So many times in late years had the story come down to Caracas that for hours no one would believe it. Finally, though, there was no denying it: The Meritorious One (El Benemerito), was really dead. President Juan Vincente Gomez. 78, had died quietly in his bed of the uremia from which he suffered for many a month. With his General's cap and all his medals beside him, they laid him out in the village church at Maracay. All night long barefoot peasants shuffled past, their black eyes wide with wonder. In his lifetime canny Dictator Gomez made much of the fact that he was born on July 24, a holiday celebrated throughout South America as the birthday of the Liberator, Simon Bolivar. The day and hour of his death last week were reported to have coincided with those of Bolivar's 105 years ago.
No contemporary figure was ever more of a pain to serious liberals than Juan Vincente Gomez. A thoroughgoing reprobate, he became Dictator of Venezuela 27 years ago when Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler had scarcely a political thought in their heads. Though for appearances sake he sometimes gave up the office of President, he always remained the iron-fisted boss who put down every attempt at revolution more ruthlessly than Germany's famed blood purge of 1934. The secret police of Germany, Russia and Italy are notable organizations. They fade into insignificance before those of Dictator Gomez. For every policeman in Caracas Dictator Gomez kept twelve spies, .male & female, on his payroll. No shotgun was ever big enough to make Dictator Gomez marry and before his death last week he had produced at least So bastards. One of them, Gonzalo, got himself shot last week attempting to stage a deathbed marriage for his mother. From graft alone he assembled the second largest private fortune in South America, estimated at over $100,000,000.*
But: Venezuela was one of few countries in the world last week with a balanced budget and a treasury surplus. Not a single foreigner owns a Venezuelan government bond and her money is the soundest in the world. Venezuela claims to have the finest highway system in Latin America, built entirely since 1912 and largely by the forced labor of political prisoners. Farmers pay no land taxes at all and may borrow up to 50% of the value of their land from a government farm bank. Caracas has been rebuilt. School attendance has been upped 300%. There is little or no unemployment.
A cattleman, and the son of a cattleman, Juan Vincente Gomez first appeared on the Venezuelan political scene 43 years ago when at the age of 35 he came tearing out of the Andean foothills at the head of a regiment of hard-riding gauchos to support with his neighbor, Cipriano Castro, the government of President Aldueza Palacio in one of the country's innumerable revolutions. They guessed wrong. The successful revolutionists exiled Gomez & Castro. Seven years later another revolution left Cipriano Castro President of Venezuela and General Gomez Vice President and Minister of War. President Castro's vices and extravagances nearly bankrupted the nation. In 1908 when Castro was in Germany attempting to have his liver repaired, General Gomez and his henchmen seized the country.