The Role of Postcards in Disseminating the Nuevo Ideal Nacional of Marcos Pérez Jiménez

Abstract

The dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez engaged a variety of cultural texts to push the sense of spectacle and tangible progress that was central to the Nuevo Ideal Nacional – a positivist infused set of ideas that placed a premium on economic development and social well-being. This article considers the role postcards played in constructing an idealized visual lexicon for perezjimenismo . Postcards of the period projected an image of modernity to Venezuelans and foreign visitors alike. They indicated what the government deemed important – public works, flagship architectural projects, and infrastructure. The lexicon of modernity established by postcards and other photographic texts came to be widely disseminated and understood – although such images clearly occluded other ‘realities’ within Caracas. Though the focus of the article is on period postcards, the article considers the way in which contemporary photographers have inverted traditional postcard tropes to produce images that present the modern Caracas as a dystopian space.