Portada Diario El Universal, Caracas, 19/12/1923. El Universal newspaper cover, Caracas, December 19, 1923. Number 5242.
Automóviles en Caracas, 1913. Automobiles in Caracas, 1913.
GENESIS OF URBAN MODERNITY IN VENEZUELA (1920-45)
THE GÓMEZ PERIOD: CONECTIVITY, SANITATION AND URBAN AGENDA
Although lagging behind other Latin American countries, under Juan Vicente Gómez (hacendado y general que gobernó entre 1908 y 1935) Venezuela experienced advances in road and health, despite the assertions of traditional historiography. The bad reputation of the dictatorship has provoked misconceptions, both of the national urban project and of the apparent overlooking of Caracas during the 27 years of “Gomecismo”. The Orden y Progreso del Benemérito campaign represented a change of priorities regarding the Progreso y Civilización policy of the “Guzmanato” (1870-88), a political cycle dominated by Antonio Guzmán Blanco. If the civilizing priority of the latter was discarded at the beginning of the Gómez period, progress was made in the growing investment in road infrastructure and public health. On the basis of the decree of 1910 and the conclusions of the Congress of Municipalities of 1911 (Actas, 1913), conectivityand sanitation were the government priorities in terms of public works. This happened before the oil bonanza that begun towards the middle of the 1920s. Although sanitation policy had originally been imported from Europe, the Gómez administra- tion entrusted the expertise of health issues to the United States, reflecting the penetration of Venezuela by economic and technical ambassadors, led by the oil companies and the Rockefeller Foundation. In addition to sanitation - which became a national rather than an urban issue - a vast road program eclipsed the prominence that ornamentation had had in public works since the Guzman period (Almandoz, 2006 p. 225-234). By the mid-1920s, Venezuelan debts - inherited in part from railroad loans - had been paid, and Gomez's project favored the provinces over the capital. However, with the oil bonanza that began in the late 1920s, the Gómez government was able to configure a new
agenda for the growing capital. Countless traffic ordinances, responding to the growing use of the automobile in Caracas and other Venezuelan cities, as well as the appearance of new urban developments to the east, were also incorporated as a central theme. In order to solve the problems of the congested city, the Urban and Rural Police Ordinance of 1926 updated sanitary and technical controls; later, the Civil Architecture Ordinance of 1930 was the first attempt to control the design and facilities of the new residential areas. Finally, the need to provide housing for the working class was acknowledged through the creation of the Banco Obrero in 1928, a fundamental piece in the Gómez urban administration. Even accepting the myth of the “forgotten” Caracas of the Gómez era, it must be revised from the urban perspective. The administration of the Benemérito increased the municipal powers of the urban police, included for the first time in the constitution of 1925, while at the same time issuing new ordinances. On the other hand, it is true that Gómez did not undertake an urban plan for Caracas, unlike his Latin American counterparts, who had plans since the 1920s (Almandoz, 2017 p. 275-298). The Gómez era must be seen as part of the birth of urbanism between centuries, and not as a new urban episode. Even though the Gómez administration did not acknowledge an urban challenge, it must be accepted that, within the framework of the national road and sanitation plans, the local transportation, urban expansion and housing agenda gathered the components for urban reform in the democratic capital, where modern Venezuelan urbanism would crystallize by the end of the 30s.
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