There are few scholars and students in the field of Latin American affairs who will fail to recognize that The Caribbean: Venezuelan Development: A Case History is another in the series of volumes comprised of papers delivered at the annual Caribbean Conferences of the University of Florida. That in itself is sufficient recommendation for this book, but as one who has attended several of these conferences and specifically the Thirteenth on which this volume is based, I may state that it has a special quality and significance. The papers are not the usual scholarly presentations in the professional sense, but are confessions of faith and in most eases blueprints for action on the part of men deeply involved in shaping Venezuela’s future. The specialist (particularly among the historians) may feel that for proper perspective the volume could use a solid background paper, but he will be consoled by the intelligent manner in which the Venezuelan participants state their problems and the confidence and optimism with which they propose to solve them.
The list of contributors to this volume is remarkable for its distinction. It includes statesmen and scholar Arturo Uslar Pietri, who movingly compares the determination with which Venezuelans of today seek the “City of Justice” with the fervor with which their ancestors sought the “City of Gold,” and idealist-industrialist Eugenio Mendoza, who with humaneness and vision tackles the problem of low-income housing. In the field of education, though Francisco de Venanzi, Rector of the Central University of Venezuela, speaks for state-sponsored education, and Santiago Vera Izquierdo, Dean of the College of Engineering of the Andrés Bello Catholic Universtiy, extols the virtues of privately-endowed education, both express the need for independence and integrity of scholarship in the development of a free society. Lorenzo Monroy, General Director of the Ministry of Education, points with pride to the success of Acción Democrática in attacking illiteracy, but spends more time outlining plans for financing education, classroom construction, and teacher training.
The enthusiasm and candor of the educational leaders is also evident in the statesmen who are concerned with government planning for economic development. Alejandro Oropeza Castillo, Governor of the Federal District, spoke at the conference in behalf of the then President Betancourt, and he clearly states the degree to which the AD government is committed to intervention in and direction of the economy, but he neither discounts nor threatens the role of private investment. He merely points out new directions, new goals, and new responsibilities. These points are further stressed by Enrique Tejera París, who indicates new ways in which capital may be infused into the economy indirectly through development institutions and specialized lending and mortgage-funding agencies. Since he delivered his paper at Gainesville, Dr. Tejera París has become Venezuela’s Ambassador to the United States. This fortunate appointment may be contrasted with the fact that Teodoro Moscoso, who writes on “Venezuela and the Alliance for Progress” (wherein he notes with satisfaction Venezuela’s actions in tax and fiscal reform and general development programming), has since resigned his Alliance post. In the realm of agrarian reform, Minister of Agriculture Víctor Manuel Giménez Landínez stresses the social function of land use rather than arbitrary land redistribution, which further indicates the “mixed” nature of the Venezuelan economy and the approach to development under AD. Even Armando González, leader of the campesino unions, reflects this approach in stating the need to increase and improve agricultural production and in mapping his campaign to redeem the farmer and farm laborer.
Much space is devoted to the role of the private sector of the economy in Venezuelan development. The businessmen, of course, state their own case vigorously, but there is a refreshing and enlightened attitude marking the papers included in this volume. One is particularly impressed with the way in which business leaders of obvious North American origin speak of their actions and themselves as “Venezuelan.” John F. Gallagher’s Sears-Roebuck and Harry Jarvis’ Creole Petroleum are part of the Venezuelan community, and they go a long way towards atoning for the “sins” of the past. While Creole’s participation in the conference may be good public relations, nonetheless the open and frank manner of all the papers attests to its enlightenment. In fact, Peter R. Nehemkis, counsel for the Whirlpool Corporation, makes a spirited denunciation of old-style, freebooter capital and calls upon private investment to forget about “favorable atmospheres” and to step out into dynamic and even revolutionary situations.
I have tried to avoid comparing this volume with the conference itself, but one must regret that it cannot capture the realism of the films shown by Eugenio Mendoza of the work to be done in the “belts of misery” girding Venezuelan cities or the give-and-take of the question periods which followed the presentation of the papers. Nevertheless, this volume is more a “handbook for development” than a “case history” and as such it must be characterized as exciting.
