Cipriano Castro

File:Cipriano Castro, 1884.jpg

Cipriano Castro was the only son of José Carmen Castro and Pelagia Ruiz. He was born on 12 October 1858 in {{ill|Capacho Viejo|es}}, Táchira. Castro's father was a mid-level farmer and he received an education typical of the tachirense middle-class. His family had significant mercantile and family relations with Colombia, in particular with Cúcuta and Puerto Santander. After studying in his native town and the city of San Cristóbal, he continued his studies at a seminary school in Pamplona, Colombia (1872–1873). He left those studies to return to San Cristóbal, where he began work as employee of a company called Van Dissel, Thies and Ci'a. He also worked as a cowboy in the Andean region. Castro had 21 siblings, the majority of whom were half-siblings on his father's side from relationships after his mother's death. He was very close to his family and sent most of his little brothers to study in Caracas.{{fact|date=March 2025}}

In 1876 Castro opposed the candidacy of general Francisco Alvarado for the presidency of the Táchira state. In 1878 he was working as the manager of the newspaper El Álbum when he participated along with a group of independence advocates in the seizure of San Cristóbal when they refused to submit to the authority of the new president of the state.{{fact|date=March 2025}}

In 1884, he got into a disagreement with a parish priest, Juan Ramón Cárdenas in Capacho, which led to his imprisonment in San Cristóbal. After six months, he escaped and took refuge in Cúcuta, where he ran an inn.{{Cite news |date=1901-08-28 |title=Man of Mark: Is President Castro Whose Life of War, Adventure and Romance Would Keep a Dozen Novelists Busy |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/15963736/ |url-access=subscription |access-date=2024-02-01 |work=Moberly Evening Democrat |pages=1 |via=Newspapers.com |volume=31 |issue=41}} There he met his future wife, Rosa Zoila Martínez, who would become known as Doña Zoila. In June 1886, he returned to the Táchira as a soldier, accompanying generals Segundo Prato, Buenaventura Macabeo Maldonado and Carlos Rangel Garbiras to again raise the flag of autonomy, much to the dismay of the governor of the Táchira region, General Espíritu Santo Morales. Castro defeated government forces in Capacho Viejo and in Rubio. Promoted to general, himself, Castro began to stand out in the internal politics of Táchira state. It was during the burial of a fellow fighter, Evaristo Jaimes, who had been killed in the earlier fighting that Castro met Juan Vicente Gómez, his future companion in his rise to power. He entered politics and became the governor of his province of Táchira but was exiled to Colombia when the government in Caracas was overthrown in 1892. Castro lived in Colombia for seven years, amassing a fortune in illegal cattle trading and recruiting a private army.{{fact|date=March 2025}}

{{Main article|Dictatorship of Cipriano Castro}}

File:Gómez and Cipriano Castro.jpg and Cipriano Castro]]

Amassing considerable support from disaffected Venezuelans, Castro's once personal army developed into a strong national army, and he used it to march on Caracas in October 1899 in an event called the Restorative Liberal Revolution, and seize power, installing himself as the supreme military commander.

Once in charge, Castro inaugurated a period of plunder and political disorder having assumed the vacant presidency, after modifying the constitution (1904). He remained president for the period 1899–1908, designating Juan Vicente Gómez his "compadre" as vice-president.

Castro's rule was marked by frequent rebellions, the murder or exile of his opponents, his own extravagant living, and trouble with other nations. Castro was characterized as "a crazy brute" by United States secretary of state Elihu Root and as "probably the worst of Venezuela's many dictators" by historian Edwin Lieuwen. His nine years of despotic and dissolute rule are best known for having provoked numerous foreign interventions, including blockades and bombardments by Dutch, British, German, and Italian naval units seeking to enforce the claims of their citizens against Castro's government.

{{Main|Venezuelan crisis of 1902–1903}}

In 1901 the banker Manuel Antonio Matos was the leader of the Liberating Revolution,{{Cite book |last=Arais Amaro |first=Alberto |title=Historia de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela |publisher=Editorial Romor |year=2000 |isbn=978-980-381-082-5 |location=Caracas, Venezuela |language=es |trans-title=History of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela}} a major military movement with the intention to overthrow Cipriano Castro's government.{{Cite book |last=Rodríguez |first=Gilberto Liway |title=Nueva historia de Venezuela: Independencia |publisher=Grupo Editorial Venelibros |year=2001 |isbn=978-980-6210-45-5 |location=Caracas, Venezuela |language=es |trans-title=New history of Venezuela: Independence}} Severe disagreements between Castro and the foreign economic elite that support the revolution (as New York and Bermudez Company, Orinoco Shipping Company, Krupp, French Cable, and others) evolved into an open war that shook the country and brought the government to the brink of collapse.

On 2 April 1902, in response to rising political tension between the Netherlands and Venezuela to evacuate the Jews of Coro to Curaçao, the {{HNLMS|Koningin Regentes}} and the {{HNLMS|Utrecht|1898|6}} arrived in the Venezuelan port of La Guaira. Prior to their arrival, the Venezuelan Navy had repeatedly checked Dutch and Antillean merchant ships and the presence of the Dutch warships acted as a deterrent against further actions.{{cite web |title=scheepvaartmuseum.nl :: Maritieme kalender 1902 |trans-title=Het Scheepvaartmuseum Maritime Calendar 1902 |url=http://www.hetscheepvaartmuseum.nl/knowledgebase/calendar%7C1902 |url-status=dead |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20131004215341/https://www.hetscheepvaartmuseum.nl/knowledgebase/calendar|1902 |archive-date=2013-10-04 |access-date=2012-12-24 |website=Het Scheepvaartmuseum |language=nl}}

File:Caricature of Cipriano Castro.jpg, published in the New York Herald, January 1903]]

In November 1902, the troops at command of Castro himself broke the Siege of La Victoria, weakened the vast network of revolutionaries armies and its extraordinary power.

Few weeks after that, Venezuela saw a naval blockade of several months imposed by Britain, Germany and Italy{{cite journal |last=Fonzo |first=Erminio |year=2015 |title=Italia y el bloqueo naval de Venezuela (1902–1903) |url=https://www.academia.edu/19440292 |journal=Cultura Latinoamericana |language=en |volume=21 |issue=1 |pages=35–61 |url-access=subscription |access-date=9 February 2017 |via=Academia.edu}} over Castro's refusal to pay foreign debts and damages suffered by European citizens in the recent Liberating Revolution. Castro assumed that the Monroe Doctrine would see the United States prevent European military intervention, but at the time the government of president Theodore Roosevelt saw the Doctrine{{cite book |last=McBeth |first=B. S. |year=2001 |title=Gunboats, Corruption, and Claims: Foreign Intervention in Venezuela, 1899–1900 |url={{google books|51dsAAAAMAAJ|plainurl=y}} |location=Santa Barbara |publisher=Greenwood |isbn=9780313313561 }} as concerning European seizure of territory, rather than intervention per se. With prior promises that no such seizure would occur, the US allowed the action to go ahead without objection. The blockade saw Venezuela's small navy quickly disabled, but Castro refused to give in, and instead agreed in principle to submit some of the claims to international arbitration, which he had previously rejected. Germany initially objected to this, particularly as it felt some claims should be accepted by Venezuela without arbitration.

File:Cipriano Castro and cabinet in 1902.jpg

When the world press reacted negatively to incidents including the sinking of two Venezuelan ships and the bombardment of the coast, the U.S pressured the parties to settle, and drew attention to its nearby naval fleet in Puerto Rico at command of Admiral George Dewey. With Castro failing to back down, Roosevelt pressure and increasingly negative British and American press reaction to the affair, the blockading nations agreed to a compromise, but maintained the blockade during negotiations over the details. This led to the signing in Washington of an agreement on 13 February 1903 which saw the blockade lifted, and Venezuela represented by U.S. ambassador Herbert W. Bowen commit 30% of its customs duties to settling claims. When an arbitral tribunal subsequently awarded preferential treatment to the blockading powers against the claims of other nations, the U.S feared this would encourage future European intervention. The revolutionaries, bearing a wound that could not be healed, succumbing finally in July 1903 in the Battle of Ciudad Bolivar after the siege of government army conducted by General Gomez, with which Matos decides to leave Venezuela, establishing itself in Paris.

However, the blockading nations argued for preferential treatment for their claims, which Venezuela rejected, and on 7 May 1903 a total of ten powers with grievances against Venezuela, including the United States, signed protocols referring the issue to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.{{Cite book |last= |first= |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cT_po79vQvsC&pg=PA36 |title=The Permanent Court of Arbitration: International Arbitration and Dispute Resolution – Summaries of Awards, Settlement Agreements and Reports |date=1999-05-18 |publisher=Kluwer Law International B.V. |isbn=978-90-411-1233-0 |editor-last=Hamilton |editor-first=P. |edition=Centenary |language=en |editor-last2=Requena |editor-first2=H.C. |editor-last3=van Scheltinga |editor-first3=L. |editor-last4=Shifman |editor-first4=B.}}{{Cite book |last=Steel |first=Anthony |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Mu48AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA322 |title=The Cambridge History of the British Empire, Volume III: The Empire-Commonwealth, 1870–1919 |publisher=The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press |year=1967 |editor-last=Benians |editor-first=E.A. |editor-link=Ernest Alfred Benians |edition=2nd |location=London |pages=322 |language=en |chapter=The British Empire and the United States of America, 1870–1914 |editor-last2=Butler |editor-first2=Sir James |editor-last3=Carrington |editor-first3=C.E. |editor-link3=Charles Carrington (historian)}} The Court held on 22 February 1904 that the blockading powers were entitled to preferential treatment in the payment of their claims.{{Cite journal |last=Maass |first=Matthias |date=2009-11-03 |title=Catalyst for the Roosevelt Corollary: Arbitrating the 1902–1903 Venezuela Crisis and Its Impact on the Development of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09592290903293738 |journal=Diplomacy & Statecraft |volume=20 |issue=3 |pages=383–402 |doi=10.1080/09592290903293738 |s2cid=153429243 |url-access=subscription |access-date=2024-02-01 |via=Taylor & Francis}} Washington disagreed with the decision in principle, and feared it would encourage future European intervention to gain such advantage. As a result, the crisis produced the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, described in Roosevelt's 1904 message to Congress.{{Cite book |last= |first= |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8V3vZxOmHssC&pg=PA676 |title=The Encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars: A Political, Social, and Military History [3 Volumes] |date=2009 |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |isbn=978-1-85109-951-1 |editor-last=Tucker |editor-first=Spencer C. |pages=676–677 |language=en}} The Corollary asserted a right of the United States to intervene to "stabilize" the economic affairs of small states in the Caribbean and Central America if they were unable to pay their international debts, in order to preclude European intervention to do so. The Venezuela crisis, and in particular the arbitral award, were key in the development of the Corollary.

In 1906, Castro punished the international firms involved in the Revolution to the point that diplomatic relations were broken with the United States and then with France due to debt differences.{{Citation needed|date=February 2024}} As a result, Venezuela lost its direct telegraph cable access when the French company that had been providing it was ousted from the country. The DeForest Wireless Telegraph company negotiated with Castro and sent a representative on 18 April 1908 to install stations in five different towns across Venezuela.{{Cite news |date=1908-04-24 |title=The Sixtieth Congress: Condensed News from the National Capitol. Wireless for Venezuela |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/421686872 |url-access=subscription |access-date=2024-02-01 |work=The Pleasanton Herald |pages=1 |via=Newspapers.com |volume=28 |issue=10}}

General Antonio Paredes led an insurrection against Castro, and in the winter of 1906, Paredes was captured and executed alongside sixteen other dissidents. His brother, Hector Luis Paredes, issued a manifesto from his home in Berlin, Germany. In it, Paredes called on the Venezuelan diaspora to join together to oust Castro from power, accusing him of stealing millions from the national treasury and using mercenary force to impede the government.{{Cite news |last=Paredes |first=Hector Luis |date=1907-10-05 |title=War Against Castro: His enemies to unite. General Paredes's Brother Wants to Save Venezuela |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/471158027 |url-access=subscription |access-date=2024-02-01 |work=New-York Tribune |page=13 |via=Newspapers.com}}

In 1908, accusing the opposition to his regime, General Castro massively expelled Corsican producers and traders established in and around Carúpano.{{Citation needed|date=February 2024}}

{{Main|Dutch–Venezuelan crisis of 1908}}

File:Cipriano Castro, 1913.jpg during his exile, 1913]]

In 1908, a dispute broke out between the Netherlands and president Castro regime on the grounds of the harboring of refugees in Curaçao. In July, Castro's government broke diplomatic relations with the Netherlands, arguing that the country's chargé d'affaires in Caracas had sent his government negative reports about the situation in Venezuela, some of which were published in the press of that country. Castro subjected Dutch ships to registration and applied tariff measures to them. The Netherlands considered that the series of decrees harmed its trade with Curazao. Venezuela expelled the Dutch ambassador, prompting a Dutch dispatch of three warships – a coastal battleship, the {{HNLMS|Jacob van Heemskerck|1906|6}}, and two protected cruisers, the {{HNLMS|Gelderland|1898|6}} and the {{HNLMS|Friesland|1896|6}}. The Dutch warships had orders to intercept every ship that was sailing under the Venezuelan flag.

On 12 December 1908, the Gelderland captured the Venezuelan gunboat Alix off Puerto Cabello.{{r|McBeth|p=221}} She and another ship the 23 de Mayo were interned in the harbor of Willemstad. With their overwhelming naval superiority, the Dutch enforced a blockade on Venezuela's ports.

Several popular riots run through the streets of Caracas, protesting the Dutch threats against Venezuela. The demonstrations degenerate into looting of businesses. Among the looted businesses was that of the Dutch merchant Thielen, an important figure in the Castro regime.

{{see also|1908 Venezuelan coup d'état}}

Few days later, Castro, who had been seriously ill for four years due to a kidney problem,{{Cite journal |last=Sullivan |first=William M. |date=October 1976 |title=The Harassed Exile: General Cipriano Castro, 1908–1924 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/980787 |journal=The Americas |volume=33 |issue=2 |pages=282–297 |doi=10.2307/980787 |jstor=980787 |s2cid=147570618 |url-access=subscription |access-date=2024-02-01 }} left for Paris to seek medical treatment for syphilis, leaving the government in the hands of vice president Juan Vicente Gómez, the man who was instrumental in his victories of 1899 and 1903. However, on 19 December 1908, Gómez seized power himself and effectively ended the war with the Netherlands. Relying on allied merchants and ranchers, the Gómez assumed command as dictator, counting on the support of multiple opponents of Castro regime and foreign governments with interests in Venezuela. The Secretary of State of the United States lent three war battleships and a high commissioner to support Gómez in exchange for a change in Venezuelan foreign investment policy.

A few days later, General Castro left for Berlin, nominally for a surgical operation. After that Castro suffered the harassment of the European powers resentful due to the policy that he had maintained towards them during his 8 years as president of Venezuela.

Without resources to carry out an armed invasion, he went to Madrid and then recovered from his operation in Paris and in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. At the end of 1912 Castro intended to spend a season in the United States, but was captured and vexed by the immigration authorities of Ellis Island which forced him to leave in peremptory terms (February, 1913). After having endured all sorts of vicissitudes continuing in Trinidad, Martinique, Paris, and Tenerife, he always sought to unite an armed force that would attempt to penetrate the country and return him to power. He traveled to Cuba, Washington, and back to Trinidad, where he remained from 1913 to 1916. This year, he returned to New York, still unsuccessfully seeking diplomatic support to regain power. In 1917, he was back in Trinidad. The following year, he moved to Puerto Rico without having managed to overcome the thorn of having lost power and regain it from the hands of the man who had staged a coup d'état against him in 1908: his godfather, Juan Vicente Gómez. He finally settled with his wife in Santurce Puerto Rico (1918), under close surveillance by spies sent by Juan Vicente Gómez, who assumed the Venezuelan presidency.

Castro spent the rest of his life in exile in Puerto Rico, making several plots to return to power — none of which were successful. Castro died 4 December 1924, in Santurce, Puerto Rico.

File:Zoila Rosa Martínez.jpgCastro was married to Zoila Rosa Martínez in October 1886 when she was only 16 years of age.{{Cite news |last=Perozo Padua |first=Luis Alberto |date=2021-03-01 |title=Rosa Castro, la primera venezolana en Hollywood |trans-title=Rosa Castro, the first Venezuelan in Hollywood |url=https://www.elnacional.com/opinion/rosa-castro-la-primera-venezolana-en-hollywood/ |access-date=2024-02-01 |work=El Nacional (Venezuela) |language=es}} She served as First Lady of Venezuela from 1899 to 1908.{{Cite book |last=Reyes |first=Antonio |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YQdlAAAAMAAJ |title="Presidentas" de Venezuela (primeras damas de la República en el siglo xix) |year=1955 |pages=216 |language=es |trans-title='Presidents' of Venezuela (first ladies of the Republic in the 19th century) |oclc=1262432 |access-date=2024-02-01}}{{Cite book |last1=Hernández |first1=Luis Guillermo |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5XlGDwAAQBAJ |title=Diccionario General del Zulia |last2=Semprún Parra |first2=Jesús Ángel |publisher=Sultana del Lago |year=2018 |isbn=9781976873034 |edition=2nd |location=Maracaibo |pages=540 |language=es |trans-title=General Dictionary of Zulia |access-date=2024-02-01}} She was sometimes known as Zoila de Castro.{{Cite web |last=Hernández |first=Octavio |date=1906 |title=La fiesta del Club Unión de Maracaibo en honor de doña Zoila de Castro |trans-title=The Club Unión de Maracaibo party in honor of Mrs. Zoila de Castro |url=https://curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/latin-american-pamphlet-digital-collection/catalog/43-990113751260203941 |access-date=2024-02-01 |website=Harvard Library |publisher=Impr. Americana |pages=1, 5, 9 |language=es |publication-place=Maracaibo, Venezuela |id=990113751260203941}}

She died in Caracas in 1952.{{Cite book |last=Reyes |first=Antonio |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YQdlAAAAMAAJ |title="Presidentas" de Venezuela (primeras damas de la República en el siglo xix) |year=1955 |pages=223 |language=es |trans-title='Presidents'of Venezuela (first ladies of the Republic in the 19th century) |oclc=1262432 |access-date=2024-02-01}}

File:Lucila Mendez 000.jpgCastro's daughter, Rosa Castro Martínez, was born on 31 January 1906. She adopted the stage name Lucille Méndez, and became the first Venezuelan actress in Hollywood silent movies.{{cite journal |title=John M. Anderson to Build Theatre |journal=New York Times |date=8 July 1925 |page=12 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1925/07/08/archives/john-m-anderson-to-build-theatre-his-park-avenue-in-east-58th-st-to.html |access-date=25 September 2018}} Director Ralph Ince suggested the stage name, the same as his former wife. Rosa and Ralph married on 7 July 1926; afterwards, her Spanish performances billed her as Rosa Castro, though she continued to be listed as Méndez in films recorded for English-speaking audiences.

Méndez died in San Diego, California on 24 May 2008 at the age of 102.

Hs brother Celestino Castro as Provisional president of the Tachira state (11.8.1900), is appointed commander-in-chief of the government forces in charge of combating the invasion of the General Carlos Rangel Garbiras from Colombia (July 1901) and assumes the role of commander of San Cristobal in the battle that culminates in the defeat of the invaders (26.7.1901). In February 1902, he managed to intercept in Las Cumbres the invasion of General Emilio Fernández from Colombia. He keeps to brother scrupulously informed of the events on the border, taking care to recruit and send troops to the center of Venezuela that help fight the forces of the Liberating Revolution (1902–1903). As militar commander of the state of Táchira (May 1904), he is appointed first vice president of that state (December 1907). He fled to Colombia after the coup d'état of 19 December 1908 and remains in exile until his death in 1924.

{{trivia|date=September 2023}}

During his presidency, northern Venezuela was struck by the powerful 1900 San Narciso earthquake, which caused widespread material damage in Miranda State and in the Venezuelan capital Caracas. Castro was woken in the middle of the night, and he leaped off from a window of the Yellow House, the then official residence of the President of Venezuela, and suffered a broken ankle.{{cite web |title=El movimiento telúrico tuvo una magnitud de 8,0 |url=http://www.funvisis.gob.ve/old/reportaje3.php |website=www.funvisis.gob.ve |publisher=Venezuelan Foundation for Seismological Research |access-date=12 June 2021 |language=Spanish}} The earthquake led him to consider changing the official residence to a building with anti-seismic structure, which occurred in 1904, when he transferred the Presidential House to Miraflores Palace, becoming its first occupant.{{Cite book |last=Maldonado-Bourgoin |first=Carlos |title=La Casa Amarilla: enclave histórico de Venezuela |year=1994 |pages=280 |language=es |trans-title=The Yellow House: historical enclave of Venezuela}}

Cipriano Castro was portrayed by Roberto Moll in the 2017 film La planta insolente.{{Cite news |last1=Del Águila |first1=Sonia |date=2020-02-06 |title=Roberto Moll y el día que fue declarado 'clínicamente muerto': 'Le dijeron a mi hija que haga los trámites de la funeraria' |trans-title=Roberto Moll and the day he was declared 'clinically dead': 'They told my daughter to do the paperwork at the funeral home' |url=https://elcomercio.pe/tvmas/farandula/roberto-moll-y-el-dia-que-fue-declarado-clinicamente-muerto-le-dijeron-a-mi-hija-que-haga-los-tramites-de-la-funeraria-video-noticia/ |access-date=2022-12-08 |website=El Comercio |language=es}}

{{Portal|Venezuela}}

• Presidents of Venezuela
• Dictatorship of Cipriano Castro

{{reflist|30em}}

{{Commons category|Cipriano Castro}}

• [https://tiempodepolitica.com/c-venezuela/cipriano-castro/ Cipriano Castro]
• [http://carmen-michelena.blogspot.com/2011/04/el-general-cipriano-castro-un.html Castro biography (in Spanish)]

{{S-start}}

{{s-off}}

{{succession box

| title = President of Venezuela

| before = Ignacio Andrade

| after = Juan Vicente Gómez

| years = 1899 – 1908}}

{{S-end}}

{{VEpresidents}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Castro, Cipriano}}

Category:Presidents of Venezuela

Category:Venezuelan soldiers

Category:1858 births

Category:1924 deaths

Category:People from Táchira

Category:Venezuelan people of Spanish descent

Category:Exiled Venezuelan politicians

Category:Burials at the National Pantheon of Venezuela

Category:Venezuelan expatriates in Puerto Rico

Category:Leaders ousted by a coup