On April 17, 1961, Cuba was invaded by the Bay of Pigs. The CIA had intoxicated their own country, telling it that the invaders would be greeted as heroes by the eager populace. As mercenaries, enemies of their country, that is how the Cuban people saw them, who, guided by Fidel, quickly defeated them. Kennedy, who had authorized the invasion, perhaps against his will, must accept defeat and retreat. Anti-Castro Cubans see him as a traitor, because he did not provide air cover for the invasion. In 1962, October, the rocket crisis arrives. Nikita Khrushchev's USSR has placed them in certain caves in Cuba at the invitation of Fidel. Kennedy enters with force, ordering the blockade of the island. He aspires to inspect it, Fidel refuses. A Russian fleet is crossing the Atlantic to Cuba. Will American ships dare to intercept it when it enters the blockade zone? They didn't have to dare, the Russians turned around and headed back to their base. Later investigations will show that the installation of the rocketry in Cuba had been concealed by Khrushchev from the Russian Communist Party, which did not approve of such an aggressive line and, upon learning of it, ordered a retreat.
Fidel Castro himself would clarify forty-three years later, in a TV program, the details of the downing of a U2 plane that flew over Cuba in those days, key points of that historic moment. He said that Russia was threatened by missiles from Turkey and from all of Europe and had the perfect right to defend itself with equal weapons, but he made the mistake of not arguing that right but hiding the placement of its missiles in Cuba. By speaking in this way, the Cuban leader established, without intending to, a link between the Cuban rocket crisis and the NATO crisis of 1957, which was the cause of the fall of Pérez Jiménez. As will be remembered, at the NATO meeting held in Turkey in December 1957, at the same time that the fall of the dictator was agreed, it was decided to place rockets and radar equipment in the Turkish country and in several countries in Europe, aimed at the USSR. The rockets in Cuba were the Soviet response and the counter response was the rocket crisis.
The thing had another way of having repercussions in Venezuela. in his book The hidden face of Rómulo Betancourt4, Simón Sáez Mérida has exposed details of the placement of the Armed Forces under US command in the days of the rocket crisis. He details on pages 188 and following, the assignment, by order of Betancourt, of part of the Venezuelan navy to an inter-American fleet, under US command, secretly, without the knowledge of the Venezuelan Congress or the ministerial cabinet. The «Task Force 137», made up of ships from the United States, Argentina and Venezuela, acted in the detection of ships:
"During the patrol, the Argentine destroyers Rosales y Spore they intercepted six and 21 ships respectively. Venezuelan destroyers Zulia y Nueva Esparta stopped 40 and 31 vessels respectively, while the destroyer Mallinix, of the United States Atlantic Fleet reported establishing a total of 55 contacts."
In reality, some Venezuelans close to the President shared the secret. On October 27, 1962, the Supreme National Defense Council met in Caracas, convened by the Presidency of the Republic "before the serious international situation as a result of the Soviet missile crisis in Cuba, and decree no. 878 to mobilize the Armed Forces». Late was the moment of the officialization of military subordination: Khrushchev agreed, on October 28, to dismantle the missiles.
If Betancourt was very active in the internal war, he was not far behind in the diplomatic one. He obtains the expulsion of Cuba from the OAS, which causes the withdrawal of the URD party from his government, due to Foreign Minister Ignacio Luis Arcaya's refusal to request it before the continental organization. The man with the pipe moves the "Betancourt Doctrine" in the OAS, which establishes an automatic rupture of relations with governments born of coups d'état. Such governments are generally of the military right. The doctrine is fulfilled, Venezuela is becoming isolated from too many governments, but also constituted as the mainstay of pro-American democracy in Latin America. Over the years, the famous Doctrine will be surreptitiously abandoned, but beware, after glasnost, the United States will advance in the sense, if not democratic, at least electoral, that we currently see to the rhythm of crazy dance on television. This shows the very high degree of Betancourt's American nature, of philosophical advancement in the ideas of his masters.
The year 1963 begins with the restoration of constitutional guarantees. On January 16, the Museum of Fine Arts is assaulted by the guerrillas, who kidnap priceless paintings exhibited within the French Exhibition. On August 16, Marcos Pérez Jiménez arrived in the country under arrest after an extradition process followed before US courts, or perhaps before the US government. The arrival of the imprisoned ex-dictator implies a conspiratorial radicalization of the Pérez Jimenistas.
It is an election year, shortly after there is a second division of AD. If the first. The MIR, had an ultra-leftist sign, now an intermediate sector in age is separated, called the ARS Group within the party. They had been constituted as such since the times of 1946, when they created problems for Rómulo Betancourt. Perhaps they were center-right, perhaps nationalists, a right with terrorist edges "Mexican style", which acted against Pérez Jiménez and against communist subversion. Very bureaucrats, very clear in the domain of positions of power, claim them. Not pleased, they withdraw from Democratic Action at a convention where they keep the Democratic Action name and the white electoral card. His boss is Raúl Ramos Jiménez, a man with a reputation for being tough. Others who are with him are Héctor Vargas Acosta, José Ángel Ciliberto. In the end they control neither the name of Acción Democrática nor the card and they go to the elections with one in which a horse appears.
And the candidacy of Arturo Uslar Pietri with his cohort of liberals in the URD style is not lacking, to which is added Ramón Quijada, the main agrarian leader of Democratic Action until the day before, who, after the uslarist swell, will return to the «Party of the people " as if nothing had happened. Two very little known novels have wanted to be the philosophical, or rather existential, manifesto of the candidate writer in this period: mask station y A portrait in geography. The Venezuela of the López Contreras years fills the first volume. Villalba, José Rafael Pocaterra, the crude bourgeoisie, the delicious women pass before the eyes of an intelligent, well-intentioned, neat student who perhaps killed a policeman and goes to Paris and is the alter ego of Uslar. In the second volume the young man, who is no longer so young, returns from a few decades of studies in the City of Light and sees Pérez Jiménez and Pedro Estrada parade, with disgust. The poor are picturesque, the rich clumsy, he superior and misunderstood. A certain oedipal history is revealed in code.
The classic Social-Christian candidacy of Rafael Caldera runs.
Within Acción Democrática there is tension between the candidacy of Raúl Leoni and that of Carlos Andrés Pérez. Betancourt promotes Pérez's candidacy but it is not easy for him to impose it against a complex of adverse factors: in part the Trade Union Bureau was more sympathetic due to biographical links and deep alliances with Leoni, in part the intrigues of Dr. Giacopini Zárraga were at work, who moved money, a lot of money, within the Acción Democrática leadership to prevent a Pérez presidency, which England saw as bent on continuing the action on British Guiana that the Guatirean leader had advanced. England evaluated these realities very poorly. Raúl Leoni will carry out the invasion of Guyana known as Rupununi.
