The present work is among the recent publications of the Facultad de Economía of the Universidad Central de Venezuela. With a prologue by Dr. D. F. Maza Zavala, Director of the Instituto de Investigaciones, it would seem at first glance to fit closely with the several other studies in the series. However, a preliminary statement is more useful in saying what this book is not about. Furthermore, even this must be preceded by the comment that Brito Figueroa is neither a trained historian nor an economist, as he himself points out. He received his doctorate in an thropology, with this study serving as his dissertation.
This is not, then, an orthodox study. Brito Figueroa observes in his introductory remarks that sufficient research and writing on the general colonial economy has already been done. He has not undertaken a volume to supersede or to succeed the writings of such as Acosta Saignes, Arcila Farías, Salvador de la Plaza, or others. Rather, he has prepared an essentially Marxian interpretive book, one in which he deals extensively with the functions and interrelationships among the various major sources of production. What he views as the development of productive economic forces also receives major attention.
The author’s avowed purpose, then, is to employ Marxian historical materialism and what he regards as the laws of social change to understand the economic events of colonial Venezuela. The use of a consistent dialectical process is believed to be the most fruitful way of analyzing the economic forces of the colonial period so as to have some meaning for the present day. And so, in one of the innumerable quotes from Marx, Brito Figueroa echoes the sentiment that “the means of production of material life condition the process of social, political, and spiritual life in general.”
Almost at the outset, he states three of the major questions which he hopes to illuminate. Firstly, what kind of basic economic relations existed in the primitive indigenous communities? Secondly, what kind of economic structure was formed in the various regions of the colony as a consequence of the historical process of conquest and colonization? And thirdly, what qualitative changes occurred in the economic structure during the colonial epoch
These and related matters are then pursued in the course of a topical rather than purely chronological handling of the material. No clear or simple answers are provided, nor are individual chapters closed on similar notes. Among the broad topics covered at some length are the Indians and their commerce, pearl fishing and mining in the early formation of the colonial economy, and the structure of the agrarian sector. The latter receives extensive discussion, as does a subsequent section on agricultural production as related to the world capitalist market.
Brito Figueroa is painstaking in his research and thorough in examining the existing literature. His investigations have also been conducted in the archives of several nations in addition to that of Venezuela. His Marxist approach fades into the background from time to time. The explicitly ideological and dialectical analysis comes through most strongly in the latter chapters, notably the concluding one which attempts to summarize the evolution of the economic structure. The author handles Marxian doctrine and analysis with considerable skill, although not always with persuasiveness. If many will disagree with him, few will deny a thoughtful and original view of colonial Venezuela’s economic development.
