Juan Vicente Gomez: A Monster, A Saint or Just A Human being

Juan Vicente Gomez (1859-1935)
President of Venezuela between 1908 and 1935
Born in La Mulera, Tachira, Venezuela, in the midst of an important family of Andean farmers, Gomez comes from a race adventurous and heroic, outrageous and cruel, wicked and mystical, where concubinage was sometimes an established norm. For some biased biographers, his name belongs to an illustrious lineage of conquerors, founders of cities, heroes and with a scent of sanctity.
Supported by his family, he became a military man, earning the title of General in 1903, during the civil war, in which local revolutionary leaders were subdued and removed throughout Venezuela. Juan Vicente Gomez was a great hero in the process of pacification of the country and was called the “Benemerito”, the hero of Venezuela.
In 1908 he reached the government through a coup d’état. He self-proclaimed Commander of the Army and was president of Venezuela for 27 years. As president Juan Vicente Gomez began Venezuela's oil exploration, providing concessions and significant benefits to foreign corporations.  At the same time, and unintentionally, he made Venezuelan farm workers abandon the fields to work with the oil companies, causing the halt of the agricultural development. He managed the country like his personal farm, gave wealth only to their near family and supporters. At the same time his policies impoverished the country, delaying Venezuela’s entry into the twentieth century. During his tenure the prisons were full of political prisoners. At the jails – La Rotunda and Puerto Cabello were the worst – the prisoners received so ruthless medieval tortures. Free thought was revoked, bringing the country into decline and intellectual darkness. Despite being a lover of nature and peasant life, as a consequence of his governance, he indirectly promoted the destruction of both in Venezuela.
On the other hand, at the household level, Gomez is represented in many pictures as good and revered father, remarkably prolific, lovingly surrounded by his many offspring and grandchildren. As he had countless concubines, never was acquired,, neither the knowledge of how many, nor the identity of the numerous children he procreated, some even after he reached the age seventy.

He was the firstborn son of my Great-great-great-grandparents Pedro Cornelio Gomez and Hermenegilda Chacon Alarcon.

Match.com in the early 20th century

Under the dictatorial regime of Juan Vicente Gomez lives Teresa Torres Bello, a single mom. Her own mother Dionisia Bello had arranged for her lover’s (Don Juancho) murder, he was stabbed to death in the year 1935, considering he had gained too much power, and she feared that he would overthrow his brother, Juan Vicente himself who happeneed to also be Dionisia’s lover. So, Teresa was left alone and betrayed with her young son Gustavo Gomez Torres of merely eight years of age; alone is how she moved far away from her home and all this mess in Caracas to a town in the mountains of Tachira, Rubio. There she was hit with the dreadful news: her beloved aunt Trina Bello who was a great part of most of her few good childhood memories had died due to sickness.

Trina lived in the island of Margarita as she was rescued by General Pedro Alcantara from a tormenting episode with Teresa’s brother, her nephew Luis Felipe Torres Bello, of which her first child Edilia was born.

Even thought Teresa had never met her uncle before, and moved by the love she had for Trina, she decides to write him a letter offering her condolences. The letter turns out so alluringly beautiful that he rapidly falls in love and writes back. The letters go back and forth for a year as their love flourishes sentence by sentence. With every letter he is hocked by her charm; that is how Teresa finally chanced upon her soul mate: through mail. Among the lasts letters was a marriage certificate that they both signed.

As a result she moves to Margarita Island, with her now ten year old son, to meet her husband for the first time and to raise Edilia and her half sister Elda who was the fruit of Pedro's marriage to Trina. Then they go on to have six lovely kids together (Maria, Guillermo, Pedro, Alice, Alberto, and Homero). Pedro was a military man; he ran his house as he did his troops. With an overflow of order and propriety, he demanded that his kids were well dressed at all times and discouraged any time of conversation at the table. While Teresa was immensely kind, she dedicated the rest of her life to help the sick in her new home town, and in more than one occasion when her daughters Alice and Maria were missing some of their favorite clothes, Teresa had donated it to the poor insisting that they already had too much and others needed it more than they did.

I was introduced to this story by: Maria Margarita Leal Protzel

Married to Harry Michael

Born in Fort Benning, Georgia March 27, 51

Lives in Weston, Florida

Common ancestor: Teresa Torres Bello

                                                                            

Alberto Jose, one of the six Leal Torres kids became a military man as his father, and posted to Peru, married a local girl named Lita, and had a daughter named Margarita Leal; and Teresa's eldest son (the one she had before her marriage) is my great-grandfather.

My roots

Naturally, I will start from the beginning. 

In this post I will track down my past relatives in order to come up with relatives in the present. The first way I can think to do this is to compile some of my last names which I organized by making this chart.

Any other suggestions to help me in the pursuit of my goal are very much welcomed.

The Topic

I have a confession to make. I didn’t really choose a topic for this blog. Instead I created a source, a source where I can possibly get any theme imaginable.
My plan is to contact relatives of mine and hope they will provide me with something interesting to blog about.I will examine my family tree (no, not the parochial view of it, but a much wider version), and talk about its various branches, either those of witch I’ve known of all my life or some I never could have imagined existed, which can date back multiple generations or the exact opposite.
This means that I have an extremely wide variety of people to choose from and when I do, I plan to blog on something, anything, which either remotely or completely relates to them. It could be about an interesting hobby, a place they live or have lived, their occupation, an interesting story, their pets, or their culture, along with other themes I hope to come up with in the process.