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Cattle, Corruption, and Venezuelan State Formation During the Regime of Juan Vicente Gomez, 1908-1935

This essay seeks to expand our understanding of state formation in Venezuela by examining the business enterprises established by Juan Vicente Gómez and his political allies to exploit the agrarian economy, especially the cattle trade. It argues that these enterprises were critical both in cementing the allegiance of officials to Gómez, and in establishing the regime's authority over society. Venezue-lans engaged in a variety of forms of protest against officials' profiteering and occasionally won concessions from the regime, signaling that corruption constituted an issue around which the terms of state control were negotiated. Relying on Gómez's correspondence, as well as British and U.S. diplomatic records, this essay argues that business networks among members of the regime fundamentally shaped not only the internal dynamics of the state, but also its relationship to society, a topic usually neglected in studies of Venezuelan state formation.