Cipriano Castro

Military experience and introduction to politics

In 1876 Castro opposed the candidacy of general Francisco Alvarado for the presidency of the Táchira state. In 1878 he was working as the manager of the newspaper El Álbum when he participated along with a group of independence advocates in the seizure of San Cristóbal when they refused to submit to the authority of the new president of the state.

In 1884, he got into a disagreement with a parish priest, Juan Ramón Cárdenas in Capacho, which led to his imprisonment in San Cristóbal. After six months, he escaped and took refuge in Cúcuta, where he ran an inn.^[1] There he met his future wife, Rosa Zoila Martínez, who would become known as Doña Zoila. In June 1886, he returned to the Táchira as a soldier, accompanying generals Segundo Prato, Macabeo Maldonado and Carlos Rangel Garbiras to again raise the flag of autonomy, much to the dismay of the governor of the Táchira region, General Espíritu Santo Morales. Castro defeated government forces in Capacho Viejo and in Rubio. Promoted to general, himself, Castro began to stand out in the internal politics of Táchira state. It was during the burial of a fellow fighter, Evaristo Jaimes, who had been killed in the earlier fighting that Castro met Juan Vicente Gómez, his future companion in his rise to power. He entered politics and became the governor of his province of Táchira but was exiled to Colombia when the government in Caracas was overthrown in 1892. Castro lived in Colombia for seven years, amassing a fortune in illegal cattle trading and recruiting a private army.

Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903

Caricature of Cipriano Castro, by William Allen Rogers, published in the New York Herald, January 1903

The Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903 saw a naval blockade of several months imposed against Venezuela by Britain, Germany and Italy^[2] over Castro's refusal to pay foreign debts and damages suffered by European citizens in a recent Venezuelan civil war. Castro assumed that the United States' Monroe Doctrine would see the United States prevent European military intervention, but at the time the government of president Theodore Roosevelt saw the Doctrine^[3] as concerning European seizure of territory, rather than intervention per se. With prior promises that no such seizure would occur, the US allowed the action to go ahead without objection. The blockade saw Venezuela's small navy quickly disabled, but Castro refused to give in, and instead agreed in principle to submit some of the claims to international arbitration, which he had previously rejected. Germany initially objected to this, particularly as it felt some claims should be accepted by Venezuela without arbitration.

Cipriano Castro and his war cabinet in 1902

When the world press reacted negatively to incidents including the sinking of two Venezuelan ships and the bombardment of the coast, the U.S pressured the parties to settle, and drew attention to its nearby naval fleet in Puerto Rico at command of Admiral George Dewey. With Castro failing to back down, Roosevelt pressure and increasingly negative British and American press reaction to the affair, the blockading nations agreed to a compromise, but maintained the blockade during negotiations over the details. This led to the signing in Washington of an agreement on 13 February 1903 which saw the blockade lifted, and Venezuela represented by U.S. ambassador Herbert W. Bowen commit 30% of its customs duties to settling claims. When an arbitral tribunal subsequently awarded preferential treatment to the blockading powers against the claims of other nations, the U.S feared this would encourage future European intervention. The episode contributed to the development of the Roosevelt Corollary to Monroe Doctrine, asserting a right of the United States to intervene to "stabilize" the economic affairs of small states in the Caribbean and Central America if they were unable to pay their international debts, in order to preclude European intervention to do so.

Dutch-Venezuela War

Castro at Ellis Island (New York) during his exile, 1913

On 11 March 1902 the HNLMS Koningin Regentes departed from the port of Vlissingen bound for the Dutch West Indies in response to rising political tension between the Netherlands and Venezuela to evacuate the Jews of Coro to Curaçao. She interrupted this journey to assist and help the casualties of the Mount Pelée volcano eruption on the French island of Martinique.^[4] After this, the ship continued her journey in concert with HNLMS Utrecht and on 2 April 1902 they arrived in the Venezuelan port of La Guaira. Prior to their arrival, the Venezuelan Navy had repeatedly checked Dutch and Antillean merchant ships and the presence of the Dutch warships acted as a deterrent against further actions.^[5]

In 1908 a dispute broke out between the Netherlands and president Castro regime on the grounds of the harbouring of refugees in Curaçao. Venezuela expelled the Dutch ambassador, prompting a Dutch dispatch of three warships – a pantserschip (coastal defence ship), the Jacob van Heemskerk, and two protected cruisers, the Gelderland and the Friesland. The Dutch warships had orders to intercept every ship that was sailing under the Venezuelan flag. On 12 December, the Gelderland captured the Venezuelan coast guard ship Alix off Puerto Cabello.^[6] She and another ship the 23 de Mayo were interned in harbor of Willemstad. With their overwhelming naval superiority, the Dutch enforced a blockade on Venezuela's ports.

Castro's overthrow in 1908, exile and death in 1924

In 1908 Castro had been seriously ill for four years due to a kidney problem.^[7] Castro left for Paris in late 1908 to seek medical treatment for syphilis, leaving the government in the hands of vice president Juan Vicente Gómez, the man who was instrumental in his victories of 1899 and 1903. However, on 19 December 1908, Gómez with the support of the U.S. Navy seized power himself and effectively ended the war with the Netherlands. A few days later, General Castro left for Berlin, nominally for a surgical operation. After that Castro suffered the harassment of the European powers resentful by the policy that maintained towards them during the 8 years as president of Venezuela. Without resources to carry out an armed invasion, he went to Madrid and then recovered from his operation in Paris and in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. At the end of 1912 Castro intended to spend a season in the United States, but was captured and vexed by the immigration authorities of Ellis Island which forced him to leave in peremptory terms (February, 1913). He finally settled with his wife in Puerto Rico (1916), under close surveillance by spies sent by Juan Vicente Gómez, who later assumed the Venezuelan presidency in the longest dictatorship in the Latin America history. Castro spent the rest of his life in exile in Puerto Rico, making several plots to return to power — none of which were successful. Castro died 4 December 1924, in Santurce, Puerto Rico.