Background
Juan Vicente Gómez was born on 24 July 1857 in Tachira, Venezuela. He was a son of Pedro Cornelio Gómez and Hermenejilda Chacón.
Juan Vicente Gómez was born on 24 July 1857 in Tachira, Venezuela. He was a son of Pedro Cornelio Gómez and Hermenejilda Chacón.
Juan Vicente Gómez came into power by a coup d'étatd'etat in 1908 while the dictator Cipriano Castro was in Europe. A new consitiution was framed in 1909 and Gómez became constitutional president in 1910. He put down two revolts in 1913. In 1914 a new document, drawn up by him, provided for a constitutional dictatorship, but another more to his liking was adopted in 1922. Gómez governed directly, or through his position as commander of the army. In 1925 another constitution was promulgated. Although Gómez was virtually illiterate he preserved peace, reorganized the country's finances, and began paying off the excessive foreign debt created by his predecessor--this before prosperity following the oil boom had filled the country's coffers. In 1929 he was reelected but refused to accept the title of president, retaining control through his position as commander in chief of the army. In 1931 he again assumed direct power.
Two basic changes brought about during the Gomez period spelled the end of the old-style caudillo. One was his building up of a professional army. By the mid-1930s the lower and middle ranks of officers consisted of military school graduates. So, although the generals continued to be people who owed their posts to their personal loyalty to Gomez, those below them were professional soldiers.
The second major change under Gómez was growth of the oil industry. Even before World War 1, Gómez began giving concessions to foreign oil companies to search for petroleum. By the early 1920s they had found it in abundance, in and around Lake Maracaibo—and later in the eastern part of the country. They were allowed to exploit it under a law that the foreign oil companies’ officials themselves had largely written. At the same time, Gómez and those closest to him used the opening up of the oil industry to get very large financial returns for themselves.
Gómez used the country’s vastly increased revenues to pay off the national debt, to build roads, and to construct public works. Those revenues resulted in growth not only of a substantial wage-earning working class in and around the oil industry, but also of other workers and middle-class elements in the major cities.
