Venezuela's democratic tradition has been very frail during the past two centuries. One or more constitutions were passed for almost every decade since the 1810's to the 1960's (except for the 1840's). Generally these constitutions were the result of a so-called revolution, and in almost every case they changed the conditions of the presidential elections: direct or indirect voting systems, length of the presidential periods (that ranged from 2 to 6 years), if the president could be reelected or not, etc. You can probably imagine that these consitutions did not really have people's best interests in mind but were the result of power struggles that would be too lengthy to detail.

At the very end of the 19th century one of these revolutions called the Revolución Libertadora was particularly significant. It was led by a couple of peasant "compadres" from the Venezuelan Andean region: Cipriano Castro and Juan Vicente Gómez. They began a political era known as "Andinos al Poder" (Andeans in Power). Cipriano Castro only got to rule until 1908 because he got sick and went to Paris to get a medical treatment. His compadre basically told him to not come back because he would take his place from then on. Juan Vicente Gómez would go on to rule the country until his death in 1935.

Venezuela saw very drastic changes in this period: It went from a poor agrarian society to a richer country based on the exploitation of oil. Politically, Gómez managed to centralize the country, taking away the power held by a multitude of local "caudillos" and unifying Venezuela through a mixture of ambitious infraestructure program and tight control of the country's internal security, which lead as was to be expected to political represion, incarcerations, tortures and exiles. A group of students imprisoned in 1928 would later be known as the "Generación del 28" whose members eventually were the fathers of Venezuela's modern political parties.

Gómez personally assigned the governors among loyal high-ranking military officers. He organized and modernized the armed forces, creating formal hierarchies and chains of command that gave support to his rule. Gómez created the Air Force and later, Eleazar López Contreras the National Guard (more on him below).

Two Andean military officers were the following became president after Gómez's death: First, the aforementioned López Contreras and then Isaias Medina Angarita. Both were relatively progressive rulers. López Contreras freed the political prisoners and restored the freedom of the press, though he outlawed communist and anarchist movements. Medina Angarita on the other hand introduced constitutional reforms that legalized many clandestine and/or semi-formal or facade movements that eventually led to the creation of modern political parties: Acción Democrática (AD - Social Democrats) was formed in 1941; Copei (Christian Democrats) in 1942; and Partido Comunista de Venezuela (PCV) in 1945.

Isaias Medina Angarita was deposed in October 18th 1945 by a civilian-military coup instigated by AD leaders (among them Rómulo Betancourt - who would later become Venezuela's president) and a young militaries. The excuse for the coup was that Medina Angarita had not gone far enough in his political reforms by not granting the rights for universal and direct voting during presidential elections. López Contreras and Medina Angarita had to go into exile just as Rómulo Bentancourt had done previously during López Contreras's presidency. A Revolutionary Junta presided by Rómulo Betancourt took power. A young military officer named Carlos Delgado Chalbaud was appointed Minister of Defense (more on him below).

The three following years were called "Trienio Adeco", a period characterized by AD's political hegemony.

In 1948 elections were called and Rómulo Gallegos, who by the way is regarded as one of the greatest Latin writers, became the first democratically elected president by direct and universal voting in the history of the countries. At that time he received more than 80% of the total votes and yet he was deposed by the same military officers that had led the previous coup, namely Carlos Delgado Chalbaud and Marcos Pérez Jiménez, whom eventually became a dictator for 10 years.

With Marcos Pérez Jiménez occurs something interesting: Despite his presidency being a right-wing dictatorship that severely limited democratic freedoms, even today many regard him as a reference of a good period, first because of the sense of order and security and then because of the massive infraestructure programs that are in use even today: all the major highways, hospitals, bridges, electrification projects and some others that were later dropped during the democratic period (like a national railway system).

In 1958 Venezuela's this last dictatorship came to an end. In order to guarantee democratic stability the main three political parties - URD, Copei and AD - came to an agreement where they'd share power under certain conditions: to defend the constitution, to accept election results and to establish certain policies that promoted continuity and national unity. They also agreed to exclude the communist party.

It was a tough blow for the Comunist Party because they were members of the Junta Patriótica that deposed Pérez Jiménez and they actively participated in the pursuit of democracy. For instance, they were the promoters of the 1950 oil strike which later extended to other sectors of the economy, after which the party was made illegal, the publication of their newspaper "Tribuna Popular" was suspended and their leaders and members were persecuted, incarcerated or assassinated.

Considering that the legal means for political participation were closed for them they, along with other groups like MIR, decided to take the power through the arms, so the 1960s was a decade signed by a guerrilla conflict, military coup intents and also State sponsored EDIT- (human rights) violations. This lasted until 1969 when Rafael Caldera of Copei managed to pacify the country and re-incorporate the armed groups back into the civilian life.

After 1958 up until 1992 (the year of Chavez coup) the power was shared exclusively by AD and Copei. URD eventually lost its popularity and importance and the two political parties became much stronger. "Pacto de Punto Fijo" - so was the agreement's name - corrupted the democratic system from inside since the very beginning despite its apparently noble aims. For one thing elections became practically a farce where AD and Copei took turns to govern every 5 years. There was a false sense of choosing because at the end both parties were the same. Elections were always rigged, for example votes intended for smaller parties would just be split between the AD and Copei, in a practice know in Venezuela as "Acta mata voto" which means the "The (tally) act kills the votes". If you were a registered member of any of these two parties you would have many privileges monetary and else. There was a gradual general sense of complacency and corruption slowly started to permeate society in every level.

Continued...