Historiography

This thesis analyses the foreign economic policies of the Eisenhower and Kennedy administration toward Venezuela from 1957 to 1963. By examining material from U.S. diplomatic document collections, my research intervenes in the historiography of the Alliance for Progress by demonstrating the failures of U.S. policy in Venezuela during the Latin American Cold War. Although the United States supported the democratic government of Rómulo Betancourt politically, it hamstrung his government economically. The Kennedy administration at first provided loans for economic development to Venezuela, though they quickly eliminated this aid and began prioritizing military assistance as the most efficient way of supporting Betancourt’s government. More importantly, by continually limiting imports of Venezuelan oil into the United States, both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations hurt Venezuela’s economy and caused Betancourt to face a crisis of legitimacy as his capacity to manage the nation’s natural wealth came into question.

Traditional Caribbean history has been directed by and focused upon the conquerors who came to the region to colonize and seek profitable resources. Native Caribbean peoples and African slaves used to work the land have been silenced by traditional history so that it has become necessary for modern Caribbean thinkers to challenge that history and recreate it. Alejo Carpentier and Michelle Cliff challenge traditional Caribbean history in their texts, The Kingdom of This World and Abeng, respectively. Each of these texts rewrites traditional history to include the perspectives of natives and the slaves of Haiti and Jamaica. Traditional history is challenged by the inclusion of these perspectives, thus providing a rewritten, revised history.