page_title: Rómulo Betancourt
section_title: Second term as president
hierarchical_section_title: Rómulo Betancourt / Second term as president
caption_attribution_description: English: First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy addresses the audience in Spanish at La Morita Resettlement Project in La Morita, Venezuela, at a ceremony granting farmers titles to land under the Agrarian Reform Program. President John F. Kennedy stands to the right of Mrs. Kennedy; President of Venezuela Rómulo Betancourt sits to the right of President Kennedy in the front row. US State Department interpreter, Donald Barnes, stands to the left of Mrs. Kennedy. Also seated in the group at right: United States Chief of Protocol, Angier Biddle Duke; Chester B. Bowles, President Kennedy's Special Representative and Adviser on African, Asian, and Latin-American Affairs; US Ambassador to Venezuela, Teodoro Moscoso; Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Robert F. Woodward; Naval Aide to President Kennedy, Captain Tazewell Shepard.
context_page_description: Rómulo Ernesto Betancourt Bello, known as "The Father of Venezuelan Democracy", was the 47th and 54th President of Venezuela, serving from 1945 to 1948 and again from 1959 to 1964, as well as leader of Acción Democrática, Venezuela's dominant political party in the 20th century.
  Betancourt, one of Venezuela's most important political figures, led a tumultuous and highly controversial career in Latin American politics. Periods of exile brought Betancourt in contact with various Latin American countries as well as the United States, securing his legacy as one of the most prominent international leaders to emerge from 20th-century Latin America. Scholars credit Betancourt as the Founding Father of modern democratic Venezuela.
context_section_description: A decade later, after Pérez Jiménez was ousted, Betancourt was elected president in the general election of 1958, becoming the first leader of the Punto Fijo Pact. Having inherited a well constructed country but with the need to give more education to its people, Betancourt nevertheless managed to return the state to fiscal solvency despite the rock-bottom petroleum prices throughout his presidency.
  In 1960 two important institutions were created by Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso, Betancourt's minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons: the Venezuelan Petroleum Corporation (Corporación Venezolana del Petróleo — CVP), conceived to oversee the national petroleum industry, and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the international oil cartel that Venezuela established in partnership with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran. Considered a radical revolutionary idea at the time by its opponents, but essential to Venezuela's independence and fiscal solvency by a visionary nationalistic Betancourt.
  At an annual oil convention in Cairo, Venezuela's envoy, fluent in Arabic, convinced oil producing Middle Eastern countries to sign a secret agreement that promoted unity and control of their own national oil resources; under the noses of the British and American corporations that dominated the oil industry globally and had funded the event. Planting the seed for OPEC that was founded in September 1960 at Baghdad, Iraq. This movement was triggered by a 1960 law instituted by American President Dwight Eisenhower that forced quotas for Venezuelan oil and favored Canada and Mexico's oil industries. Eisenhower cited national security, land access to energy supplies, at times of war. Betancourt reacted seeking an alliance with oil producers of Middle Orient and North Africa as a pre-emptive strategy to protect the continuous autonomy and profitability of Venezuela's oil, establishing a strong link between the South American nation and the OPEC  countries that survives to this day.
  On a scenario of suspended economic guarantees, special situation derived from the Castro-communist armed insurrection, Betancourt adopted the CEPAL model of substitution of imports in order to achieve a fast track to development through industrialization that succeeds in replacing imported goods with locally produced goods. The government strategy include tax exceptions to attract capital investment and terrains at low cost to facilitate foreign suppliers to build plants for the assembly or packaging of finished products, closing the economy to trade through excessive tax to similar imported goods, import quotas to reduce foreign competition or other quantitative restrictions that prohibited imports. In addition, the Central Bank overestimated the Bolivar to cut down prices of imported inputs and promote export-oriented growth.  Large road-building, and electrical power programs as the construction of Guri Dam Phase I were carried out, transforming Venezuela into a modernized Latin American nation.
caption: U.S. President John F. Kennedy in December 1961 promoting the Alliance for Progress with Venezuelan President Rómulo Betancourt, who had invited Kennedy to this land redistribution ceremony in a Venezuelan village.[8] Kennedy's wife, Jacqueline, addressed the audience in Spanish. Video of this ceremony can be seen here.
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