Tough & Ugly

GOMEZ, TYRANT OF THE ANDES --Thomas Rourke--Morrow ($3.50).

Before Simon Bolivar died in 1830, after having fought some 200 battles, won independence for six countries and toyed with the idea of becoming Emperor of South America, he said, "I have plowed in the sea." What he meant was that little dictators were springing up behind him and, with his uncanny political foresight, he could see that in the future his land would "fall into the hands of vulgar tyrants." Last week Thomas Rourke offered a biography of one of the tyrants in a volume that showed how fully Bolivar was justified in his dejection, not only about Juan Vicente Gomez but about almost every ruler of Venezuela for the past 100 years.

Beginning his book with the admission that "for some reason, completely obscure to me, there is an amazing lack of interest in the United States in Latin-American affairs," Author Rourke gives facts that quickly answer his question. Both vulgar and a tyrant, Juan Vicente Gomez appeared on the Venezuelan scene after it had been dominated for decades by men more vulgar and tyrannical than himself, and he was sufficiently tough and ugly to explain any amount of disinterest in the land he ruled. The bastard of a spirited, intelligent Indian woman and a poor farmer, he was born in the wild Andean country near the Venezuela-Colombia border in 1857, grew up in a land in which revolutions occurred with almost seasonal regularity. Paez, rising with Bolivar, had revolted against him, became Venezuela's first dictator. Monagas revolted against Paez. Castro overthrew Monagas; Tovar followed Castro; old Paez returned from exile to reign for two years before a general revolution threw him out to die in the U. S. Falcon followed, overthrown by Bruzual, against whom old Monagas promptly led another revolution. Hard, fatuous Antonio Guzman Blanco threw out the men who followed Monagas, and Paul took over while Blanco loafed in Paris. A teeming welter of ''little generals.'" overnight presidents and 20-minute dictators ruled before Gomez substituted a first-class tyranny for the inefficient ones that had preceded him. Author Rourke thus sees Gomez not as an isolated specimen or a singularly evil individual, but as the heir of a long tradition, with his government merely the perfect flower of a bad system.

Gomez was 42 when he left the mountains. A prosperous cattleman, he backed the unsuccessful revolution of a comic-opera general named Castro, had to flee to Colombia. In May 1899, Castro and Gomez recrossed the border with 60 men, moved swiftly with a force that grew with every victory until in October the capital, Caracas, was taken. As Castro's hardworking, sly, patient, right-hand man, Gomez pacified the country while the general made a fool of himself by arresting foreign ministers, declaring war on "practically the whole world," plunging into historic debauchery. Theodore Roosevelt called Castro the "little monkey." sent battleships to Venezuela when German cruisers fired on Venezuelan cities as a result of Castro's foolishness. Gomez, always respectful of foreign powers, aping both the Kaiser and Theodore Roosevelt in manner and dress, conspired skillfully until he persuaded Castro to go abroad for an operation. Then he took over the country.

The innovations in Gomez's modernized and super-efficient tyranny were threefold. First was its lack of theatrics. Gomez killed, imprisoned, tortured, stole, grafted, but did it so quietly that for years the real character of his government was unknown outside the country. Second was his foreign policy. Gomez did not so much sell Venezuela's national resources to foreign capital as simply operate the country for his personal profit. 'One of the wealthiest men in the world, he even got a cut from the sale of Popsicles on the streets of Caracas. Third was his financial policy. When he died last winter after 27 years in power, Venezuela had a balanced budget, a treasury surplus, with a currency the "soundest in existence." But Gomez, who was utterly lacking in social vision, driven only by the desire for personal wealth, had accomplished these gains by atrocities whose full frightfulness only became apparent after the jails were opened and his ruined and torture-crippled opponents told their stories.

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