About This Book
This book by Professor Allan R. Brewer-Carías, on "The Militarization of Politics," "An Evil That Has Stalked Us Since Independence," is a compendium of several of his studies in which he reflects on the Venezuelan political process from Independence to the present day. To this end, he has started from the study of Independence as a political process developed between 1810 and 1812 entirely as the work of civilians, who designed the constitution of what was the first republican state in the history of South America.
From 1813, after the invasion of the Spanish armies to Venezuela and the development of the wars of liberation commanded by Simón Bolívar, those civilian heroes were supplanted by military heroes, having given rise to the republican militarism that characterized the political process throughout the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. with governments all commanded by the military.
This militarization of politics could only be reversed after 1958 when, by virtue of the “Punto Fijo Pact” of that year, the political parties managed to establish the bases for the constitutionalization of a civilian and democratic government, with the military in their barracks, which characterized the entire democratic period between 1958 and 1999. with civilians alternating in government.
And all this changed radically after 1999 with the return of the militarization of politics, in a process that has developed over the last twenty years, characterized, on the one hand, by the systematic and massive destruction of democratic institutions and values, and on the other, by the open use of political discourse by military officers. as a clear expression of "political militancy" in favor of the "revolution" and at the service of the "political partiality" of those who govern; all in violation of the 1999 Constitution, which even has a markedly militaristic content.
