A new lefty government in Venezuela wanted to diversify the oil economy so that imported foodstuffs could be replaced by home grown production. Doing so would improve the lot of the average peasant who was to be the beneficiary of government mandated land reform. 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.
The early 60s really saw socialism on the march. The educated, urban, intellectuals created some great visuals to go along with it. Case in point this stylized view of a cow’s head, grain, and a peasant family. Pretty cool if grain was an important part of Venezuela’s agriculture. It wasn’t, and strongly hints that the socialist didn’t have a good grasp of the situation. Perhaps good intentions are more important as they replaced neglect.
Todays stamp is issue C762, a 40 Centimos airmail stamp issued on February 6th, 1961. It was a 15 stamp issue in various denominations that recognized an agricultural census that went on the previous year in preparation for land reform, the redistribution of farmland from large landowners to the ownership of small tracts by the agricultural laborers. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.
The economy in Venezuela was really all about oil. Here the leftists work was solid because they showed flexibility and followed through when there was an advantage. Romulo Betancourt was a young communist who was exiled to Costa Rica. He had in mind a string of leftists regimes forming a block out of the former Gran Columbia. He had studied the 1938 Mexican nationalization of their oil industry and realized that was not the way to go to pay for it. The oil had naturally been found by American oil companies and World War II demand had seen the companies greatly increase Venezuelan production. The softening of demand post war would have allowed them to boycott Venezuelan oil. Venezuela under the right wing had not much benefited from the oil as the tax revenue amounted to only 9% of production. In Betancourt’s first term as President, he raised the tax on the oil to 50% and the money flowed in while leaving the professional foreigners to keep production up.
Betancourt was not as successful with land reform. Millions of acres were bought from wealthy landowners and distributed to peasants. The products were mainly coffee, sugar cane and tobacco. Seeing the vast economic growth in the cities with it’s promise of an easier life, many peasants resold the land given to them and used the proceeds to finance the move to the cities. So land reform was no help to output. Indeed only 4 percent of the land in Venezuela is under cultivation. Food must be imported.
Betancourt was not done maximizing oil revenue however. American President Eisenhower was not pleased with the taxes on American oil companies and signed a law promoting importation of Mexican and Canadian oil over Venezuelan. Betancourt in turn sent his Arab speaking oil envoy to Cairo to work with fellow traveler pan Arabist socialists who were facing similar issues regarding getting control of middle east oil revenue. In 1961, Venezuela became a founding member of OPEC that over time had such a big part in rising oil prices.
I mentioned that Betancourt was a young Communist. Indeed he was a participant in violent plots against right wing strongmen in Columbia and Costa Rica. Back in Venezuela however he marketed himself as a democrat. His early radicalism was not forgotten though when Dominican Republic strongman Trujillo tried to have him assassinated by a car bomb. See https://the-philatelist.com/2019/07/05/dominican-republic-1937-making-the-guy-behind-the-cow-understand-you-are-working-for-him-with-parsley/ . He was badly burned but survived. With the change in the USA from Eisenhower to more progressive President Kennedy in 1961, Betancourt sought and received better relations with the USA. He forever burnished his democratic credentials by leaving office without incident at the end of his final term in 1964. A rarity in the Latin America of the day.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the Venezuelan stamp designers of the 60s. The international socialist movement in the 60s did not turn out to have all the answers, but they definitely had a hopeful vision of where they wanted to go, well captured on this stamp. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.