Román Delgado Chalbaud

Román Delgado Chalbaud (* 1882 in Mérida ; † August 11, 1929 in Cumaná ) was a Venezuelan professional officer and politician . He fell during the attempt at revolution using the German cargo steamer Falke in the early morning of August 11, 1929 at the Guzmán Blanco Bridge in Cumaná in a battle with government troops under General Emilio Fernández.

Origin and education

Delgado's parents were Miguel Delgado and Dolores Chalbaud. They died when Delgado was a child, after which the orphan was sent to the Sagrado Corazón de la Grita college for care . Thanks to the intervention of an uncle, General Estebán Chalbaud Cardona, through the mediation of President Joaquín Crespo , Delgado received an apprenticeship at the Escuela Naval de Puerto Cabello ( Naval School of Puerto Cabello ) on board the school ship Ana Jacinta , where he was trained from 1895 to 1898 Naval officer received.

As early as 1901 Delgado was promoted to sea captain and was given command of the gunboat Restaurador , with which he was used against the rebel steamer Ban Righ , which had been bought by opponents of the new President Cipriano Castro in England and now threatened the Venezuelan coast . Delgado was still in command of the Restaurador when it was captured and confiscated in the port of Guanta on December 11, 1902 by a boarding party of the German small cruiser SMS Gazelle as part of the international blockade of Venezuela . Delgado was supported by the leader of the command, Lieutenant Titus Türk , as a hostage taken, had been completely searched until the ship. According to Turk, Delgado had intended to undertake a fire attack on the Gazelle and then sink the Restaurador himself with an explosive charge , but Delgado had been surprised by the boarding party.

In 1903 Delgado became the fleet chief of the Armada Nacional . With his help, the so-called Revolución Libertadora of Manuel Antonio Matos against Castro was decisively defeated in July 1903 in Ciudad Bolívar on the Orinoco and Castro's rule was finally established.

Political and military career under Vicente Gómez

On December 19, 1908, Delgado joined the coup of Juan Vicente Gómez against Castro and was then one of his closest leadership.

In 1909 Delgado founded the Compañia Anónima de Navegación Fluvial y Costanera ( joint stock company for inland and coastal shipping ), which controlled all of Venezuela's goods traffic on the coast and on the inland waterways. This position made him one of the most influential protagonists of the so-called gomecismo system of rule ; at times he was already regarded as Gómez's successor. In 1911 the dictator sent him to Europe to raise foreign credits for some economic projects. This included the modernization of the national banking system , the construction of a sewer network for the capital Caracas and the establishment of a steamship service for the Upper Orinoco and the Río Negro for future colonization of the region. Delgado negotiated in Paris with representatives of Crédit France and the House of Louis Dreyfus , in London with representatives of the Ethelburg financial consortium. The negotiations provoked protests in parts of the Venezuelan public , so that Gómez finally distanced himself from the projects.

After the failure of his plans, Delgado sat in opposition to Gómez. In 1913 he took part in a coup against the president to prevent his re-election. The coup failed and Delgado was sentenced to long chain detention in the notorious La Rotunda prison, from which he was only released in 1927.

The revolution of 1929. The falcon expedition

Immediately after his release from prison, Delgado went into exile in Paris. Here, with the help of French financiers and the Venezuelan oil baron Antonio Aranguren, he founded a government in exile, the Junta Suprema de la liberación nacional ( Supreme Junta of National Liberation ), which he chaired with the aim of overthrowing the government of General Leopoldo Baptista but Gómez 'was only a straw man . Through the fall of Bautista, the system of gomecismo was supposed to collapse and the dictator should be eliminated. His son Carlos Delgado Chalbaud was also involved in the revolution .

The revolution plan envisaged the opening of three fronts on the Venezuelan coast. In the west , a group headed by the chief of staff, General Leopoldo Baptista, was to march into Venezuela by land from Colombia , and a general Gutiérrez was to operate in the far northeast. Delgado himself took over the middle front in the state of Sucre with the strongest rebel group. These three fronts were intended to fragment and weaken the government troops. In the opinion of the rebels, this created the conditions for a general uprising against Gómez.

The junta chartered the Falke cargo steamer in Hamburg through the local arms dealers Felix Prenzlau and Felix Kramarsky , which served as a transport ship for the rebels and their weapons. The falcon left Hamburg with Delgado on board on July 9, 1929 and arrived in the Polish port of Gdynia on July 12 , where a good 1,400 boxes of rifles and ammunition were taken over. On July 19, 1929, the falcon left Gdynia with a course for the Caribbean . Shortly before the departure, a photo was taken of the ship's command and 21 revolutionaries who had come from Paris on the bridge of the Falcon ; this picture was published on January 5, 1930 by the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung .

The steamer arrived on August 7, 1929 off the island of Blanquilla off Venezuela . Here was the Hawk , despite protests from the German crew in General Anzoategui renamed and officially put at the service of the Venezuelan revolution and marine addition to German and Venezuelan flags hoisted. This process was illegal under both German and international law .

In the early morning of August 11, 1929, the falcon entered the port of Cumaná . At this point the insurrection plan had already failed in two essential details. A strong rebel group that had stood ready in Santo Domingo had not been able to reach Blanquilla by sea and was therefore out in support of the central front. The Western Group under Chief of Staff Baptista did not even come into action, as no logistical preparations for the incursion into Venezuela had been made in the Colombian Barranquilla due to lack of money.

At around 5:00 am, the falcon, under Delgado's leadership , suspended three landing commands . In addition, some German crew members had joined the rebels as mercenaries . Shortly after landing, apparently around 5.30 a.m., the rebels encountered a troop of Government General Emiliano Fernández, governor of the state of Sucre, at the Guzman Blanco Bridge. In the short battle that followed, in which the rebels also used machine guns , both Delgado and Fernández were killed in a very short time. Due to Delgado's death , the rebels withdrew disoriented on the falcon , which immediately left the port and under pressure from the crew called the British port of Port of Spain on Trinidad , where the steamer was chained by the authorities on suspicion of piracy has been.

Delgado's body was transferred to Caracas in 1953 and buried there on December 10th at the Cementerio General del Sur .

literature

• Manuel Caballero: Gómez, el tirano liberal , 2nd edition Caracas 1994.
• Jorge Olavarría: Gómez , Caracas 2007.
• Federico Vegas: Falcon , Caracas 2005.
• Steamer "Falke" from Altona. Violation of the duties of a seafarer; Confiscation , in: Decisions of the Reichsoberseeamt and the Maritime Offices of the German Reich , Vol. XXV, Issue 9 u. 10, Berlin 1931, pp. 726-754.
• Titus Türk : 75 days on board the cruiser "Restaurador", 2nd edition Lübeck 1905.
• Brian S. McBeth: Dictatorship & Politics. Intrigue, Betrayal, and Survival in Venezuela, 1908-1935 ; Notre Dame, Indiana 2008.

Web links

• Biographical entry on Román Delgado Chalbaud near Venezuela Tuya