Venezuelan Tyranny Prospers:
ALEXANDER, ROBERT J.
The Marcos Perez Jimenez regime, having established a complete dictatorship, is now milking oil revenues without any regard for the nation's future Venezuelan Tyranny Prospers By Robert J....
...A third, Alberto Carnevali, was allowed to die of cancer in San Juan de los Morros, after failing to receive adequate medical assistance...
...Other officers are undoubtedly ambitious to take Perez Jimenez's place, and he can never feel secure in the Presidency...
...Future Venezuelan generations will suffer from this failure to take advantage of the current prosperity...
...In December 1952, the military regime thought it had sufficiently crushed the opposition so that it could afford the luxury of an election...
...Ever since 1948, when a military coup overthrew the Democratic Action government of President Romulo Gallegos, the Democratic Action party has been given even more brutal treatment than that meted out recently to the Copey...
...Agricultural development programs begun under the Democratic Action Government have been scuttled: the Venezuelan Development Corpora-lion is starved for funds...
...The Marcos Perez Jimenez regime, having established a complete dictatorship, is now milking oil revenues without any regard for the nation's future Venezuelan Tyranny Prospers By Robert J. Alexander ON JANUARY 14, Rafael Caldera and most of the Executive Committee of the Venezuelan Copey party were arrested by the Government of President Marcos Perez Jimenez...
...Since the 1952 election, it has not been allowed to publish party literature and has had to resort to illegal methods...
...the various parties campaigned with little interference from the Government...
...The regime is spending most of its oil profits on a tremendous building program in Caracas and some provincial cities...
...it was allowed to continue its operations unhindered, and has gained considerable ground...
...It is building skyscrapers, installing broad avenues and boulevards, and laying out streets in numerous upper middle-class and upper-class residential areas...
...The only labor group existing in 1948 which has not been touched by the Government is the Federation of Workers of the Federal District, controlled by one faction of the Venezuelan Communist party...
...The principal ones were rounded up and deported to Panama, while the smaller fry were sent to San Juan de los Morros...
...Nothing is being done to expand industry and agriculture as insurance against the day the oil bubble bursts...
...Nevertheless, the dictator and his clique are making the most of a good thing...
...At the same time, the counting of ballots was temporarily suspended...
...During the last three years, the Government has tried to form its own labor federation, establishing the so-called MOSIT, or Independent Workers Trade Union Movement...
...They are unlikely to receive any better treatment this time...
...When the Gallegos Government was overthrown, there were over 900 unions, with 300,000 members, most of them affiliated with the Confederation of Workers of Venezuela...
...Perez Jimenez's chief rival for absolute power within the original junta, Colonel Carlos Delgado Chal-baud, was mysteriously kidnaped and killed in 1950...
...Some were sent to the concentration camp in the jungles of the Orinoco River valley, where several have died, but most of them still languish in the San Juan de los Morros penitentiary...
...Virtually all civilian elements in Venezuela are now united against the Perez Jimenez regime, whose power rests entirely on Army bayonets...
...Since then, most of the nation's other unions have been dissolved...
...Some money has been spent on workers' housing and a few Caracas slums have been torn down...
...Thereafter, the Democratic Republican Union leaders were treated as badly as those of Democratic Action...
...Much of the oil income has also gone to the Army, but no one can determine the exact amount being spent on arms, planes, tanks and other implements designed to tighten the bonds of dictatorship...
...The Copey chiefs have reportedly been undergoing brutal torture at the hands of the notorious National Security Police...
...This group will almost certainly join the peronista continental labor movement, ATLAS, whose representatives were much in evidence at the Confederation's founding congress...
...What seems to have finally doomed the Copey was a party manifesto denouncing the Perez Jimenez Government's part in the recent attempt to invade Costa Rica...
...The arrest of the Copey leaders indicates that the dictatorship's position is not as secure as it appears...
...Thus, the Perez Jimenez regime has dropped the last pretense at being anything but a naked military dictatorship...
...The Government has even mistreated those in its own military group who show any signs of opposition...
...A year later, the Federation of Petroleum Workers, the country's largest union, was disbanded...
...The pre-election period was marked by comparatively wide freedom...
...Indeed, while not supporting the dictatorship, it has done its best not to offer provocation to Perez Jimenez and has sought to take advantage of what little democracy remains in Venezuela to put its point of view before the people...
...All democratic institutions have been suppressed, and even organizations like the Agriculturalists' Association and the Chamber of Commerce are regimented...
...The Perez Jimenez regime has thus established a dictatorship rivaling in ferocity the Juan Vicente Gomez regime of some years ago...
...The Democratic Action party had been outlawed...
...Early in 1950, most of the party's important trade-union leaders were arrested...
...All the principal leaders were arrested immediately after the coup, though President Gallegos, ex-President Romulo Betancourt, and various members of their governments were finally released and deported as a result of international pressure...
...The regime extended legal recognition to the Communist union a few weeks after the November 1948 coup...
...The Democratic Republican Union, though a bitter opponent of the Democratic Action governments, has also been persecuted...
...In other cases, the Government seized control of legitimate unions by holding fraudulent elections or removing elected leaders...
...Venezuela is riding high on a petroleum wave and production is steadily mounting...
...Most of the "unions" affiliated with the MOSIT were created overnight for the purpose and given legal recognition...
...The Government, however, has given the Copey little chance to function democratically...
...Rumors of vast corruption are rife in Caracas, and there is little doubt that the regime's leaders are becoming very wealthy as a result of the country's general prosperity...
...The Copey party is not a radical group and hence cannot possibly be branded "Communist" like the nation's other two democratic parties, Democratic Action and the Democratic Republican Union...
...Over a year ago, the regime tried unsuccessfully to form a "dissident" Copey group in the mountain states of Tachira and Andes, where the party is strongest...
...As this is written, they are still in jail...
...It is a Catholic social party, backed by a considerable part of the Church hierarchy...
...When the returns started coming in, however, the Democratic Republican Union, hitherto a small party, was found to be winning an overwhelming victory...
...Faced with this situation, the three-man military junta which had been ruling up to then dissolved itself and Colonel Perez Jimenez was declared provisional President...
...The Confederation was dissolved early in 1949...
...The Copey was coming in second, carrying all before it in the mountain states, while the Government party was running a poor third...
...So, too, do the constant rumors of attempted coups d'etat by Army elements...
...One of the groups which has fared worst is the trade-union movement...
...Even before the 1952 election, its principal leaders were frequently arrested...
...Three major groups participated in the vote: the Copey, the Democratic Republican Union, and the Government's so-called Independent Electoral Front...
...Last December, the MOSIT held a national congress to launch a National Confederation of Labor...
...A year ago, when the same men were jailed for eight days, they were held incommunicado in a damp cell without beds or cots and with inadequate food...
...Several days later, the Government announced that the Independent Electoral Front had won a strong majority, the Copey had come in second, and the Democratic Republican Union had ended third...
...An officers' club, costing tens of millions of dollars, has been erected in the center of Caracas...
...Two general secretaries of the party were assassinated in the streets of Caracas when they tried to carry on party activities...
...The great crime of Perez Jimenez's economic program is that only piddling sums are being spent to develop Venezuela's economy...
...The jailing of the Copey leaders resulted...
Vol. 38 • March 1955 • No. 11
