The creation of a labor aristocracy: The history of the oil workers in Maracaibo, Venezuela, 1925--1948

This work examines the political and economic development of an oil workers community in Maracaibo, Venezuela from the period of initial exploitation in the Maracaibo basin through the military coup in 1948, which shattered all forms of political and social development within the camps. Assuming an historical approach to the development of a working class consciousness, this dissertation argues that the skilled and unskilled oil workers in the oil camps assumed a political identity in the twentieth century which challenged the political and economic hegemony of the oligarchs and the American capitalists.; As the American oil companies flooded the Maracaibo oil fields in the 1920's, they imported ideas of political democracy and social justice, which many within the community appropriated as viable forms of political beliefs. As the Great Depression weakened the international economic system, American oil companies sought to downsize the oil work force. The result was political agitation in the form of a massive labor mobilization in 1936. This labor mobilization threatened to curtail petroleum production in Venezuela, especially significant as World War Two loomed on the horizon.; The worker community hit a crossroads as the world became embroiled in World War Two. The Presidency of Isaiah Medina Angarita sought to integrate the community within the Venezuelan political system with long-term effects. Workers mobilized as they concluded that integration meant assimilation, and concomitantly, a loss of their exceptional or leadership status within the Venezuelan polity. By the late 1940's, constant labor mobilizations led to the conservative forces, an alliance of the military and conservative oligarchs, to overthrow the regime and extinguish, in the short run, a worker political identity.