XIXth Century Zulia in the Construction of Venezuelan Nation

Taking into account the participation of Zulia in the history of Venezuela offers new interpretative reflections about how agreements and negotiations were made between the diverse regional political forces interested in safeguard the territory of the country and the nation promised for republican politic discourse. The study considers the scope of the federal principle that, like theory and practice, favored reorganization of internal power; also, as a resource that favored the stability of traditional political leadership, and of the new emerging one, through alliances and agreements with the national centre. To explain how these agreements were respected, or on occasions, not fulfilled by a diversity of social actors and dissimilar interests that were associating, leads to reconsidering the scope of federalism as a mediating resource between the different constitutive powers of the country. Results of the analysis of this process in Zulia evidence that the alliances created around the republican ideal propitiated the scenes needed to give continuity to the republic and the later consolidation of the national State in Venezuela.