Venezuela provides an important departure from the experiences of countries such as Guatemala and Chile, where the foreign companies actively destabilized reformist governments. The presence of a fiercely anticommunist reformist party such as AD, with links to the labor movement, assuaged U.S. concerns over potential radical social change. AD party leaders proceeded cautiously with regard to policy, seeking to increase revenues but refraining from fundamentally restructuring the relationship that allowed foreign companies to operate freely in the country. This is the fundamental strategic relation that the foreign companies sought to preserve and that the reformers chose not to alter. Events in Venezuela underscore how dependence on oil shaped the views of middle-class reformers and labor leaders and highlight the limited capacity of nationalist discourse to alter the structures of power and inequality existing in the nation. Likewise, the U.S. government's embrace of the nationalist democratic left typified by AD reflected a long-term association based on the belief that these "reformists" would be the best antidote to communism in Venezuela. After 1960 Venezuela became an important model for U.S. policy in the region, and the State Department described Betancourt as "in the vanguard of the Latin American forces of democratic, evolutionary economic and social reform." As uneasiness over Cuba grew, Venezuela became a testing ground for new policy. The oil companies also recognized the advantages of stable relations with reformist or even nationalist governments. Intent on preventing another Mexico or another Cuba in the Western Hemisphere, the United States and the oil companies became exponents of the Venezuelan experience as a model for political and economic development throughout the Third World. © 2005 Latin American Perspectives.
