Rómulo Betancourt: His Historical Personality and the Genesis of Modern Democracy in Venezuela

Abstract

Germán Carrera Damas's book on Rómulo Betancourt (published originally in Venezuela almost a decade ago as Rómulo histórico: La personalidad histórica de Rómulo Betancourt vista en la instauración de la República popular representativa en la génesis de la democracia moderna en Venezuela) is a very important addition to contemporary revisionist scholarship on the former Venezuelan president and Punto Fijo–era democracy. Carrera Damas argues that Betancourt's political life was consciously historical because he was acutely aware of his actions' significance: the institutionalization of a liberal democracy in Venezuela that was socialist but pluralistic, nationalistic but not anti-imperialist, reformist and yet revolutionary. This vast essay, which might be difficult for those unfamiliar with Carrera Damas's work, has been thoughtfully translated by Elizabeth Lowe and is prefaced by historian John V. Lombardi's glimpse into his collaborations with Carrera Damas and the latter's standing in Venezuelan historiography.It would be hard to overstate Betancourt's historical significance, but while his leadership was once celebrated in the United States as a democratic bulwark against the Right and the Left, he remains mostly unknown outside specialist circles. As a civilian and a party builder, he lacks the romantic bravado of a caudillo and a bandit or the fascination of the strongman. But Betancourt's life has enough exploits and action to be reconsidered as a pivotal character of twentieth-century Latin America: student leader, political prisoner, exile, foreign agitator, political program writer, policy wonk, clandestine journalist, party organizer, coup plotter, revolutionary leader, survivor of multiple assassination attempts, democracy advocate, and twice president of Venezuela.Carrera Damas's book is not an ordinary biography but rather a celebration of the reflexive, intellectual basis of Betancourt's political action throughout his life. As such, it might seem like a departure for Carrera Damas, who during an academic career that has spanned seven decades has been the quintessential structuralist historian and the most adamant critic of ideological nonprofessional historians. Carrera Damas, a self-avowed Marxist during his early career, wrote two of his most influential books critiquing the abuse of official history and framing the Venezuelan national project—up to and including the democratic era—as an effort of different elites to forestall popular upheaval. Another relevant constant of his work has been to place Latin America's history in the longue durée of a truly universal history and not merely as a byproduct of Western or even Atlantic history. For Venezuela, this has meant tracing the various attempts to establish a liberal democratic republic by the people and the repeated efforts by authoritarian structures to quell this.In the book currently under review, Carrera Damas builds on his prior efforts by putting Betancourt's “historical personality” front and center in this longue durée history. A constant critic of great men historiography, Carrera Damas frames Betancourt in a different light: as a “democratic leader” going against the grain of Venezuelan traditional elites and leading a historically delayed popular movement to its (ultimately interrupted) conclusion. Using extensive archival work in correspondence, private papers, speeches, and editorials, Carrera Damas places Betancourt as a system creator, a pivot of “the long march of Venezuelan society toward democracy” (p. 82). Betancourt moved on from simple romantic voluntarism to draft a democratic political platform—1931’s Plan de Barranquilla—and to set about actualizing this platform by organizing Venezuela's first modern national mass political party. Carrera Damas puts Betancourt in a global context, as a leader committed to an Atlantic version of democratic liberties in the postwar Americas.Carrera Damas's effort runs in contrast to much literature about Venezuela's contemporary politics in English, which take a mostly critical view of the country's democratic crisis and decline. This book also revises the historiography on Betancourt and Acción Democrática, cutting through both left-wing and right-wing critiques (which are directly discussed in chapter 12).There are of course limitations and contradictions in what is a vast enterprise. There is the lack of a critical apparatus, omitted so as not to “overburden the text” (p. xxv). This is perhaps understandable for a Venezuelan academic audience, who might be familiar with some of Betancourt's most famous phrases (and even some more obscure ones), but it makes it difficult for English-speaking researchers to contrast Carrera Damas's arguments with primary sources, which hampers the strength of this essay as an introduction to Betancourt and his extensive archive. On a deeper level, one could argue that the book's approach diminishes the role of political allies, partners, and even Venezuelan society at large in a process in which Betancourt was admittedly a significant player. What were the political dynamics at play during the nation's “long march” to democracy? What were the reactions to Betancourt's political evolution? What compromises were reached, and what was lost in the process? This poses another issue: by identifying liberal democracy in Venezuela mainly with Betancourt's conscious efforts, Carrera Damas creates a sort of ideal type. Carrera Damas's chronological revision ends in 1964, the end of Betancourt's second administration. If the influence of Betancourt on the establishment of democracy in Venezuela stops in that year, is there nothing to be said about the process of deviations from this system in later decades, vis-à-vis the former president's own critiques?Nonetheless, this book, available for the first time in English, will remain one of the most significant and controversial works of Venezuelan political and intellectual history by one of its most important historians.