómez followed Castro, as general and second chief of the expedition, in his fruitful attempt to take the plaza of Caracas under the banner of the Restoring Liberal Revolution. The journey, which began in Táchira, crossed Mérida, Trujillo, Lara, Yaracuy and Carabobo, and ended on October 22 in the capital city. Gómez had to exercise, from then on, various positions of a military and administrative nature, both in Caracas and in Táchira, until the Constituent Assembly proposed by the new Restoration government named him, in February 1901, second vice president of the Republic., being Cipriano Castro named president and Ramón Ayala first vice president.
It was, however, the cunning and tenacity shown by Gómez in the campaign against the so-called Liberating Revolution (1901-1903) that increased his fame and earned him the nickname of "El Pacificador". During this contest, he was at the head of the national armies, and when he had to do it, he acted as & # 34; President in charge of the Republic of Venezuela & # 34;. But, the military triumph made Gómez so popular that Castro began to fear that he would try to overthrow him, Castro puts his loyalty to the test during La Aclamación. However, he remained unmoved by Castro's suspicions regarding his alleged conspiracy and bided his time. in order to seize power.
In November 1908, Castro had to leave the country for health reasons, and Gómez became the provisional president. On December 19 of the same year, under the pretext of an alleged attack that Castro's allies wanted to carry out at his request, Gómez carried out a coup d'état. He thus took power, which he would retain until his death, 27 years later.
Government of Juan Vicente Gómez
Initially, Gómez began his term by granting freedom to political prisoners and restoring freedom of the press; however, he rejected dissolving the National Congress and calling a constituent assembly, a request that was quite popular at the time. However, the historian Elías Pino Iturrieta maintains that in reality despite this apparent facade of freedoms that Gómez promoted, there were cases early repression of the press and certain political sectors, but he does admit that from 1913 the repression became exacerbated, the year in which Gómez decided to remain in power.
On August 5, 1909, the National Congress implemented a constitutional reform that limited the presidential term to 4 years and established a provisional presidential term until April 19, 1910, the day the reform came into effect. Thus, Gómez was not formally president until 1910, when he was elected by Congress. To keep up appearances, his presidency was "interrupted" from 1914 to 1922 and from 1929 to 1931 by other governments acting on his orders. During this time he acted as commander in chief of the Armed Forces. Although Gómez had to serve a constitutional term from 1910 to 1914, in 1913 he decided to remain in power, which caused a political crisis. However, Gómez manages to suspend the electoral process scheduled for that moment, alleging an alleged invasion by Cipriano Castro.
One of his main concerns was to restore international credit paralyzed in the days of his predecessor, for which he once again granted the American company recognized as: New York & Bermúdez Company, the fifty-year concession for the exploitation of Guanoco asphalt that Castro had suspended. In addition to managing to regenerate the confidence of the outside world in Venezuela, and reestablishing diplomatic relations broken by Castro, Gómez's benevolent attitude towards foreign investment sought to increase tax revenue to meet the obligations incurred by previous governments.
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Knowing the oil potential of Venezuela, the Gomez regime defined a legal framework through which a large part of the national territory is delivered in concessions, according to the interests of the international oil consortiums. The foreign investments in the country that had begun in the time of Antonio Guzmán Blanco, and which had setbacks during the government of Cipriano Castro, were generously favored by the Gomez regime. During the 1918 flu pandemic in Venezuela, Gómez retired to his ranch for three months. He also banned the press from talking about the flu.
In 1920, Congress promulgated, under the advice of Development Minister Gumersindo Torres, the first Hydrocarbons Law that increased surface rents and allowed owners to obtain concessions, increased the area of national reserves and considerably reduced the list articles freely imported by the oil companies; which protested said measure before General Gómez himself. For this reason, based on certain inconsistencies in the legal text, plus the refusal to acquire private rights, the companies acted in concert until they achieved the enactment of a new Hydrocarbons Law on June 2, 1921 and another, even more condescending, the June 9, 1922. After this, Torres was removed from the Ministry of Public Works.
To occupy the new positions, his brother General Juan Crisóstomo Gómez and his son José Vicente Gómez Bello are elected as first vice president and second vice president. The Venezuelan people called Juan Crisóstomo Gómez instead of General, "Don Juancho" or simply & # 34; Juancho & # 34;, despite the position he holds, he continues to exercise the functions of Governor of the Federal District. An abyss of rivalry opens up between brothers with the dictator's disease. The country is divided between "Vicentistas" and "Juanchistas".
In 1922 he reformed the Civil Code of Venezuela. During that time in New York City, some "political parties" led mainly by old generals, some of liberal tendencies, were founded as an option to confront Gomezism; and others of a nationalist tendency. Among these supposed parties we can mention a. The New Venezuela, Patriotic Union, Patriotic Society, Republican Party and Venezuelan Republican Union.
The year 1929 was characterized by the devastating earthquake in Cumaná on January 17, the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange, and by various subversive actions aimed at overthrowing the Gomez regime. In Paris, General Román Delgado Chalbaud organized a revolutionary movement with exiles in which Generals José Rafael Gabaldón, Emilio Fernández and Eleazar López Contreras, the latter head of the Caracas garrison, became involved in Venezuela. On April 28, General Gabaldón, taking for granted that Generals Fernández and López Contreras would take part in the uprising, rose up in arms on his “Santo Cristo” farm from where he managed to occupy Boconó, Guanare, El Tocuyo and Biscucuy. However, despite his efforts, Gabaldón was progressively isolated by the forces of General José Antonio Baldó, president of the Portuguesa state, for which he decided to turn himself in and was sent to the Libertador castle in Puerto Cabello (1929-1935).
Generals Norberto Borges, Ramón Dorta, and Euclides José Barroeta rose up in May of the same year, in the central part of the country; to support General Gabaldón, but after some skirmishes, they were defeated and reduced to prison in "La Rotunda". On June 8, Dr. Gustavo Machado and Rafael Simón Urbina assaulted Fort Amsterdam on the island of Curaçao, seized the steamer "Maracaibo" and headed for the Vela de Coro with 150 combatants, but hunger, thirst, and The lack of knowledge of the Sierra Coriana put an end to these claims, the majority died, and others were taken prisoner by the Gomez troops. Machado and Urbina manage to leave the country towards Colombia.
In the month of July, General Emilio Arévalo Cedeño -coming from Colombia- rises once again in his native state of Guárico, but is soundly defeated at the siege of "La Panchita". Arévalo since 1914, launched proclamations rioting the people against the Gómez dictatorship, his most relevant performance was when he took San Fernando de Atabapo and ordered the execution of Colonel Tomás Funes, terror of Río Negro, Amazonas Territory, on January 30, 1921.
On August 11, 1929, the end of the so-called Falke Expedition will take place in Cumaná, led by General Román Delgado Chalbaud, the last war effort against the Gómez dictatorship. The revolutionaries from Danzig (present-day Poland) They disembarked in Puerto Sucre, where they immediately entered into combat in the streets of Cumaná, General Delgado Chalbaud himself and the president of the Sucre state, General Emilio Fernández, dying in the action. Shortly after the Secretary of the expedition, the writer José Rafael Pocaterra, left the Cumanesa coast aboard the Falke and threw into the sea the large park brought from Germany, leaving the invaders (the brothers Francisco de Paula and Pedro Elías Aristeguieta in cahoots with Delgado), to act from land devoid of weapons and supplies.
On May 23, 1930, the dictator informed the country that the entire foreign debt had been cancelled. "Venezuela is debt free and does not owe anyone," Gómez emphatically stated in a message to the nation's citizens. With this, the debt of a century of wars and revolutions is settled, but the Benemérito is also freed from the "horrendous nightmare of owing abroad," according to his testimony.
In 1931, he forced Juan Bautista Pérez to resign, leading to the 1931 Venezuelan presidential election, in which he won with virtually no opposition for a period of 7 years, which did not end with his death in 1935 During 27 years of dictatorship, he collaborated with the land-owning oligarchy, reformed the Constitution several times in order to give legality to his dictatorial actions, silenced political opposition, suppressed freedom of expression and of the press, judicial guarantees, outlawed political parties.
Family
There were two official Gómez couples, the first, Dionisia Gómez Bello, with whom he had seven children: José Vicente, Josefa María, Augusto Alí, Flor María, Graciela, Servilia and Gonzalo; and the second, Dolores Amelia Núñez de Cáceres, with whom he had eight children: Juan Vicente, Florencio, Rosa Amelia, Hermenegilda, Cristina, Belén, Berta and Juan Crisóstomo. Gomez also fathered between 63 and 73 illegitimate children, many of whom received civil service jobs (along with some of his legitimate children), earning him accusations of nepotism.
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Distinctions and decorations
- There is a statue of Juan Vicente Gómez at the Aeronautical Museum of Maracay.
- Juan Vicente Gómez International Airport was named in 1993.
National Awards
Grand Master and Big Necklace of the Order of Liberator (1908-1913/1922-1929/1931-1935).
Grand Master and Big Cross of the Order Francisco de Miranda (1908-1913/1922-1929/1931-1935).
Foreign Awards
Knight with Order of Pius IX collar (
Holy See).
Great cord of the Order of Leopoldo (
Belgium).
Big Knight of the Order of Charles III (
Spain).
Grand Cross Knight of the Order of Elizabeth the Catholic (Spain).
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