The Venezuelan civil wars were a long series of conflicts that devastated the country during most of the 19th century.
Historical summary
After independence and the subsequent dissolution of Gran Colombia in Venezuela, there was no strong government with sufficient authority and power to guarantee order, nor an idea of a nation, or civic experience. This led to a phenomenon of caudillismo and militarism in which local political-military chiefs were able to confront and defeat the central government together with popular masses that supported them, following their particular ideological interests. Similar processes occurred throughout Hispanic America after the end of Spanish colonial rule. This was due in part to the weakening of the ruling class, the Mantuans who had already ruled the country since colonial times. During the first half of the century, the only character who managed to become a factor of relative stability was José Antonio Páez, a military leader with great power. His defeat on the battlefields ended his political career. The popular caudillo, Llanero, rose several times against governments that he considered had violated the current legality or fought against those who tried to overthrow legitimate governments. His only rebellion against legality would have been La Cosiata, a patriotic reaction against a supranational project that most Venezuelans were not interested in embarking on.
Between 1830 and 1903 Venezuela lived 50 years of war, with a total of 166 armed revolts. It is estimated that a million war casualties, with 70% of them being non-combatants killed by the plagues, famines, anarchy and political repression that wars brought. Other sources lower the figure to 260,000 killed in combat, plus 62,000 due to earthquakes and pestilence, not counting those killed in the Federal War. There were only two periods in that century that the governments were stable and lasting: from 1835 to 1848 and from 1870 to 1887.
The period of instability ended with the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez who ruled Venezuela from 1908 until his death in 1935, thus ensuring a strong base for state power. Gómez extinguished the regional caudillos by passing power to the central high command of the Armed Forces of Venezuela. Due to these wars, the country became impoverished and suffered demographic stagnation.
These civil wars were above all combats between armed militias, each one organized by its place of origin, thus reflecting the alliances of the regional power groups with the government or the rebels at each moment. There were cases in which the inhabitants of neighboring towns or even of the same town clashed on a small scale during these civil wars. Each party sought the support of the regional caudillos, who held the real power at the time.
The economic disorganization of independence was deepened by civil wars, and long anarchy. Páez and Soublette based their economy on cocoa, typical of their region, the plains. In those years the Orientals, the Llanos and the Corianos disputed the hegemony in rapid succession. Guzmán Blanco, a man from Caracas, managed to stay in power thanks to the coffee boom, as did the Andeans Castro and Gómez.