Democracy Over a Barrel: Venezuelan History Through the Prism of Oil
Hellinger, Daniel
Unless Venezuela can transform its oil industry from a rent-generating enclave into a productive industry, it will be left "like those sites over which wealth flows without soaking in, leaving...
...Stanford University Press, 1984), p. 20...
...AD's Carlos Andrs Perez, a protg of Betancourt, won the 1973 election decisively...
...In 1959, 58% of government revenues came from petroleum...
...five years later they tripled those from coffee, and by 1936 they were nine times greater.3 The oil strikes of the 1920s had an immediate effect on the Venezuelan economy...
...But by 1983, annual petroleum-export earnings fell from their 1981 high of $19.1 billion to $13.1 billion...
...Perez II even agreed to an IMF demand that domestic gasoline prices be raised to international levelsfar above the cost of productionthough violent protests prevented him from implementing the agreement...
...Export earnings increased even as production levels were reduced...
...In 1921, oil export earnings were one ninth those of coffee...
...The conservative Venezuelan bourgeoisie feared union activity and the repercussions of planned land reform...
...12,The consequences for the party's post-1958 evolution are explored by Steve Elmer in Los partidos politicos y su disputa por el control del movimiento sindical en Venezuela, 1936-1948 (Caracas: Universidad CatOlica Andrs Bello, 1980...
...The gears of partidocracia were lubricated by oil rents...
...Party members used their position to siphon off a share of rents through legal and extra-legal practices, such as commissions, compensation for negotiating labor con- tracts, or control of subsidies for community projects...
...The new president, General Eledzar Lopez Contreras (1936-1941), seized the moment to consolidate his own power...
...The U.S...
...5. Bravo y Franceschi, Problemas de Ia historia, p. 218...
...By 1986, oil earnings were down to $7.6 billion, and by 1988 the debt was eating half of Venezuela's oilexport earnings.'7 The elites, however, were slow to amend their profligate ways...
...His successor, Copei's Luis Herrera Campins, elected in 1978, was faced with the bill...
...Betancourt' s policy of no new concessions assured the three majors who already possessed huge concessions that they would face no new rivals for 40 years...
...His corruption and profligate spending, however, exhausted the oil rents, and he was unable to follow through on his promises...
...Peasants fled peonage on the plantations and haciendas for opportu- nities in the oil camps and the growing cities and towns.4 As imports soared, the artisan sector collapsed, and the service and commercial sectors ballooned...
...by 1967 this figure stood at 67...
...From their ranks came Gomez, who, with the support of U.S...
...Formed to fight for democracy, AD and Copei evolved into organizations competing for their share in the oil-rent trough...
...companies were embattled by charges at home that they had artificially created the oil crisis...
...Although Medina was criticized by AD for this tack, in reality his government had won an extraordinary tool for Venezuela to maintain or raise its share of industry profits...
...Disputes over nationalization do not even figure in either of these balanced accounts of the roots of the insurgency...
...To get the companies 36 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON VENEZUELA to agree to the new arrangement, Medina handed out a new round of concessions, and relieved the companies of liability for past fraudulent practices...
...Perez II implemented drastic cuts in state employment and cut state subsidies and tariff barriers upon which Venezuelan capitalists had become dependent...
...9. Hellinger, Venezuela: Tarnished Democracy, pp...
...Historian Judith Ewell has characterized the two million turn-of-the-century Venezuelans as "unhealthy, illiterate, unmarried [and] rural...
...The law was heralded as a great achievement, but unannounced was a "gentlemen's agreement" between the government and the foreign oil companies that the government would not raise taxes in the future without the prior agreement of the companies...
...Indeed, many still considered AD a revolu- tionary Marxist party, a view shared by the McCarthyite Right in the United States...
...The populist system, known as partidocracia, was characterized by a civil society smothered by highly disciplined, centralized party apparatuses...
...Betancourt promised that once in power, AD would demand a "just" share of the oil earnings from the "imperialist" companies and invest this money to improve the standard of living and modernize the economy.7 But the political turmoil following the death of Gomez persuaded Betancourt and the Venezuelan Communists, with whom he remained allied until 1938, to go slowly...
...But neither Contreras nor Medina would take the final step needed to break the power of the Gomecista oligarchy: direct elections with universal suffrage, as demanded by AD...
...111-232...
...Instead, the government announced a policy of "no new [oil] concessions...
...Well-publicized scandals began to expose the moral bankruptcy of the governing class...
...The extraordinary profits (134% at their peak in 1974), however, will not return...
...Unless Venezuela can transform its oil industry from a rent-generating enclave into a productive industry, it will be left "like those sites over which wealth flows without soaking in, leaving more poverty and sadness than before...
...2. See Maria Gabriela Troconis, Venezuela republicana, siglo XIX (Caracas: Centro Gumilla, Curso de Formacibn Sociopolitica 3, 1988), pp...
...The 50/50 formula was less favor- able than the one negotiated by Medina in 1943...
...11 .Marquez et al, El imperialismo petrolero, pp...
...16 In 1978, when the voracious pace of spending began to outstrip revenue, Perez began to borrow heavily from U.S...
...The provisional gov- ernment of 1958 met the crisis by unilaterally raising the government's share of oil profits, which provoked an outcry from the companies...
...The 1973 elections inaugurated a 15-year period in which AD and Copei would, between them, regularly obtain 80% of the vote...
...1 0.Angel J. Marquez et al, El imperialismo petrolero y Ia revoluciOn venezolana, tomo 2, las ganancias extraordinarias y Ia soberania nacional (Caracas: Editorial Ruptura, 1977), pp...
...Herrera Campins created, and his successor, Jaime Lusinchi, administered, a complicated new exchange system that maintained the exchange rate at 4.3 bolIvars to the dollar for the state, allowed it to float for ordinary transactions, and established a middle rate for purchases of imports that the government deemed critical...
...companies were so delighted with the arrangement that they used it as a model for new concessions in the Middle East.' Adeco unionsaided by the Labor Ministrywere also able to wrest control of the petroleum unions from the Communists, an accomplishment greatly appreciated in Washington...
...Perez I had nationalized the oil industry...
...The organizational vehicle for this transformation was the Accion Democrdtica party (AD), legally founded in 1941...
...Pietri first popularized the phrase "sow the petroleum...
...The overvalued currency deepDaniel Hellinger is a professor of political science at Webster University and author of Venezuela: Tarnished Democracy (Westview Press, 1991...
...When Perez sought to recapture the presidency (presidents cannot constitutionally stand for immedi- ate reelection) in 1988, he campaigned in a style designed to evoke memories of the populism and nationalism of his first administration...
...A popular uprising forced Perez Jimnez to flee the country in 1958...
...After secret negotiations with the oil companies, the trienio government levied an extraordinary profits tax designed to bring the state's share of revenues to a minimum 50...
...Revolution, however, was not on Betancourt' s agenda...
...These practices eventually erupted in a major scandal toward the end of the Lusinchi Administration...
...This myth reinforces the association of oil nationalism with democracyand of course with AD...
...Of the major political actors, only the Communists were excluded, even though they had played a significant role in the struggle against the dictatorship...
...For example, see Morris Adelman, "The World Oil Outlook," in Marion Clawson, ed., Natural Resources and International Development (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1964...
...A host of other scandals swirled around key politicians from the president on down...
...The country was embroiled in constant civil rebellions led by regional caudillos...
...In addition, the government and the oil companies agreed to split 50/50 the extraordinary profits generated by the industry...
...14.Two works by Bernard Mommer illuminate the evolution of Venezuelan policy toward OPEC...
...The flow of dollars into the countryat first as investment and later as earningsartificially boosted the currency (the bolIvar) far beyond what was merited by the country's primitive productive capacity...
...The OPEC nations had already established the right to set the "reference price" on which royalties and taxes would be calculated, regardless of the actual market price...
...market in return for the privileged access of U.S...
...Embassy support for the coup d'etat which overthrew the government in 1948...
...38-46...
...See La cuestiOn petrolera (Caracas: Editorial Tropykos, 1988), and Petroleo, renta de suelo, y historia (Mrida: Universidad de los Andes, 1983...
...The characteristics of this provincial country on the northem coast of South America were shaped, she says, "by climate, geography, pestilence, civil war, and the demands of plantation agriculture dotted with mining enclaves and urban commerce...
...B y the trienio, Betancourt, the unrivaled leader of AD, had abandoned militant anti-imperial- ism for reformism...
...In 1947, Rockefeller's International Basic Economy Corporation and the government's Venezue- lan Investment Fund agreed to establish four jointly owned food-processing plants, setting a pattern of association for North American and Venezuelan capital in a booming consumer market...
...As a result...
...Among those founders was the country's first democratically elected president, Romulo Betancourt, probably the key figure in the country's transition to democratic rule...
...While Venezuela had brought small amounts of oil to the surface in the past, the large Maracaibo strike, combined with the industrial world's growing demand for oil, set in motion the dynamics that would soon transform the country...
...In 1976, Perez nationalized the industry with barely any protest from the companies...
...The adeco leader even embraced Nelson D. Rockefeller, whom he had scorned in 1939 as an "evangelical huckster...
...The second oil shock, produced by the 1981 war between Iran and Iraq, momentarily postponed the day of reckoning...
...In this context, rather than resist nationalization, the companies decided to assure themselves compensation, continued access to secure supplies, control of downstream operations, and the handsome profits to be made from service agreements...
...This turn of events dispelled concerns that the day of reckoning for the oil-dependent economy was at hand...
...The country is incomparably more devel- oped than it was before the century "began" for Venezuela in 1935...
...But Caldera' s plans were long range and the petrodollar spigot seemed to be closing.'4 The flow of oil rents during the 1960s was, however, more than adequate for AD and Copei to establish their hegemony in the myriad arenas of civic society where Venezuelan parties vie for control...
...19.Cited in NotiExpress, January 27, 1994...
...Though Betancourt elected president in 1958criticized the government for this move, his administration benefited from the change, which boosted the state's share of profits to 70...
...Elections quickly followed, confirm- ing an overwhelming mandate for AD...
...17.Jennifer McCoy, "The Politics of Adjustment: Labor and the Venezuelan Debt Crisis," Journal of Interamerican Studies and WorldAffairs, 28 (Winter 1986-87), pp...
...Another was Rafael Caldera, who at the age of 77, was just elected president for the second time...
...The powerful domestic oil lobby in the United States, however, vetoed the arrangement...
...Yet, unless the country can transform its oil industry from a rent-generating enclave into a productive industry with linkages to the domestic economy, the warning issued by novelist Arturo Uslar Pietri in 1949 may yet prove prophetic, and Venezuela will be left "like the abandoned PotosI of the Spanish Conquest..., like those sites over which wealth flows without soaking in, leaving more poverty and sadness than before...
...For three yearsknown afterwards as the "trienio"AD energetically attempted to "sow the petroleum," dramatically accelerating the pace of reform initiated under Contreras and Medina...
...38 NCIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON VENEZUELA In April, 1959, after the United States had rebuffed offers to discount Venezuelan oil in return for larger quotas, Betancourt issued instructions to Venezuela's delegation of observers to the Arab Oil Summit held in Cairo, to discuss methods of collaboration to maintain the price of oil...
...The bourgeoisie initially prospered, but the deteriorating financial situation after 1956 turned them against the dictatorship...
...Now they proved able to control levels of production...
...1 8.Confidential interview with a PDVSA official, January 31, 1994...
...XXVII, No...
...Rafael Caldera's victory in the December 1993 elections was in large part due to popular resentment towards Perez' neoliberal policies.The maverick Christian democrat gave little indication of just what kind of oil policy he would implement...
...Between 1920 and 1936, the population living in rural areas declined from 72% to 58...
...Well-connected politicians and economic elites laundered money in and out of the multi-tiered system...
...Although he amassed a huge personal fortune, he also put the country's financial house in order...
...This connection hasat least until the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreement of 1989served as valuable political capital for the party...
...Medina was preparing tax legislation to restore the state's position when he was ousted from office in October of that year...
...The old dictator's death in 1935 unleashed regional peasant uprisings, militant trade-union activity, and university demonstrations...
...The boycott caused prices to quadruple overnight...
...This induced the government to place greater empha- sis on OPEC and on the policy of import-substitution industrialization (151...
...Facing a military emboldened by the onset of the Cold War, and isolated from other elites but unwilling to mobilize its By the trienlo, Betancourt, the unrivaled leader of AD, had abandoned militant anti-imperialism for reformism...
...8. On this relationship, see Hellinger, Venezuela: Tarnished Democracy, pp...
...3 (November/December 1993), pp...
...They established bases in Venezuela's mountains and in some of the poor barrios surrounding Caracas, but their rebellion quickly lost momentum...
...During his ten years in exile, Betancourt had cemented relations with Cold-War U.S...
...His autocratic rule, brutality, and Andean origins evoked comparisons with Gomez...
...1 5.On the origins of the armed struggle, see Elena Plaza, Historia de Ia lucha armada en Venezuela, 1960-1969 (Caracas: Centro Gumilla, Curso de Formacion Sociopolitica, 1976) and Luigi Valsalice, La guerrilla castrista en Venezuela, y sus protagonistas, 1962-1969 (Caracas: Ediciones Centauro, 1979), pp...
...Ironically, the authors of the coup included the leaders of AD, who had been sought out by military officers resentful of the army's domination by Gomecistas...
...banks, taking the first fateful step towards mortgaging future oil rents...
...Upon assuming office, however, he implemented a neoliberal program almost diametrically opposed to his policies of 1974 to 1978...
...Coup leader General Marcos Perez Jimnez auctioned off large new oil concessions, to the dismay of the dominant companies, but adhered to the 50/50 p01icy...
...He and his successor, General Isalas Medina Angarita (1941-1945), both Andeans, did enact significant new programs, such as establishing an investment fund, passing a progres- sive labor law, and expanding health care and education...
...liberals, like Senator John F. Kennedy...
...Gomez hoped that foreign capital, attracted by the stability he had imposed on the country, would unlock Venezuela's potential, but he could not have envisioned the dramatic changes about to unfold...
...Profits for 1945 slid back to 43...
...Unlike Gomez, however, Perez Jimnez attempted to build popular support both by acting the populist spendthrift, and by underwriting Venezuela's march toward industrializa- tion and modernity...
...In 1943, the new formula netted the government 60% of the profits...
...Perez II sought to privatize hotels, banks, airlines, and many other corporations created with oil rents, many of which were now mortgaged to foreign banks...
...Photos on the society pages of newspapers daily exposed the growing association between Colombian drug lords and Venezuelan politicians...
...gunboats, seized power in 1908...
...With regard to oil policy, their differences with Betancourt revolved more around control and use of oil earnings than around the presence of the oil companies in the country.'5 In 1969, most of them accepted an amnesty from newly elected President Caldera, gave up the armed struggle, and took up more conventional means of political activity...
...4. A good description of change under GOmez can be found in the essays in Manuel Caballero etal, Juan Vicente GOmezysu epoca (Caracas: Monte Avila Editores, 1988...
...AD was organized as a disciplined democratic-centralist party, in part because it initially operated clandestinely, and in part because Betancourt had applied political lessons learned during his brief stint as editor of the Communist newspaper in Costa Rica...
...At the same time, U.S...
...56-58...
...Perez I had subsidized industries and mandatedby decree expansion of employment in both the private and public sector...
...manufacturers to the Venezuelan market...
...Mexico had nationalized its petroleum industry in 1938, but Betancourt said that Venezuela would not follow suit...
...Increased production and higher taxes made up for the decline, but these measures evoked old fears that the oil would soon run out...
...VOL XXVII, No 5 MAR/APRIL 1994 37REPORT ON VENEZUELA popular base, the trienio government was overthrown on November 24, 1948...
...Falling prices and dwindling hard-currency reserves led to the devaluation of the bolIvar, which signaled the end of the bonanza...
...Formed to fight for democracy or even social revolution, these parties evolved into organizations compet- ing for their share in the oil-rent trough...
...An oil drilling platform on Lake Maracaibo...
...Political analysts in the 1960s underestimated OPEC's clout.'3 Indeed, prices for Venezuelan crude fell from $2.65 per barrel in 1957 to $1.81 in 1969...
...immigrant families with names like Boulton, Vollmer and Zuloagas accu- mulated new fortunes in commercial activities...
...His closest economic advisors are said to be critical of the provisions of the IMF agreement and the Colon accord, but sympathetic to the need to be flexible in allowing the state company to deal with foreign investors.18 Certainly, Caldera will not blindly turn over to the highest bidder the assets accumulated during the oil boom...
...Medina even developed a tacit alliance with the Communists who, in 1938, split with Betancourt, after the latter had insisted on maintaining autonomy from the directives of the Comintern...
...The ensuing social transformation was arguably the most dramatic in Latin America this century...
...During the trienio, AD was a party with a split personality: a reformist, cautious leadership with a zeal- ous, activist base.'2 Though the party rolled up hugeup to 70%electoral majorities, the partisan zeal of adeco cadre alienated more moderate sectors of the modernizing political elite, including Rafael Caldera and his social Christian Committee for Independent Electoral ActionCopeiwhich was founded in 1946 as a conservative counterweight to AD...
...19 Proven returns are at historic highs, so the oil has not run out as Venezuelan intellectuals have feared for 50 years...
...In the early 1960s, disappointed in Betancourt's lukewarm reformism, angered by his expulsion of leftists from AD ranks, and inspired by the Cuban revolution, young Communist and adeco radicals enlisted in an armed insurrection...
...The outcome of the 1958 election would be respected, but the winner would accord a measure of power to the others...
...Whether the contest was for control of unions, student associations, chambers of commerce, professional associations, or neighborhood associations, and whether it took place at the national, regional, or local level, the prize for the parties was the same: a greater share of state subsidies from oil-export rents...
...While corruption was endemic during the boom years, it became more corrosive now in times of scarcity...
...Producers for the domestic market now had to compete with a flood of imports...
...Caldera, the winner of the 1968 election, encouraged new metallurgical industries in the oil-producing state of Zulia and the eastern indus- trial region of Guayana, away from the traditional manufacturing centers west of Caracas...
...The twentieth century began for Venezuela in December 1935, when dictator Juan Vicente Gomez died in his bed after a quarter century in power...
...Many of the young radicals who had mobilized opposition in the streets expected Betancourt and AD not just to hold elections, but to lead a social revolution, following in the footsteps of Cuba...
...VOL XXVII, No 5 MAR/APRIL 1994 35REPORT ON VENEZUELA Gomez dictatorship...
...The gears of partidocracia were lubricated by oil rents...
...Betancourt had always insisted that the party would only seek power through elections, but when negotiations with Medina over a transition to democratic rule failed, he accepted the overtures of the coup plotters...
...He reinforced this VOL XXVII, No 5 MAR/APRIL 1994 39REPORT ON VENEZUELA nationalist image by forging friendly relations with Cuba and by supporting the Sandinista rebels against Somoza...
...Asdrubal Baptista, Caldera's minister of economic reform, summed up the problem recently: "In 1980-81, Venezuela received some $20 billion from petroleum, and we were 13 million inhabitants...
...His evolution is discussed and the document reproduced in Arturo Sosa and Eloi Lengrand, Del garibaldismo estudiantil a Ia izquierda criolla, los origenes marxistas del proyecto deAD (1928-1935) (Caracas: Ediciones Centauro, 1981...
...Using special powers granted by Congress, Perez channeled the petrodollar flood into Plan V, a crash program of expanded social services and massive support of energy and metallurgical industries, espe- cially those of the Corporacion Venezolana de Guayana (CVG) based in the state of BolIvar...
...under Perez lithe state company negotiated a deal approved by a Copei-AD majority in January, 1994 guaranteeing its foreign partners (Shell, Exxon and Mitsubishi) an exemption from any tax increase on profits from the huge new Cristobal Colon liquified natural gas project...
...Betancourt and his successor, Ratil Leoni, pressed the United States to negotiate a new commercial agreement to guarantee Venezuelan oil privileged access to the U.S...
...Now Venezuelans could truly say "ci petroieo es nuestro," the oil is ours...
...Playing on nationalist sentiment, AD has maintained that its oil policy provoked company and U.S...
...During the Federalist War of 1858 to 1864 alone, 60,000 to 100,000 Venezuelansapproximate- ly one in every 20died.2 The many revolts were sparked by the resentment of rural landowners toward the financial, commercial, and governmental elites in Caracas...
...ened the crisis of the monoculture economy, particularly for coffee growers unable to compete effectively with Brazil, Mexico and Central America in world markets...
...and the educational system strained to train people for commerce, banking, engineering and other white-collar occupations.5 This increasingly urban and pluralistic social order could not sustain a nineteenth-century autocracy dominated by a regionalAndeanelite...
...Nationalization suddenly became a palatable option for the oil companies...
...The companies had fiercely argued that taxes, like royalties, were contrac- tually fixed at the time concessions were made, and could therefore not be increased...
...Though Gomez had laid the foundations for the first central, national state apparatus since independence, Venezuela remained locked in a classic pattern of monoculture dependencecacao on the coast, cof- fee in the Andes, hides on the plainswith little promise of development...
...Perez himself may have become one of the richest men in the hemisphere...
...Subsequent pacts with the leading business organiza- tions, the military and the Catholic Church guaranteed that the new government would take into account the vital interests of each...
...Within a decade, subsidiaries of three major oil companies (Standard, Shell, and Gulf) had developed vast new fields in Lake Maracaibo and the eastern plains...
...New economic groups and individuals accrued vast fortunes, frequently based upon real-estate speculation, commissions, and massive corruption...
...He even embraced Nelson D. Rockefeller, whom he had scorned in 1939 as an "evangelical huckster...
...Perez I had nationalized basic industries and created massive new state corporations...
...20 Democracy Over a Barrel: History Through the Prism of Oil 1. Venezuela: A Centuty of Change (Palo Alto, Ca...
...Like other caudillos before him, Gomez governed in alliance with, rather than against the urban elite, but unlike earlier strongmen, he managed to subordinate regional caudillos once and for all...
...6. Juan Liscano, quoted in Carmela Vilda, Proceso de Ia cultura en Venezuela, III (Caracas: Centro Gumilla, 1984), p. 3. 7. Betancourt laid out his blueprint in the Plan de Barranquilla, written in exile in 1931...
...Charges and counter-charges were hurled back and forth in public, but the highly politicized judiciary seemed paralyzed to restore pro- bity...
...Indeed, it vitiated Medina' s achievement: the assertion of Venezuela's sovereign right to raise taxes...
...3. Eveling Bravo and Napoleon Franceschi, Problemas de Ia historia contemporanea (Valencia: Vandell Hermanos, 1980), pp...
...This system of party hege- mony has invited comparisonespecially in the field of laborto the PRI's dominance in Mexico, with the caveat that the Venezuelan system evolved into a twoparty version, with smaller quotas of influence allocated to the small leftist parties...
...In 1922, half-way through Gomez' reign, the first oil gusher was struck in Lake Maracaibo, in the western state of Zulia...
...we can count on $5 billion, and we are 22 million inhabitants...
...20.Arturo Uslar Pietri, De una a otra Venezuela (Caracas: Monte Avila Editores, 1972, reprint of 1946 edition...
...Whereas "adeco" once meant opposition to the corruption of military dictators, now "vivir a Ia adeco" became synonymous with corruption...
...Betancourt, Caldera and other non-Communist party leaders agreed to put aside the bitter, partisan rancor that had weakened civilian government during the trienio...
...He raised wages and expanded employment by decree, compensating employers with higher subsi- dies...
...56-58...
...This dialogue led to the formation of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC...
...The nationalization of oil brought to a close the 40-year-long ascent of populist democracy in Venezuela, in which the bourgeoisie, peasantry, working class, and middle class were united in a coalition to wrest a larger share of rent from the companies...
...T he economic mess left behind by Perez Jimnez, combined with declining oil prices, led to a recession and added to the political instability of the new regime...
...During the latter war years, howev- er, the rising price of oil eroded the state's share of profits...
...8 Rockefeller, then coordinator of Latin American affairs for the State Department, recognized that Betancourt was pursuing a program consistent with the long-run interests of the oil companies and expanding North American capital...
...103-138...
...13-16...
...217-218...
...The founders of the liberal regime presently in crisis matured during the final years of the B etancourt and his contemporariesknown as the Generation of 1928 after a university protest against the dictatorship they organized that yearrallied the small working class, the grow- ing urban middle class, and the peasants under the banners of democracy and economic modernization...
...Unsure of where an insurrection might lead, the middle-class leadership opted for a more orderly, constitutional transition to democracy...
...Taking advantage of the Allied thirst for oil during World War II, and relying on the Communists whose rivalry with AD grew steadily bitterto rally support from workers and students, Medina got the oil companies to recognize the government's right to raise new taxes on their profits...
...111-232...
...In fact, the oil companies were not badly served by the trienio government...
...The Venezuelan oil industry has continued to perform well by any capitalist standards, never dropping below a 30% rate of return even at the nadir of falling prices in 1986...
...27-28...
...In 1994 we will receive between $8 and $10 billion, of which a significant portion is compromised by external obligations...
...As Perez prepared to assume office, his hand was strengthened by the fourth Arab-Israeli War and the ensuing Arab oil boycott which sent oil prices sky high...
...In the 1890s, it was the turn of caudillos from the Andes, a coffeegrowing region, to march on Caracas...
...a small, but strategic working class began to make itself felt in the oil enclaves, ports and construction...
...He created an effective national army, and constructed a communications and transportation system that enabled him to deploy that army rapidly and effectively...
...Daniel Hellinger, Venezuela: Tarnished Democracy (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1991), pp...
...1 6.See Steve ElIner, "A Tolerance Worn Thin: Corruption in the Age of Austerity," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol...
...As an intellectual observed in 1976, Those of us born in the second decade of this century and aware from our youth of the decadence of agrarian Venezuela, are able only with difficulty to reconcile our memories with the present image of a society predomi- nantly urban and sinking into the depths of consumerism.6 Since 1935, the parties and movements which sprang to life have generally assumed that the oppor- tunity to modernize and develop the economy was temporary, dependent upon the ability to "sow the oil" before it ran out...
Vol. 27 • March 1994 • No. 5
