La Libertadora Revolution

La Libertadora Revolution (1901–1903), the last in a series of civil conflicts that plagued Venezuela during the nineteenth century. When Cipriano Castro took power in 1899, he began a process of military and political transformation that tended to centralize power and eliminate the political factionalism that was typical of the nineteenth century. The urgent need for financial resources and the chaotic budgetary situation of the country pitted Castro against the most notable bankers, creating a climate of tension which led to the revolution.

The uprising was financed and organized by Manuel Antonio Matos, an important Caracas banker, backed by the New York and Bermúdez Company, whose interests in the asphalt business were being affected by Castro's rule, as well as by important caudillos in the country. The revolution broke out in 1901 and rapidly spread throughout the entire country. The last battle took place in 1903. The government's triumph consolidated the politics of centralism and ended the politics of caudillismo, which had characterized late nineteenth-century politics in Venezuela.

See alsoCastro, Cipriano; Caudillismo, Caudillo.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eleazar López Contreras, Páginas para la historia militar de Venezuela (1945).

Orray Thurber, Orígenes del capital norteamericano en Venezuela (1983); and Inés Quintero, El ocaso de una estirpe: La centralización restauradora y el fin de los caudillos históricos (1989).

Additional Bibliography

Diaz, Arlene J. Female Citizens, Patriarchs, and the Law in Venezuela, 1786–1904. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.

Krispin, Karl. La Revolución Libertadora. Caracas: Banco de Venezuela, 1990.

                                     InÉs Quintero