THE DICTATORS - VENEZUELA

José Antonio Páez was a dictator, but no one can deny his personal value, demonstrated in many battles, or his interest in cultivating, which led him to learn music and even to sing opera, in addition to what can be seen in his Memoirs, full of literary quotations and even well written, although he incurs many cursory works that can be excused by the time in which he lived; In addition, with all the difficulties of governing a country detrimental to the war, their governments were quite acceptable.

Antonio Guzmán was a dictator, but he also showed personal courage when he had to act in battlefields, and he was also a progressive leader who modernized many things of the State administration and made notable public works, even if only in Caracas: it was not a example of administrative probity, but in his time there were no clear rules in that sense, and what he did was to take advantage of opportunities that were presented to him, more with liveliness than with mere corruption.

Joaquín Crespo was a dictator, but he also showed great personal courage and knew how to face the threats with courage, which certainly cost him his life; Nor was it an example of administrative probity, to the extreme of becoming, as his personal home, a true palace (Miraflores), which since the beginning of the twentieth century has been the seat of the Presidency of the Republic. Cipriano Castro was a dictator, but he also played everything for everything when he had to do it; He was also dishonest personally, more in pursuit of what was usual than anything else.

Juan Vicente Gómez was a dictator, possibly the most implacable of the primitive dictators of our history, but in addition to showing great courage, he unified Venezuela and ended with the caudillos who did immense damage to the country; he was personally enriched as none, and he became the largest landowner and the first industrialist in the country, but in large part it was thanks to the servility and adulation of others. Marcos Pérez Jiménez was a dictator, but he was the first of his class in the Military School and he made a set of public works really admirable, besides that in general he chose for his cabinet and for important positions of power to men of very high level; He was very dishonest and viciously persecuted those who disputed power, but without hypocrisy: it was an authoritarian regime and did not hide it or pretend to be anything else.

Chávez was a dictator, as well as a proven coward, a hypocrite and a traitor, and no matter how hard I try, I do not see anything that could diminish the bad opinion that history will have of him; In love as a teenager of Fidel Castro, he handed over the sovereignty of the country to the Cubans, it was also a despicable falsehood, deceived half the world, ruined the country to all possible frauds, and tortured and murdered to a greater degree than all his predecessors. Maduro is a dictator, he can apply the same criteria as Chavez and even worse, is hypocritical, is false, is traitor, is a torturer and is a murderer, and also his intelligence leaves much to be desired.

There is no doubt, then, that the dictators who could be described as right have not been good, but have had some merits that can not be denied, but those on the left not only have no merit, but in the personal and public they are absolutely despicable and have caused more damage and death than the others. History can never forgive them.