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Venezuela The Elite
Although the traditional gap between rich and poor
persisted
in democratic Venezuela, the modern upper class was by no
means
homogeneous. Traditional society--rural, rigid, deeply
stratified--changed rapidly during the course of the
twentieth
century. Perhaps ironically, the man most responsible for
giving
impetus to this change was the semiliterate dictator Juan
Vicente
Gómez. The primary catalyst of the social change that
began under
his dictatorship was economic, and it stemmed not from the
established source of land controlled by powerful
hacendados, but
from the subsoil in the form of petroleum extracted and
marketed
through the efforts of technicians and technocrats. Gómez,
by
permitting and encouraging oil exploration, laid the basis
for
the emergence of an urbanized, prosperous, and
comparatively
powerful Venezuela from the chrysalis of a traditionally
rural,
agricultural, and isolated society.
The trends away from the traditional society
accelerated
after 1945, particularly during the decade of dictatorship
from
1948 to 1958 and under the post-1958 democratic regime,
which is
often described as the reign of the middle class. Despite
the
vast social and economic changes that took place; however,
the
economic elite remained a small group separated both
economically
and socially from the rest of society by an enormous
income gap
and by a whiter and more Hispanicized ethnic makeup.
In general, those who considered themselves the
Venezuelan
elite, and were thus considered by their fellow citizens,
thought
of themselves as the upholders of superior values. Most
claimed
at least one postsecondary degree, possibly with a further
specialization abroad. Concentrated in business and the
professions, the Venezuelan upper class tended to disdain
manual
work and to patronize (in both senses of the word) members
of the
lower classes. In this particular sense, Venezuela was one
of the
very few countries in Latin America where a number of
elite-supported scholarly and community welfare
foundations
provided support for an imaginative variety of programs
and
scholarships. These foundations often carried the names of
elite
families who prided themselves on their sense of civic
duty.
The members of the elite also tended to emphasize
publicly
their devotion to the Roman Catholic Church and faith and
to
display a more stable family life than did the rest of the
society. That is, although divorce did occur in this
class,
children were usually born within a legally constituted
family
union. Many of the younger women managed to combine
profession
and family, often with the help of servants and members of
the
extended family.
Perhaps surprisingly for those who visit or observe
Venezuelan society for the first time, the elite is not a
closed
and static group. Prominent politicians, even those from
humble
backgrounds, could easily marry into the elite. Successful
professionals could also move up and find acceptance among
the
upper class. This relative openness of the elite may serve
to
mitigate to some extent the extremes that persist,
particularly
in economic terms, between the Venezuelan rich and those
considered "marginal."
Data as of December 1990
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