There is nothing in Venezuela's history that would have caused one to predict its governance by a democratic regime during the last half of the twentieth century. On the contrary, torn by regionalism and civil war during the nineteenth century and ruled by an old-fashioned dictator until 1935, Venezuela seemed doomed to autocratic politics. Escaping such a fate was a major achievement, one that was made possible by the Venezuelans' having a valuable resource – petroleum – which, for a time, supplied the income needed to finance the nation's development without threatening the wealthy; and by a generation of politicians who proved exceptionally skilled at creating mass organizations, placating the armed forces, and securing agreements among contending players that laid a foundation for constitutional rule.

Acción Democrática

Until 1935 the Venezuelan game was a traditional, dictatorial one. Between 1908 and 1935 the country was governed by Juan Vincente Gomez, a heavy-handed caudillo who modeled his rule after that of his nineteenth-century predecessors (Table 8.1). Among the few who protested his brutality was a group of university students who came to be known as the Generation of 1928, for the year in which they started their campaign for democratic government. It was from their nucleus that the Acción Democrática (AD) party was formed a decade later.

Gomez died in 1935, and the Venezuelan oligarchy was quick to replace him with officials who were no more eager to democratize the nation's politics than they were. They ran the nation with little serious opposition, and those who did protest were jailed, exiled, or forced underground.