Profitable Offices: Corruption, Anticorruption, and the Formation of Venezuela’s Neopatrimonial State, 1908-1948

During the crucial period of its formation, the opposing forces of corruption and anticorruption shaped Venezuela’s new national state and its relationship with society. National strongman Juan Vicente Gómez, who ruled from 1908 to 1935, fastened control over key areas of the economy, extracted wealth from the Venezuelan people, and distributed resources to favorites. Utilizing a variety of discursive strategies, Venezuelans denounced this profiteering, and in 1945 reformers seized power in an attempt to create a new political system free from the last remnants of Gómez’s government. The tragic unraveling of that attempt at reform led to the continuation of corruption, setting the stage for the political crises of the late twentieth century. Combining methods from the humanities and social sciences, Profitable Offices offers a fresh interpretation of Venezuelan history during the first half of the twentieth century while also pioneering a new approach to the historical study of corruption and the struggle against it.

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