Published at: 05/11/2025 09:00 PM

(El Nacional, Latest News, El Mundo, November 1, 1958; Vea, October 31, 2015 and El Universal, August 1987)

• On November 1, 1958, the entire press announced the ratification of the New York (NY) Pact, this time signed at the Quinta Punto Fijo, owned by Rafael Caldera, in the city. The Delicias of Sabana Grande.
• Actually, the document was written by Nelson Rockefekller and secretly endorsed months earlier in New York by Rómulo Betancourt, Jóvito Villalba and Caldera at the end of September 1957. Shortly before the fall of General Pérez Jiménez.
• In addition to Betancourt and Rockefeller, three characters were involved in its elaboration who established the coordinates to place the coup d'etat of January 23, 1958 as a starting point, these were:
  • The mobster Serafino Romualdi, a renegade former communist like Betancourt and leader of the American Federation of Labor.
  • The macabre Foster Dulles, Secretary of the US State Department.
  • Maurice Bergbaum, Head of Latin American Affairs.
• The meetings were held at the luxurious Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where the three of them secured an agreement to safeguard the interests of the U.S. State Department, highlighting their expectations of appropriating our oil and the monopoly on “Made in the USA” imports in Venezuela.
• This is how they agreed, Villalba, Caldera and Betancourt, to sign the Punto Fijo Pact in Caracas, on October 31, 1958, in the fifth of the same name.
• “The Right of Admission Reserved”: the pact was an exclusionary, sectarian, interventionist and police political act. Many of the sectors of the living forces that represented the people in the clandestine struggles were left out of it.
• Democracy was hijacked by the signatories. The people, every five years, were consulted for general elections. Public consultation and participation channels were blocked.
• The right of admission was reserved to marginalize the fundamental political actors of January 23, such as Gustavo Machado and Fabricio Ojeda, Head of the Patriotic Junta in hiding. That is why the document was between the lines of a decree of political persecution.
• In this way, Betancourt, and his private secretary, bachelor Carlos A. Pérez, officially assumed the role of key U.S. officials to implement the anti-communist hunting plan in the framework of the Cold War.
• At the doors of a famous French restaurant in the capital, Le Coq D`Or (The Golden Rooster), for decades, the unfunded check issued by Rómulo Betancourt to celebrate the anniversary of the signing of the fratricidal agreement was on display there. The three of them sat there many times to toast the oil looting.
• The famous Le Coq D`Or was conveniently located two blocks from the Qta. Fixed Point. He was attended at the entrance by uniformed goalkeepers and only those who had made a reservation and with the appropriate dress (flux and tie from well-known brands) were admitted.
• On the occasion of the bottomless check, the indexed cost of the celebration was approximately $450 today, which included two whiskeys or two glasses of French wine.
• As stated on the sign in its entry “The Right of Admission Is Reserved”, so was Representative Democracy. Reserved for a few. Unemployment, poverty, hunger, lead and persecution had Betancourt “only reserved” for the people in his five-year term and a lot of oil, almost given away, for his friend Rockefeller.

Mazo News Team