Background
Rómulo Betancourt was born in Guatire on 22 February 1908.
government official politician
Rómulo Betancourt was born in Guatire on 22 February 1908.
Studied law at the Central University in Caracas.
Betancourt began his political career in 1928 when he was one of the three principal leaders of a vehement Student Week protest against the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gomez. Betancourt was jailed for a short while and soon after began his first exile. He went to Curasao, the Dominican Republic, and Baranquilla, Colombia. In Colombia he led other student exiles in establishing the ARDI, a left-wing and vaguely Marxist political movement.
Early in 1932 Betancourt moved to Costa Rica. There he was one of the founders of the Costa Rican Communist Party and edited its paper. That experience convinced him of the need for a national revolutionary party, not one controlled, as the Communists were, from some foreign country.
Upon the death of Juan Vicente Gómez in December 1935, Betancourt returned to Venezuela and helped establish a radical party, Organización Venezolana (ORVE), and became its Secretary General within a few months. When ORVE merged in late 1936 with several other groups to form the National Democratic Party (PDN), Betancourt became the PDN’s secretary of organization.
Early in 1937 Gómez’ successor, President Eleazar López Contreras, outlawed the PDN and ordered most of its leaders deported. Betancourt was one of the few able to evade the police, and for three years he dedicated himself to gathering together a group of young intellectuals and trade unionists who were to be the core of the PDN and its successor. Acción Democrática (AD).
In 1940 Betancourt was caught by the police and exiled for a year to Chile. There, he worked closely with leaders of the Socialist Party, particularly Salvador Allende Gossens.
Upon returning home early in 1941, Betancourt proposed that the PDN name a “symbolic” candidate in the election campaign then underway. He did so even though it had no chance of success because the new president would be chosen by López Contreras’ largely hand-picked Congress. The well-known novelist Rómulo Gallegos was the PDN’s nominee, and the party began to be transformed from an underground skeleton organization into an open mass party.
The new president. General Isaías Medina Angarita legalized the PDN, as Acción Democrática. Betancourt was its secretary general and spent the 1941-1945 period building the party organization throughout the whole country. During this period, too, AD won control of a majority of the labor movement from the Communists.
As the 1945 election approached, AD sought an agreement with President Medina on a candidate whom they could both support, who would be pledged to introducing universal adult suffrage and direct election of the president and all legislators. A mutually acceptable candidate got sick, whereupon Medina refused further negotiations. Betancourt and other AD leaders then accepted overtures by a group of young military men to seek to overthrow Medina. That resulted in the Revolution of October 18, 1945.
The next day Betancourt became president of the Revolutionary Junta and virtually provisional president of Venezuela. Four other civilians—three of them AD members—and two military officers were also in the junta. Betancourt continued to head the government until early 1948, when his elected successor, Rómulo Gallegos, took over. During that period, universal suffrage was introduced, new mass parties were established, and a modem constitution was adopted.
Major economic and social changes occurred. Among the changes were the following: 50 percent of all oil company profits were to stay in Venezuela; an Economic Development Corporation was established; primary school attendance was doubled; an agrarian reform program was begun; and very strong government support was given to the labor and particularly the peasant movement.
On November 24, 1948, however, the armed forces overthrew President Ró- mulo Gallegos and began a military dictatorship of more than nine years’ duration. Betancourt succeeded in getting out of the country. Living in the United States, Cuba, Costa Rica, and Puerto Rico, at different times, he spent the period from November 1948 until January 1958 leading the underground and exiled Acción Democrática.
Finally, in the face of massive civilian resistance to the regime on January 23, 1958, army and navy leaders sent Marcos Pérez Jiménez into exile. Betancourt then returned home and in the December elections defeated two opponents and soon after became constitutional president. In the face of extreme difficulties—four major military coup attempts, guerrilla war by the extreme left, two splits in AD, and very difficult economic circumstances, among others— he became the first person in Venezuelan history to come into the presidency by genuine popular elections and to turn over the office to a popularly elected successor.
The second Betancourt period largely carried forward what had been started in the first. Among the major programs were strong encouragement to import substitution industrialization, vast expansion of the educational system, large- scale agrarian reform, and strong support for organized labor and collective bargaining.
This time Betancourt was convinced that merely having a majority of votes was not sufficient to assure a successful democratic administration. So although at various times he massively mobilized workers and peasants and others to support the regime when it was threatened by insurrection, he also sought successfully either to win over or to neutralize those elements that might overthrow the regime—the military, powerful economic groups, and the church.
In March 1964 Betancourt turned over power to President Raul Leoni. He did not want to create difficulties for President Leoni or the democratic system, and so he went to Europe, where he stayed about eight years. Upon his return in 1972, he announced that, although constitutionally eligible, he would not run again for the presidency. He threw strong support behind AD candidate Carlos Andrés Pérez.
Rómulo Betancourt remained the Grand Old Man of Acción Democrática and a bulwark for the democracy he had been so influential in establishing. Although his relations with President Pérez became rather tense, Betancourt remained honorary president of his party until his death.
Betancourt died quite unexpectedly of a massive stroke while on a vacation in New York City.