By JOSÉ ALBERTO OLIVAR
At the outset, it is worth noting that the book discussed here is not a biographical text, much less another book about the presidency of General Eleazar López Contreras. Those who wish to corroborate their own certainties will not find in the voluminous work written by Edgardo Mondolfi Gudat the slightest hint of a plaintive breaking latest news, that is what the other books are for.
Let’s agree, how much do we Venezuelans know about the career of López Contreras, beyond the hackneyed refrain of the man who “knew how to wait for his time” and the ruler who “overcame a difficult transition” after the end of a dying dictator. It seems that the historical figure of General López is reduced to a few laconic phrases that adorn some worthy initiatives such as the February Program and the reduction of the presidential term. Thus, we can realize that after the very long parenthesis between 1899 and 1931, López leaves the political scene, just as he entered, due to an accident in history. From 1941 to 1945, a period began dotted with the talk of palace politics, followed by an apparent definitive retirement from public life, barely interrupted by the obsequious gesture of a former enemy in 1963 and a controversial vote in 1968 with reason for the election of the leadership of the Senate of the Republic. Until then, General López seems elusive in the headlines of the press. However, was that really the role he had to play? Or there is much more to it.
Perhaps the overreach that General Medina Angarita achieved, regarding the coup d’état that overthrew him on October 18, 1945, made López Contreras an accessory character. It is a commonplace when referring to the almost 10 years that go from 1936 to 1945, the sometimes interested emphasis on the Medina government and its untimely fall. López is reduced to the cliché of a Gomero “general reactionary” who only wanted to return to power.
This example of our natural historical reductionism forces us to take a stand and look more carefully not only at the facts, but also at the underlying process.
The content of the book entitled The Dangerous Crossroads moves in that direction. López Contreras, Medina Angarita and the Venezuela of the 1940s, published by the Urban Culture Foundation (2023), as part of the ambitious editorial project called Siglo XX Venezuelano, directed by Elías Pino Iturrieta.
As a clear warning, Mondolfi tells us that those who, for one reason or another, made an effort to protect the historical figure of General López did nothing other than blur him, despite the former president’s efforts to go out into the arena to defend his work with his pen. of government and its political imprint. López had a keen historical sense long before coming to power; he knew very well how the ins and outs of politics moved and how the instructive finger of history permeates human behavior.
An added value of the book, which makes it very different from what exists in the inventory, is the exhaustive review that the author made of the personal archive of Eleazar López Contreras. And not because it was a stroke of good luck to have received the approval of the heirs of the Andean general to listen to his private papers, but rather because, as a historian attached to the rigor of research and hermeneutics, he did not mortgage his opinion to the complacency. The chapters that make up the work collect the testimony not only of López, but also of Tyrians and Trojans, reflected in letters, obituaries, opinion articles, memoranda, among others.
Proof of this is reflected in the revealing testimony of an adherent to the Lopez cause in 1945: “The Pedevists no longer know what to do… There is a revolution in the country because of your candidacy” (p. 353). The above is not a minor fact, especially if the deep animosity that was beginning to take shape in the opposing ranks is correct: “We do not underestimate the forces of the ruling party, this would be foolish; but we also do not underestimate the power of the groups that support López Contreras’ candidacy” (p. 356). Mondolfi does not hesitate to assert that General López’s electoral chances were encouraging. Keep in mind that the election of the President of the Republic, according to the constitutional order of the time, corresponded to the senators and deputies, although in practice the will of the “great elector” was common. However, for 1946 the risk of a landslide in the official ranks was foreseen and that a part of these currents would finally find a channel in the candidacy of the former president, despite the soft power that the Medinista government varnished.
And that caused a bitter taste in the mouths of those who had distanced themselves from General López and were now clinging to the shadow of General Medina. The anti-López campaign that initially managed to distance the two main figures from the power structure that had prevailed since 1899, known as Andinismo, took hold when the former president’s supporters began to raise his name to return to occupy the position in the period. 1946-1951. Given that resolution, the initial attempts at compromise were unsuccessful, since López was convinced that Medina had sinned from “ideological inconsistency” by agreeing with exogenous forces that benefited the country at all or very little, that is, the “communists”, as as he called them.
For López, communism was the antithesis of everything he understood by order, progress and country. He had already highlighted this during his presidency, in which he unleashed a furious campaign of persecution and exile against anyone who emanated the Marxist-Leninist stink in these lands. Beyond the manipulations orchestrated from the international sphere, López was convinced that those circumstantial alliances resulting from the war would sooner or later collapse, which is why it was necessary to confront communist infiltration.
Such an unshakable position went against the sealed coexistence between the supporters of the Medina government, grouped around the Venezuelan Democratic Party (PDV) and the communists sheltered under the acronym of the Venezuelan Popular Union (UPV), a fact that was considered important for ensure the progressive march of Medinism.
So for those who cultivated the benefits of this political-electoral alliance, it was necessary to block the way for López’s possible return. It is not an outburst to affirm that the entry into the electoral arena of the name of Ambassador Diógenes Escalante, a friend and countryman of López, was a laboratory candidacy, very well planned, to try to influence the general’s mood, since he had treasured his preference on the occasion of the presidential election of 1941. Medina and Uslar knew it, hence that skillful move. However, this collapsed after learning of the official candidate’s mental disqualification.
López did not flinch, and when accepting support for his candidacy for the Presidency of the Republic, in a public event in Caracas, he said a phrase that raised alarm among his adversaries: “The Venezuelan people must know that , in a preferential place in my home, hanging is a campaign uniform, not to admire it as a historical relic, nor as a souvenir in the premature old age that my adversaries attribute to me, but to use it as a symbol (…) if necessary, against any subversive movement ” (p. 436).
Of course, the phrase was taken out of context, and General López was attributed the purpose of leading the country into an imminent bloodbath if he did not achieve his presidential whim, when in reality it was a clear institutionalist position of “lending his personal contest” to quell any barracks (pp. 437,438).
The cards were left out, the Medina government and the Adeist opposition set off their alarms, everyone began to draw up their accounts and accelerate their plans. After a few days, a group of young officers pulled out the parade that they had been preparing for a long time within the National Army, all with the aim of disrupting what General López was supposed to be plotting on his side.
More than a coup against President Medina Angarita, what happened on October 18, 1945 was a desperate action to prevent the return of López Contreras to power. Medina was just a piece on the board, his unwillingness to get involved in operations against the new established order says a lot, especially because between 1946 and 1947 the real danger that threatened the continuity of the collegiate government between the military and Democratic Action was the General López Contreras. Mondolfi, based on the primary sources he consulted, formulates a not inconsiderable judgment: “…the nemesis of Betancourt and other members of the Octobrist cast was never the deposed president Medina but the old general from Queniquea” (p. 482) .
It is not for nothing that the author of the book would borrow an expression from General López, on the occasion of announcing his willingness to enter the presidential contest scheduled to take place in the legislative chambers. Venezuela experienced a dangerous crossroads that year in 1945. It was not a temporary event, on the contrary, it was a deeply divided country. On the one hand, the military establishment in which insurmountable differences between a young officer corps eager to occupy the command positions that corresponded to them based on merit, and a superior officer corps, ossified by time, were moderated. And on the other hand, an increasingly complex society, in which organized expressions abounded in unions, professional guilds and political parties, each defending their class interests and the ideological beliefs that defined them. All of this constituted an absolute novelty that aroused misgivings and ultimately fears, since the notion of order, learned “the hard way,” was going down the drain.
The bitter pill that the return to the dictatorship would mean at the end of 1948 was partly the result of restlessness, the political immaturity of some, the unbridled ambition of others, in short, democratic inexperience in a society accustomed to being governed by the hand of the strong man and his entourage of aides.
That path of no return that confrontation always brings with it seemed to blur any possibility of conciliation. However, the epilogue inserted by the author highlights a fundamental fact: beyond “the resentments, resentments and poorly healed wounds” that even ten years later – 1958 – spread through the political epidermis of Venezuelans, there was the willingness to turn the page and everyone, not only Adecos, Copeyanos and Urredistas, but also Lopecistas, Medinistas and even some communists, “resolved to agree among themselves the necessary common minimums that would give support to a governance project capable of avoiding self-predation and cannibalism how characteristic they were in the 1940s” (p. 591).
That step must not have been easy, and as the author rightly points out, “peace never comes without effort”, it requires a lot of insight, detachment and, above all, good will. The bitter adversaries who deep down shared a common ideal finally understood that coexistence was possible in which the rest of the country would benefit.
*The dangerous crossroads. López Contreras, Medina Angarita and Venezuela in the 1940s. Edgardo Mondolfi Gudat. Foundation for Urban Culture. Venezuela, 2023.
The entry A López Contreras different from the conventional was first published in EL NACIONAL.