In this slender volume Venezuelan historian Pacheco traces the ancestry of his country’s iron-fisted dictator, Juan Vicente Gómez, back to early sixteenth-century Extremadura. From that cradle of conquerors Captain Pedro Gómez de Orozco, a participant in the conquest of Nueva Granada, brought the family line to America. The author provides sketchy biographical data on nine generations of his descendants— soldiers, encomenderos, ranchers—down to Juan Vicente’s father, a farmer-businessman of the extreme western part of Venezuela.
Pacheco’s genealogical study is based primarily on civil and ecclesiastical records deposited in archives in Pamplona, Colombia, and in the strongman’s home state of Táchira (the Colombia-Venezuela border zone being the locale of the Gómez clan from the conquest onward). The book will not stir up any more interest than other works of this type except for the contribution it makes toward settling a minor politico-historical squabble. Anti-Gómez writers have claimed that he was actually born on the Colombian side of the border, and that he was not born on July 24, Simón Bolivar’s birthday, as the dictator held. In reply, the author demonstrates rather convincingly that Gómez definitely was born on the now-famous La Mulera hacienda in western Táehira, not in Colombia, and that, according to an ostensibly authentic baptismal record, he was indeed born on the anniversary of the Liberator’s birth. Otherwise we learn little about General Gómez’ origins that helps explain the primitive strength and ruthlessly brilliant cunning with which he maintained himself in power for twenty-seven years.
