Oil revenue can do much, most of all raise expectations. Most dictators would prefer a lower bar of success. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
Today stamp shows the grand façade of the main Carmelite Post Office in Caracas. The oil revenue was seeing much construction in Caracas of the time and yet the post office building was almost 200 years old. The stamps of the time show a lot of these historic old facades. I suspect that the reason for them was that the government believed Venezuela underpopulated and was trying to attract a new crop of European immigrants. The old world style architecture might help attract them.
The stamp today is issue A102, a 5 Centimos stamp issued by Venezuela on May 14th, 1958. It was part of a six stamp issue in various denominations showing the main post office. In addition to this issue there were three other issues of stamps in the previous 5 years showing the façade of the post office. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used. Indeed of the 28 stamps featuring the post office, none are today worth more than $1.50. So the office has lost its once large popularity.
Marcos Jimenez was an army officer that ruled for about 10 years in the 1950s. The oil revenue was really flowing at the time and he started massive public works projects in Caracas. His slogan was sow the oil. The reality was that a lot of debt was being built up and much of it was trying to employ large numbers of Venezuelans to avoid revolution. He also tried to attract European immigrants into the capital in order to benefit from their education and to skew the racial makeup of the country. Jimenez did not succeed in this. Though 2 million immigrants came, most only stayed a few years. He hosted a regular show on Venezuelan TV, where he and a historian friend would talk about historical events
Jimenez was not popular with the elites in the cities, nor with the peasants in the countryside. When a coup was in the offing, Jimenez avoided bloodshed from his side by quickly leaving the country. He settled in the USA until 1963, when he was extradited back to Venezuela to face corruption charges. He sat in jail for 5 years before his sentence was commuted and he was allowed to retire to Spain. He died there in 2001. A later fan of Jimenez was Hugo Chavez. He said Jimenez was one of the best presidents, that people only disliked him because he was a military man, and Chavez was impressed by all the public works that went on in that era.
The Carmelite Post Office was originally built as a home in the 18th century. It later became the War office and in the 1930s was rebuilt as the main post office with the Gothic façade that appears on the stamp. In 1984, the building was declared a national historic landmark. It still stands but has been dwarfed by the huge buildings that now surround it. The look is a little different today as it has been painted bright colors.
Well my drink is empty and so I will open the discussion in the below comment section. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.