A SOUTH AMERICAN DICTATOR.

Evening Star, Issue 22248, 28 January 1936, Page 8

A SOUTH AMERICAN DICTATOR.

Djctatorships have been so much a symptom of the troubles of post-war Europe that it is easy to forget how, for a long earlier period, they were regarded as the special product of Central and South America. Mussolini is said to have received his first name . after Benito Juarez, an example of the type in Mexico who opposed the intrusive Emperor Maximilian. General Gomez, of Venezuela, who died last month, was the last of the American race. For twenty-seven years his “ Yes ” or No ” determined .every act of government. He was President five times, and, even when not in office, his retention of, the position of Commander-in-Chief. ensured for him the real power. His rule had real benefits for his country. After establishing its finances, which he found in a chaotic condition, he transformed it from one of the least respected of South American republics into a power in the Caribbean, as well as in the wider world. When he came to the front Venezuela bad had nearly fifty revolutions in eighty years. He declared it to be his ambition to give the country so many years of peace that the habit of it would become as ingrained in the people as had formerly been the habit of revolution. In that he did not succeed, but he would have done so if the task had been possible to any dictator. He built roads in all directions, and had reason to boast that they made it possible to travel quickly and safely by motor car where before journeys could only be made dn mule-back and in grave danger. His roads had the further value that, wherever rebellion was threatened against his rule, his troops could move quickly to repress it. He took such good care that no one except his own forces should have arms that for many years, it is said, even sporting guns were unobtainable, and agriculture suffered from the increase of game. But the hrst news which followed the report of Gomez’s death was that civil war, had broken out in Venezuela, with forty dead, as the result of street battles, in Caracas. Thousands of political prisoners, it was stated, who had been kept in dungeons for the previous ten or fifteen years, and thousands of exiles who returned at the dictator’s death, were assisting in efforts to overthrow the last vestiges of his authority. It was a warning to Europe of the general evanescence of blessings imposed by force. That rude, undeveloped countries like those of South America should have needed in the past dictators is not surprising, but it is a tragedy that so much of Europe should have returned to them. Those countries are fortunate that have never had to consider such a drastic and, uncertain remedy for their difficulties.