The Venezuelan dictator Juan Vicente Gómez (1857-1935) presided over the transformation of his country from a backward nation into one of the globe's major oil producers and an important force in international commerce.

Juan Vicente Gómez was born in the mountain state of Tachira and had virtually no formal education. He started to work as a cowboy, and within a few years he was the owner of a substantial landed property in his native state. He had also become involved in the turbulent local politics of his region.

In politics Gómez associated himself with another Tachira native, Cipriano Castro, who led contingents in several civil wars of the last decades of the 19th century. When Castro organized, from exile in Colombia, an invasion of his homeland, Gómez accompanied him in the effort, and when it was successful and Castro became...