El Trienio Adeco

Marcos Pérez Jiménez to the Peruvian military academy, which was reputed in Latin America as being very efficient, where the young Andean officer had as professor Gen. Manuel Odria, later to become dictator of Perú.

Another Peruvian influence on Venezuelan politics was Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, who tried to create an inter-American alliance of leftist anti-imperialist parties, which vaguely fitted Betancourt's own program.

Escalante was party to this agreement, but on his return to Venezuela from Washington, where he was ambassador, to participate in his own election, he started mumbling and making incoherent statements.

Betancourt was incensed and so it was that the strongest political party in Venezuela and the military conspirators, none of which had a rank higher than major, made a deal whose consequences were to be long-lasting.

However, the long history of violence in Venezuelan politics during the previous century made Medina not want a bloody civil war on his hands.

But most noticeable was that bureaucracy, which previously had been kept at the barest possible minimum, made a phenomenal forward leap, and not just because of all the reforming that had to be done but also because AD had to reward its more prominent backers.

There was a national election for the presidency in 1947, which the adeco candidate, the talented novelist Rómulo Gallegos, won, again by a huge margin.

But at the time there was much discontent in the middle class, which was Caldera's base of support—he got 262,000 votes—not to speak of the upper crust; and of course the officers who had ushered AD into power were on the lookout for the main chance.