While the formidable Guzman Blanco was still alive, the various Presidents acted cautiously. No sooner had he passed away than disorder broke out afresh. Since a new dictator thought he needed a longer term of office and divers other administrative advantages, a constitution incorporating them was framed and published in the due and customary manner. This had hardly gone into operation when, in 1895, a contest arose with Great Britain about the boundaries between Venezuela and British Guiana. Under pressure from the United States, however, the matter was referred to arbitration, and Venezuela came out substantially the loser.
In 1899 there appeared on the scene a personage compared with whom Zelaya was the merest novice in the art of making trouble.
This was Cipriano Castro, the greatest international nuisance of the early twentieth century. A rude, arrogant, fearless, energetic, capricious mountaineer and cattleman, he regarded foreigners no less than his own countryfolk, it would seem, as objects for his particular scorn, displeasure, exploitation, or amusement, as the case might be. He was greatly angered by the way in which foreigners in dispute with local officials avoided a resort to Venezuelan courts and--still worse--rejected their decisions and appealed instead to their diplomatic representatives for protection. He declared such a procedure to be an affront to the national dignity. Yet foreigners were usually correct in arming that judges appointed by an arbitrary President were little more than figureheads, incapable of dispensing justice, even were they so inclined.
Jealous not only of his personal prestige but of what he imagined, or pretended to imagine, were the rights of a small nation, Castro tried throughout to portray the situation in such a light as to induce the other Hispanic republics also to view foreign interference as a dire peril to their own independence and sovereignty; and he further endeavored to involve the United States in a struggle with European powers as a means possibly of testing the efficacy of the Monroe Doctrine or of laying bare before the world the evil nature of American imperialistic designs.
By the year 1901, in which Venezuela adopted another constitution, the revolutionary disturbances had materially diminished the revenues from the customs. Furthermore Castro's regulations exacting military service of all males between fourteen and sixty years of age had filled the prisons to overflowing. Many foreigners who had suffered in consequence resorted to measures of self-defense--among them representatives of certain American and British asphalt companies which were working concessions granted by Castro's predecessors. Though familiar with what commonly happens to those who handle pitch, they had not scrupled to aid some of Castro's enemies. Castro forthwith imposed on them enormous fines which amounted practically to a confiscation of their rights.
While the United States and Great Britain were expostulating over this behavior of the despot, France broke off diplomatic relations with Venezuela because of Castro's refusal either to pay or to submit to arbitration certain claims which had originated in previous revolutions. Germany, aggrieved in similar fashion, contemplated a seizure of the customs until its demands for redress were satisfied. And then came Italy with like causes of complaint. As if these complications were not sufficient, Venezuela came to blows with Colombia.
