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Populist Anxiety: Race and Social Change in the Thought of Romulo Gallegos*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Doug Yarrington
Doug Yarrington*
Affiliation:
Adams State College, Alamosa, Colorado
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Extract

Novelist and statesman Rómulo Gallegos (1884-1969) played a key role in the emergence of Venezuelan populism, first by inscribing the populist rationale for change in a series of novels—most famously in Doña Bárbara (1929)—and later by lending his prestige to Acción Democrática (AD), the nation’s most successful populist party. A founding member of AD, Gallegos supported the coup that brought the party to power in 1945 and became the party’s standard bearer in 1947, winning Venezuela’s first presidential election based on universal suffrage and direct voting. As president, he advanced AD’s reform agenda for almost a year before the military removed him from office and imposed a reactionary dictatorship. Forced into exile, Gallegos returned to his homeland when the dictatorship fell in 1958 and spent his remaining years as a revered elder statesman and acclaimed cultural figure.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , July 1999 , pp. 65 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1999

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Footnotes

*

The author thanks Judy Ewell, Naomi Lindstrom and Orlando Pérez, as well as three anonymous reviewers, for comments on earlier versions of this work.

References

1 Representative works sympathetic to Gallegos include Liscano, Juan, Rómulo Gallegos y su tiempo (Caracas: Monte Avila, 1980);Google Scholar and Dunham, Lowell, Rómulo Gallegos, vida y obra (Mexico City: Ediciones de Andrea, 1957).Google Scholar For more critical approaches, see Alonso, Carlos, “Otra sería mi historia: Allegorical Exhaustion in Doña Bárbara,” MLN 104:2 (March 1989), 418–438;Google Scholar Howard, Harrison Sabin, Rómulo Gallegos y la revolución burguesa de Venezuela (Caracas: Monte Avila, 1976);Google Scholar and Claudette Rosegreen-Williams, , “Rómulo Gallegos’s Doña Bárbara: Toward a Radical Reading,” Symposium 46:4 (Winter 1993), 279–296.Google Scholar

2 In this essay, “populism” refers to political movements led primarily by members of the middle class who seek to moblize urban and rural working classes against an entrenched oligarchy allied with foreign capital, and to reform economic and political institutions in favor of the classes that comprise the populist coalition. In its formal ideology, populism is nationalist, developmentalist, and socially inclusive, though in practice populist leaders often compromise or betray these ideals. See Hellinger, Daniel, “Populism and Nationalism in Venezuela: New Perspectives on Acción Democrática,” Latin American Perspectives 11:4 (Fall 1984), 33–34;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Berins Collier, Ruth and Collier, David, Shaping the Political Arena (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 196–201.Google Scholar

3 For a study of romances as allegories of national consolidation, see Sommer, Doris, Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).Google Scholar

4 One of the few works to integrate race into a discussion of populism is Andrews, George Reid, Blacks and Whites in São Paulo, Brazil, 1888–1988 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), pp. 146–156.Google Scholar

5 For an overview, see Wright, Winthrop R., Café con Leche: Race, Class, and National Image in Venezuela (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990).Google Scholar

6 This paragraph draws on research using diplomatic correspondence. Examples include Records of the Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Venezuela, 1910–1929, Microcopy 366, (National Archives Microfilm Publications, Washington, D.C., 1961), C. Freeman to P. McGoodwin, 1 September 1917, 831.00/807 (roll 4); H. Brett to Department of State, 23 September 1915, 831.00/753 (roll 4); and A. Williams to Department of State, 30 November 1922, 831.6232/3 (roll 22).

7 Howard, Rómulo Gallegos y la revolución burguesa.

8 Dunham, , Rómulo Gallegos, pp. 31 Google Scholar, 33.

9 Dunham, Lowell, Rómulo Gallegos: An Oklahoma Encounter and the Writing of the Last Novel (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974), p. 7.Google Scholar

10 On Venezuelan positivism, see Arturo, Sosa A., Ensayos sobre el penasamiento político positivista venezolano (Caracas: Ediciones Centauro, 1985);Google Scholar Iturrieta, Elías Pino, “Ideas sobre un pueblo inepto: la justificación del gomecismo,” in Juan Vicente Gómez y su época, Pino Iturrieta, ed. (Caracas: Monte Avila, 1985), pp. 157–169;Google Scholar and Vallenilla, Nikita Harwich, “Venezuelan Positivism and Modernity,” Hispanic American Historical Review 70:2 (May 1990), 327–344.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For overviews of Latin American elitist conceptions of race, see Richard, Graham, “Introduction,” in The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870–1940, Graham, , ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), pp. 1–5;Google ScholarPubMed and Hale, Charles A., “Political and Social Ideas,” in Latin America: Economy and Society, 1870–1930, Bethell, Leslie, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 225–300.Google Scholar

11 The Brazilian Euclides da Cunha, for example, believed that mestizos were (usually) “degenerate,” “unstable,” and “unbalanced.” da Cunha, Euclides, Rebellion in the Backlands, trans. Putnam, Samuel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), p. 85.Google Scholar

12 Vallenilla Lanz, Laureano, Cesarismo Democrático (Estudios sobre las bases sociologicas de la constitución efectiva de Venezuela) [1919] 4th ed. (Caracas: Tipografia Garrido, 1961), pp. 133–134.Google Scholar

13 On the ideology of whitening in Latin America, see Skidmore, Thomas E., Black into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought, 2nd ed. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Helg, Aline, “Race in Argentina and Cuba, 1880–1930: Theory, Policies, and Popular Reaction,” in The Idea of Race, pp. 37–69.Google Scholar

14 Wright, , Café con Leche, p. 81.Google Scholar

15 My suggestion of a reform movement rooted in anxiety over social status is inspired by Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform (New York: Vintage, 1955).Google Scholar I am grateful to Judy Ewell for suggesting the comparison.

16 Graham, , “Introduction,” p. 1.Google ScholarPubMed

17 These essays are included in Gallegos, Rómulo, Una posición en la vida (Mexico City: Humanismo, 1950).Google Scholar

18 Gallegos, Rómulo, “Necesidad de valores culturales,” [1912] in Una posición, p. 99.Google Scholar

19 Gallegos, , “El factor educación,” [1909] in Una posición, pp. 59, Google Scholar61-64, 68, 73. Lamarck’s belief that a population’s acquired characteristics, which often resulted from the social environment, would be passed on biologically to the next generation was widely accepted in Latin America. Stepan, Nancy Leys, The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 25–28.Google Scholar

20 Gallegos, , “Necesidad de valores culturales,” pp. 94–95.Google Scholar See also Gallegos, , “El factor educación,” pp. 76–77.Google Scholar

21 Gallegos, , “Necesidad de valores culturales,” p. 95.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., p. 98.

23 The book’s original title was El último Solar.

24 Liscano notes the similarity between the arguments presented in “Necesidad de valores culturales” and Reinaldo Solar. Liscano, , Rómulo Gallegos, p. 59.Google Scholar

25 Gallegos, Rómulo, Reinaldo Solar (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1961), pp. 72–74.Google Scholar

26 Stabb, Martin S., In Quest of Identity: Patterns in the Spanish American Essay of Ideas, 1890–1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967), p. 54.Google Scholar

27 Chamberlin, 7J. Edward and Gilman, Sander L., eds., Degeneration: The Dark Side of Progress (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).Google Scholar

28 Borges, Dain, ‘“Puffy, Ugly, Slothful and Inert’: Degeneration in Brazilian Social Thought,” Journal of Latin American Studies 25:2 (May 1993), 235–256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Ibid., especially p. 245.

30 Liscano, emphasizes this point in Rómulo Gallegos, pp. 99–100.Google Scholar

31 Stepan, , The Hour of Eugenics, pp. 135–170.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., p. 170.

33 Martínez-Echazábal, Lourdes, “Mestizaje and the Discourse of National/Cultural Identity in Latin America, 1845–1959,” Latin American Perspectives 25:3 (May, 1998), 21–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Sommer, Foundational Fictions. Sommer’s discussion of Gallegos focuses almost exclusively on Doña Bárbara.

35 Gallegos, Rómulo, La trepadora (Buenos Aires: Espasa Calpe, 1965), p. 173.Google Scholar

36 Ibid.,p. 55.

37 Ibid., pp. 206–7.

38 Ibid., p. 95.

39 Belrose, Maurice, La sociedad venezolana en su novela, 1890–1935 (Maracaibo: Universidad de Zulia, 1979), p. 226.Google Scholar

40 Young, Robert J. C., Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London: Routledge, 1995).Google Scholar

41 Freyre, Gilberto, The Masters and the Slaves, trans. Samuel Putnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986);Google Scholar see also Needell, Jeffrey D., “Identity, Race, Gender, and Modernity in the Origins of Gilberto Freyre’s Oeuvre,” American Historical Review 100:1 (February 1995),51–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 Lewis, Marvin A., Ethnicity and Identity in Contemporary Afro-Venezuelan Literature: A Culturalist Approach (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992), pp. 43–44.Google Scholar

43 Gallegos, Rómulo, Pobre negro (Buenos Aires: Espasa Calpe, 1965), p. 89.Google Scholar

44 Ibid., p. 103.

45 Ibid., pp. 44, 133, 143, and 162–3; Wright, , Café con Leche, pp. 38–39.Google Scholar

46 Hellinger, Daniel, “Civil Society and Venezuela’s Struggle for Democracy, 1935 to 1948,” unpublished manuscript, 1997; Oscar Battaglini, Legitimación del poder y lucha política en Venezuela, 1936–1941 (Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1993).Google Scholar

47 Zelnick, Stephen, “Ideology as Narrative: Critical Approaches to Robinson Crusoe ,” Bucknell Review 27:1 (1982), 99–100.Google Scholar

48 Needell, Jeffrey D., “History, Race and the State in the Thought of Oliveira Viana,” Hispanic American Historical Review 75:1 (February 1995), 1–30.Google Scholar

49 Critical discussions of Doña Bárbara can be found in the works listed in note 1. See also Sommer, , Foundational Fictions, pp. 272–289.Google Scholar

50 Beverley, John, “Populism and Nationalism: Some Reservations,” in Rodríguez, Ileana and Zimmerman, Marc, eds., Process of Unity in Caribbean Society: Ideologies and Literature (Minneapolis: Institute for the Study of Ideologies and Literature, 1983), p. 153.Google Scholar

51 Karsen, Sonja, “Doña Bárbara: Cincuenta años de crítica,” in Ensayos de literatura e historia iberoaméricana (New York: Peter Lang, 1988), p. 115.Google Scholar

52 Coronil, Fernando and Skurski, Julie, “Dismembering and Remembering the Nation: The Semantics of Political Violence in Venezuela,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 33:2 (April 1991), 300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 Beverley, John, “Venezuela,” in Foster, David William, ed., Handbook of Latin American Literature (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987), p. 567.Google Scholar

54 For a highly critical reading of the novel’s messages regarding race, gender, and politics, see Rosegreen-Williams, “Rómulo Gallegos’s Doña Bárbara.”

55 The standard history of AD is Martz, John D., Acción Democrática: Evolution of a Modern Political Party in Venezuela (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 Wright, , Café con Leche, pp. 87, 99.Google Scholar

57 Coronil and Skurski, “Dismembering and Remembering the Nation.”

58 Cited in Martz, , Acción Democrática, p. 47.Google Scholar

59 The next three paragraphs draw on Wright, , Café con Leche, pp. 97–124.Google Scholar

60 Betancourt, Rómulo, Venezuela: Oil and Politics trans. Bauman, Everett (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979), p. 46.Google Scholar

61 Ibid., p. 213.

62 Wright, , Café con Leche, p. 122.Google Scholar

63 Ibid., p. 121.

64 Lewis, Ethnicity and Identity.

65 Wright, , Café con Leche, pp. 125–131.Google Scholar For parallels, see Andrews, Blacks and Whites in São Paulo.

66 Knight, Alan makes the same argument regarding Mexican populism in “Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910–1940,” in The Idea of Race, pp. 71–113.Google Scholar