Construcción del Viaducto 1 de la autopista Caracas-La Guaira (Venezuela). Los viaductos, construidos en 1952, son tres puentes arco biarticulados de 152, 146 y 138 m, de E. Freyssinet. Construction of Viaduct 1 of the Caracas la Guaira highway (Venezuela). The viaducts, built in 1952, are three biarticulated arch bridges with 152, 146 and 138 m spans, by E. Freyssinet.
TOWARDS FUNCTIONALIST MODERNISM
BETWEEN THE CIVIC-MILITARY JUNTAS AND THE NIN
As an update of the "Orden y Progreso" motto that had governed other positivist dictatorships in Venezuela and Latin America, the "Nuevo Ideal Nacional" (NIN) of the Marcos Pérez Jiménez regime and the preceding civic-military juntas of 1945 and 1948 invested much of the abundant oil income in an ambitious program of state modernization, expansion of industrial production and improvement of urban infrastructure. As for the latter, in a speech delivered on October 18, 1955, the dictator himself summarized the situation ten years before: "There were no satisfactory means of communication, because the roads lacked the conditions required to adequately meet the needs of traffic, and, what is even worse, there were no plans for the execution of other road works; there was no doctrine of production or plans based on that doctrine; no progress was made with the speed required to bridge the distance we had from moderately developed countries." The assessment was not entirely fair. The systematization of the administrative platform for public works had begun in 1945 with the National Housing Commission, which developed a national plan the following year. The Independent Institute of State Railways Administration (IAAFE) and the National Road Commission were also created; the latter became a Council in 1948, after the formulation of the National Road Plan the previous year (González Casas 1997, p. 152). Also, in 1945 the government Junta had structured an Emergency Plan, which included the execution of irrigation works, the construction of urban and rural educational centers and the construction of aqueduct and sewer networks, among other goals (López Villa 1994, p. 106). The program of public works of the junta established after the overthrow of President Rómulo Gallegos (1948), could only be improved after 1949, with the creation of a Reserve Fund and the Fund for Special Reserves for Public Works. In addition to the increase in fuel prices due to the Korean War, the new revenues were favored by the Hydrocarbons Law of the previous year, which limited the profits of the oil companies to 50% (Maldonado 1997, p. 171). All this enabled planning with a greater territorial scope reflected in three forerunner documents that, although they did not materialize at the time, guided the planning in future decades. Namely: the National Electrification Plan, in charge of the Venezuelan Development Corporation (CVF, 1946) and the Ministry of Development; the Minimum Agricultural Production Plan (1954-47), prepared by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAC); and the Basic Considerations for the elaboration of a national plan of irrigation during the period 1950-1970 (1949), in charge of the Ministry of Public Works (Geigel 1994, p. 23, González Deluca 2013, p. 307, 311).
Plano de la Autopista Caracas-La Guaira. Caracas La Guaira Highway Plan.
The great public work of the NIN of Pérez Jiménez, who de facto assumed the presidency in 1952¹, could only be developed on this basis. At the beginning of the decade, two important organisms of national scope were created: the Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons (1950), separate from Development; and the Office of Special Studies of the Presidency (1953), an ancestor of Cordiplán, regarding the integration of economic development with territorial planning (Maldonado 1997, p. 171). The "rational transformation of the physical environment and improvement of the moral, intellectual and material conditions of the inhabitants of the country", leading –according to Pérez Jiménez's speeches– to a "full possession of our territory", was, so to speak, the material expression of the NIN (Pérez Jiménez, 1955 p. 30, 85). As part of the National Electrification Plan, plants were inaugurated in Táchira, Puerto Cabello, Puerto La Cruz and Maracay. Regarding road infrastructure, Venezuela had 3,321 km of paved roads and 6,716 km of gravel roads in 1952, after four years of the military junta (Allegret 1997, p. 604). By the end of the Pérez Jiménez regime, the road network exceeded 27 thousand kilometers, including the Coche-Tejerías section of the Pan-American Highway and the Caracas-Puerto La Cruz highway, part of the Oriente highway, in operation around 1956 (Olivar 2014, p. 126). Considered in its time second in international relevance right after the Panama Canal, the top work of the regime was the Caracas-La Guaira highway, inaugurated in 1953, with original studies dating from 1945 (Maldonado 1997, p. 180).
¹ After the coup d'etat of December 2, which ignored the triumph of the opposition in the elections convened by the military junta chaired by Germán Suárez Flamerich.
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