Published at: 09/09/2026 09:00 PM

“Sowing the oil” - From Uslar Pietri to Delcy Rodríguez

• Arturo Uslar Pietri belonged to that extraordinary cosmic race of beings who loved Venezuela far beyond their literary prestige, personal ambitions and political aspirations. That species that Simón Bolívar invented as a product of miscegenation and forged in 19 years of total commitment to our independence.
• As a producer and television host, through his educational talk Human Values, he sowed country awareness, homeland awareness and certain lessons about our glorious historical past and no less portentous evolution in the challenges we must face.
• For more than 30 years, around his conferences, several generations of hundreds of thousands of viewers were infected with that fever of working for Venezuela, of building a better country, which he broadcast weekly to his “invisible friends”. Thus, in the midst of the atrocities and failures of the Adeco-Copeyan governments, the enthusiasm and optimism to build a possible Venezuela.
• Uslar Pietri publicly warned him, when he was only a 30-year-old, about the catastrophe that would ensue if oil was not planted to leverage a fully developed economy. In the midst of the repeated complaint about the inefficiencies of the Adeco-Copeyan bipartisanism, he was able to teach that all Venezuelans are called to dedicate ourselves to that creative work of the reconstruction and refoundation of Venezuela.
• This is how on Tuesday, July 14, 1936, Uslar Pietri closed his editorial in Diario Ahora (Year I, No. 183) with the headline stating the need to “Sow oil”.
• This oil doctrine, which, applied during the four years of the administration of General Isaías Medina Angarita (1941-1945), made the coexistence of political forces and an environment of authentic social peace a reality, as well as notable progress in education, health, housing, roads and socio-economic benefits for the entire Venezuelan family.
• The historic Hydrocarbons Act of 1943, inspired by this premise of Uslar Pietri, was agreed at the White House with the then President of the United States, Franklin Delano Rooselvet, the main oil companies operating in the country and the factors of political power present in the chambers of the Senate and Deputies of Congress National of the Republic.
• On the occasion of its enactment, it was unanimously acclaimed by all political parties (Communist Party of Venezuela - PCV, Democratic Action - AD, Democratic Republican Union - URD and Copei) in the memorable speech that President Medina delivered before a massive demonstration in Los Caobos Park.
• However, after the overthrow of Medina Angarita, this concept of country was destroyed by successive adeco-Copeyan governments, until Hugo Chávez, Nicolás Maduro and Delcy Rodríguez made it the cornerstone of the nation's social and economic architecture. Oil as a lever for the diversification of the economy, a guarantee of social welfare and political stability.
• From 1958 to 1998, “Sowing oil” was an economic policy trampled on by Rómulo Betancourt and his successors... In this regard, in 1961, Uslar Pietri denounced: “In less than two years, the traditional agricultural and livestock production of our soil has not increased, but it shows a tendency to decrease drastically; a large part of the resources available to us come from mining activities destructive and not reproductive agro-livestock”.
• This law was in force until November 13, 2001, that is, 58 years, then the Constitutional President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Hugo Chávez Frías enacted the Organic Law on Hydrocarbons, which came into force on January 1, 2002.
• It was Uslar Pietri, therefore, who advanced for more than half a century the need for an economic policy based on the effective use of oil revenues in the integral development of the country, with a holistic vision of all the strategic potentialities of Venezuela.
• As evidenced today in the Energy Agreement that the President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, has signed with the government of the United States of America, through which she will obtain resources of more than 100 billion dollars, necessary to consolidate a future of political peace, citizen security and sustainable social development.
• The regrettable thing about the overthrow of the government of General Medina Angarita and the decline of its socio-economic policies was that such an accurate concept of country, emanating from the headline “Sowing Oil”, was for 40 years crushed by successive governments that made Venezuela a nation of desolate fields, diminishing agriculture, very deplorable educational and health levels, extreme poverty, miserably indebted, insecure and dependent.
• Thus, lapidately, Uslar Pietri himself, at the end of his editorial, warned: “That instead of oil being a curse that will turn us into a parasitic and useless people, let it be the fortunate situation that allows, with its sudden wealth, to accelerate and strengthen the productive evolution of the Venezuelan people under exceptional conditions.”
• Finally, Arturo Uslar Pietri warned: “The day that Venezuela has an adequate oil policy, the day when, through the effective action of its children, everyone ceases to be an oil parasite, that day will have, by simple addition, economic wealth, social progress and political stability.” Alluding to the need to recover the lost spaces of our agro-livestock economies, return to developing rural companies and promote industrialization towards the future.

Mazo News Team