Opinion: The Yellow Liberalism and the Death of a Party · 3:47pm Nov 3rd, 2018

It's October 23rd of 1899, Cipriano Castro has taken control of Venezuela with his Liberal Restorative Revolution against Ignacio Andrade's government. The president came to power by winning the 1897 elections in the name of the Liberal Party under accusations of fraud and voting manipulation with the help of the then president Joaquin Crespo, who also manipulated the primaries in the Liberal party by persecuting and even exiling (such is the case for the general Francisco Tosta García) other candidates so Ignacio (who was deemed "too conservative and weak" by his peers) could be used as a puppet government and nobody could persecute him or any of his allies who have embezzled the nation since the beginning of Guzmán Blanco's rule in 1870.

When Ignacio Andrade came to power, the conservatives (lead by José Manuel "El Mocho" Hernández) started a revolution arguing that the elections were rigged and that Joaquín Crespo fixed the system so he could still rule on the shadows, with the latter also being true as Crespo put people loyal to him on key charges of Andrade's government. Crespo quickly went to fight the revolutionaries, thinking that this would help him to win some prestige, not realizing that this would be the end of his life with a stray bullet going to his heart in La Mata on April 16th of 1898, just a few months after Ignacio came to power.

Andrade won the fight against the revolutionaries and, without Crespo making it hard for him, he quickly decided to change the constitution and government as a whole through a series of executive orders and more rigged elections so the liberals could maintain the power, which would be the excuse used by Cipriano to start the revolution that would put an end to a government unable to function or work as a whole, whose army was unable to stop a bunch of peasants with little to no military experience and with a cabinet that preferred to support Cipriano and betray the actual president of Venezuela, event that caused the illustrious general, Antonio Paredes, to feel disgust at the people who, when invited him to the party, he called "you are a traitor."

The rise of Castro and his andinos marked the end of the Yellow Liberalism, a period started by Guzmán Blanco in 1870 and meant 29 years of Liberals (who used the color yellow as a party flag) controlling every single place of power in all levels of government. This period would also be marked with embezzlement like never seen before and what would originally was a period of progress for Venezuela (Guzmán Blanco) ended up being one of the most corrupt periods in Venezuelan history as people like Crespo would mostly focus on ruling Venezuela like a farm and keep all the money for themselves (with the now sprouting communist being among the protesters) and persecute critics, including liberals themselves.

But Castro not only ended the rule of the Liberal Party in October of 1899 for he also ended the Conservative Party who, knowing full well that Castro had less legitimacy than Andrade and they were supporting a movement that was breaking the rule of law as well as turning to shreds the democratic system in Venezuela. Both the Liberals and Conservatives decided to abandon their platforms, their ideologies and accepted the first strong man that promised an end to the system with the hopes of getting a piece of that power to themselves, now realizing that Castro would get rid of them in the end just to be removed by his best friend, Juan Vicente Gómez, who would then paralyze Venezuela in time, never allowing it to progress until his death in December of 1935.

It would be fair to think that both the Liberal and the Conservative Party died because Castro decided to proscribe the parties but that would be wrong. He used political persecution to chase down his critics but he didn't proscribe either the Liberal Party or the Conservative Party, or at least not at the beginning for that would be Gómez work in the end. What happened is that the political parties started to move away from the people and started to focus more on their desires to either gain or remain in power, in other words, a political death.

This is because political parties can still get elected, no matter what they say or who leads them, and it can still be followed by people from any side but whether they get elected or not, those aren't the indicators to tell whether or not a political party is alive or functioning and let this be a warning for every individual that wants to know what kills a party, for Ignacio Andrade himself would be the one explaining on January of 1900, when he asked how could a nation prefer a man that came through a coup instead of someone who gained power through the democratic system, how his own party died after Cipriano Castro came to power:

"And it isn't, I repeat, that Parties don't exist, no: they are eternal in their principles and beliefs! Is, the men themselves, yes, who are not the same; with the honesty, the decor, the morality and the distinguished attributes from those men, who were patriots and abnegated; who edified with their example, because, apostles of their idea, they practiced it and dignified it: all, all of that is gone, and we now have, from the civilian fights, to the battle of the press and tribune, they've been substituted with the armed revolt, and the overthrow of the legal government, as well as the nullification of any legitimate order; that's to say, for today political parties, for those real partners of speculation, criminal means, everything is good: The blood, the conspiracy, the flattering, the infidence, the corruption of the military, the treason, and the end and horrible relaxation of the characters, and the public customs."

Let's hope that no other country suffers from this end, for once a political party dies, it never comes back to life and a country cannot have democracy without political parties.

Source: La Caída del Liberalismo Amarillo by Ramón J. Velásquez
Infidence: The breaking of trust

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