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An Old Andean Custom. Venezuelan independence dates back to 1821, when one of hemisphere history's towering figures, Simón Bolivar, finally drove the Spanish rulers out of his homeland and went on to free the neighboring nations. Bolivar had no illusions that he had brought U.S.-style democracy to the liberated lands; he died predicting that in the Americas, "Ecuador will be the convent, Colombia the university, Venezuela the barracks." He knew his countrymen well; soldiers have ruled Venezuela through most of its history. Many of them were from the high western Andes, where to celebrate their own character, the mountain men sing:
Strong as the tree against the wind, Strong as the rock against the river, Strong as the mountain snow against the sun.
Out of this pride, the Andeans through the years have built a tradition that they, rather than natives of the listless lowlands or of luxury-loving Caracas, have a natural claim to run the country.
All the Venezuelan Presidents from 1899 to 1945 came from a section of the Andes around San Cristóbal. Marcos Pérez Jiménez comes from nearby Michelena, a tiny settlement founded by one of his ancestors, where he was born on April 25, 1914. His father, 70 years old at the time, was a small-time cattleman and coffee planter, his mother a schoolteacher from Colombia.
One day Marcos' elder brother Juan arrived home in a braid-bedecked uniform from Venezuela's main military academy, and Marcos decided to become an officer too. His nearsightedness barred him from his first choice, the air force, so he took the school's two-year course in artillery, and at 18 got his first command, a battery of two venerable cannon. After a stretch of teaching at the academy, Pérez Jiménez finished his own military education with three years at the Peruvian War College in Lima. By 1945 he was a major, and—like 16 other young war-school graduates —rebelliously resentful that his studies had brought him only low pay and petty commands under politically appointed generals.
No less resentful was a politico named Rómulo Betancourt, whose left-wing but anti-Communist party, Acción Democrática (A.D.) was having rough going at the hands of the general then in the presidency. One night Pérez Jiménez and a few other officers secretly sought out Betancourt. Said Pérez Jiménez: "Why don't you come along with us in a movement that would dignify the country and purify the armed forces?" Army and A.D. joined in a successful revolution that killed 300 and wounded 1,500.
"It Is Inadmissible . . ." Betancourt became President, taking Major Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, who had played a key role in the army revolt, as his War Minister. Under Betancourt, A.D. wrote a constitution that guaranteed every civil right the party could think of. A.D. encouraged unions. It gave Venezuela its first free and universal presidential election, with the party's candidate, Novelist (Doña Barbara) Rómulo Gallegos, winning three to one. Most important, A.D. worked out and ratified the historic 50-50 contract with the oil companies—the golden rule that was later to benefit no one more than the officer Betancourt assigned as army chief of staff: Marcos Pérez Jiménez.