Talk:Rómulo Betancourt

Reform of Oil Industry
I've been a long time surfer of Wikipedia but just constantly get frustrated with the quality and reliability of the content. I pulled this from a compilation of notes I made while reading Betancourt's book Venezuela Oil & Politics. I know all the page numbers it's just I'm not familiar with all the Wiki keys and symbols on the editing functions yet. I know I should play around in the sandbox first (and when I did, there was edit-clash or something like that) but I figure I'll get it figured out and then come back and fix this. It's better to have this up now I suppose.

I also changed the year and name of the original clandestine party that Betancourt founded that would turn into Accion Democratica once receiving legal status.

Maybe once I get good at editing I'll add some Schlesinger quotes on Betancourt so that it's not just Ronald Reagan!! Neoliberalism, right?...

AdrianLaTraceJr 05:17, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

This article has some normative language. "It became clear that Castro was arming the guerrillas" - source? This is disputed. The elections in 1963 were "a day of pride" for Venezuela? The landowners whose land was confiscated received "generous compensation"? This article should be made more NPOV. glasperlenspiel 21:21, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC)


 * Cuba was unseated of OAS since 1962 because of that country funded guerrillas acting in Venezuela. Info: "Octava Reunión de Consulta de Ministros de Relaciones Exteriores (1962)". (Sorry, spanish).

May my hands burn incident
It says that after the assasination incident he regained popular confidence in his regime. The article leaves out the best part of the biography. In one of his speeches he had vowed "may my hands burn if they have ever stolen from the treasury" and sure enough his hands burned.--129.171.180.20 (talk) 01:31, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Reagan speech
Do we really need a speech from Reagan in the end about his death? I think a speech from a notable Venezuelian, such as his successor would be better.


 * The word "Venezuelian" doesn't exist. Regarding your comment, I think it is quite remarkable that a foreign leader expressed his condolence towards the Venezuelan people in such words. --190.38.176.219 03:54, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

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This brief and concise biography of a complex character in Venezuela's political history is essentially neutral and correct. The above comments cannot be taken seriously without proper references.


 * So, the previous "arguments" put "Rómulo Betancourt" article under suspition? Come on!

Cold War
This article does not really fully describe the role that Betancourt had as a Cold War leader. All important national leaders become involved with controversies, but this article does not document any, which makes him seem less important than he was in his time. I have added a bit of controversy and encourage others to do this as well, because (1) it assists with NPOV and (2) all important leaders have controversies and (3) the Reader should be able to access sources about controversies.

I'm reading the 1960 Red Star Over Cuba which really is a discussion of the Cold War in the Caribbean and have added some text directly supported by this scholarly book. I suggest adding a Cold War section, because Betancourt is among the primary leaders for the Cold War in the Caribbean, one of the two most important Cold War battlefields.

The text below is a mixture of what Red Star directly said and what is implied. I have only edited the article where it is directly supported, but this approach does not really offer the necessary cntext offered below.

Bentancourt as a Cold War leader
The Caribbean was very significant globally during the Cold War and Betancourt had an important and controversial Cold War role. The political environment was very complex because two sometimes conflicting political currents had then become important. The Caribbean nations were experiencing significant national political revolutions and changes and they were also often deeply embroiled within the Cold War tensions.

As a young man Betancourt was expelled from Venezuela for radical agitation and he moved to Costa Rica where he founded and led a number of radical and Communist student groups. In the early 1930s, while in Costa Rica, he became at age 22, the leader of that country's Communist Party. In 1937, after resigning from the Comunist Party and returning to Venezula, he founded the Partido Democrático Nacional, which became an official party in 1941 as Acción Democrática (AD). The Columbian leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán claimed that Betancourt had "offered him arms and money to launch a revolution in Columbia" which was part of Betancourt's apparent plan to build a solid phlanx of leftwing regimes in the Caribbean. It was alleged by Azula Barrera and Colombian President Mariano Ospina Pérez that Betancourt had helped lead the armed rising at the 1948 Inter-American Conference that left more than a thousand people dead, and among these was the political asassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán.

Betancourt was a strong advocate for armed insurrection and revolution, but his focus was upon national and regional priorities rather than Cold War priorities. Fidel Castro took a contrasting perspective and following the Cuban Revolution lead Cuba directly into the center of the Cold War. Betancourt did support the Cuban revolution initially with fifty million dollars, but would later distance himself and Venezuela from Castro's Cold War focus. Raggz (talk) 22:51, 29 January 2008 (UTC).

Betancourt also faced determined opposition from extremists and rebellious army units, yet he continued to push for economic and educational reform. A fraction split from the AD and formed the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). When leftists were involved in unsuccessful revolts at navy bases in 1962 (El Carupanazo, (Carúpano) and El Porteñazo Puerto Cabello) and El Barcelonazo, Betancourt suspended civil liberties. Elements of the left parties then formed the Armed Forces for National Liberation (FALN), a communist guerrilla army to fight him. The FALN were engaged in rural and urban guerrilla activities, including sabotaging oil pipelines, bombing a Sears Roebuck warehouse, Alfredo Di Stefano kidnapping, and bombing the United States Embassy in Caracas. FALN failed to rally the rural poor and to disrupt the December 1963 elections

After numerous attacks, he finally arrested the MIR and Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) members of Congress. It became clear that a leftist Fidel Castro had been arming the rebels, so Venezuela protested to the Organization of American States (OAS).

Request for Comments
There is an RfC on the question of using "Religion: None" vs. "Religion: None (atheist)" in the infobox on this and other similar pages.

The RfC is at Template talk:Infobox person.

Please help us determine consensus on this issue. --Guy Macon (talk) 07:02, 24 April 2015 (UTC)