The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela

Abstract

This book examines the impact of the Venezuelan oil industry on the social and political development of the country. Although the book spans the oil industry’s development from its beginning in the nineteenth century to the arrival of the current administration of Hugo Chávez Frias in 1999, the author concentrates mainly on events that took place during the Juan Vicente Gómez dictatorship (1908 – 35), when the country became the second largest crude oil producer in the world. The book tries to prove that the oil industry was the modernizing conduit for the country, but there is no adequate definition of what is meant by modernization. The few examples given refer to the haphazard development of townships that became cities. Possible indicators of modernity, such as the introduction of electricity, banking facilities, or sports played by the oil community do not help. The first bank in Maracaibo was opened in 1878 and the first electric generator was installed in the city in 1888. The quintessentially American and English games of baseball and cricket were played by the expatriate oil community, but cricket never caught on, and baseball only took off after 1941 when Venezuela won the world championships in Havana, Cuba.The book suffers from a lack of essential facts on which to anchor the social and political impact of the industry. The author argues that the oil workers became a modernizing influence, but the total number of people employed by the oil companies is not given. The author relies instead on vague statements, such as that the oil industry’s labor force “remained exceedingly small” (p. 172). Detailed employment statistics appeared annually in the Development Ministry’s Memorias. In 1936, for instance, the ministry reported that the industry employed 13,754 workers directly (14 percent foreign) out of a national population of 3.4 million. The author also states that the oil industry in Zulia and other oil states was responsible for the largest internal migration of people in the country, but again the evidence contradicts such an assertion. John Robert Moore shows that between 1928 and 1936 the total migrant population accounted for 12 percent of the country’s population and that the oil states received 24 percent of total migrants. According to E. J. Stann, the majority of migrants went to Caracas, accounting for 25 percent of the city’s population in 1920 and rising to 40 percent in 1936. The reason for such a movement was the wage differential between urban and rural sectors, which existed long before the arrival of the oil companies. There is scant information on the wages paid in the oil industry compared with local wages. In 1917, the average wage in the mining sector was 33.3 percent higher than the oil industry. With the oil boom after 1922, wages increased and began to exert a slight pull in attracting rural labor to the region. In 1936, there were few industries in Zulia that could match the oil industry’s average monthly salary for native staff, but there were still three sectors, chemical firms, financial services, and transport services, that paid higher salaries than the oil companies.On the political front, the author inexplicably fails to mention the undisputed example of foreign political intervention by a hydrocarbon company. In 1901, the New York & Bermudez Co., owned by the Asphalt Company of America, contributed US$140,000 toward Manuel Antonio Matos’s Libertadora Revolution (1901 – 3), which almost toppled the government of Cipriano Castro (1899 – 1908). The author gives little credit to the Gómez dictatorship for tackling the abuses perpetrated by the oil companies during the early part of the 1920s in Zulia. The appointment of Vincencio Pérez Soto as state president of Zulia in 1926 was partly to bring order to the oil industry that he found out of control. The author refers to a racist undercurrent in both the oil companies and the Venezuelan elite, but the examples quoted can be found in almost any of the expatriate literature of the time describing the native population. Indeed, it would be remarkable to find the contrary, especially as racial segregation existed in the US southern states up to the 1960s, and the British ruled a vast empire.In spite of the lack of a convincing argument that the oil industry had a modernizing influence, the book adds value in its treatment and description of the social development and activities that took place within the oil industry. The author manages to bring to life an important and fascinating aspect of the oil industry that is not often seen in the literature.