Surely a young person of twenty years considers the Contemporary History of Venezuela like a series of recondite facts that she does not register in his memory because she ignores simply them. Popular, political coup d'etats, rises that fought in secrecy and a country that entered modernity giving tumbles between military and civilians, but more military than civil, are the registry of the second part of the Memories of Enrique Tejera Paris (Two blows and one transition). There it is the history of a civil leader who allied itself with a colonel to initiate a democratic process that soon would take step to a dictatorship. A data within the amplest registry that gives Tejera to us like witness and actor of the adventure who means to govern in Venezuela but, mainly, the location of the keys to understand how and because, at a certain time, we put the handle in backward movement to the search of a past that we supposed already surpassed.

- You in your book Narrate that when Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso arrived already at the Ministry of Public Works and the Economy knew everything what was going to do had, it in the mind came, it planning. In other words it was preparation for the task. How would approach you a comparison of this type of civil servant with the present ministers of Chávez?

- A time I said a to him (Raul) Leoni that I did not like a minister who he had designated and when he asked to me why, I responded to him that he came to speak with him and had said to me that was desperate because in that ministry “there is no time nor to think”. I explained to him, then, that never would accept a position that had not dreamed to have during long time because one must know what is going to do.

- Without embargo, in his Memories you confess that when appointed director of Administration of the Ministry of Agriculture “… it did not know when the coffee took shelter or as soon as time give birth a cow (nine months)”.

- But I yes was preparation because he was professor of public administration, she had founded that chair and she has always fascinated me the matter. Thanks to that I was invited to give to classes of Organization and Method in Rio de Janeiro.

- I asked it because at present anyone is appointed minister and the rotation is so vertiginous that in ten years it has had, for example, eight ministers of the Interior and have been created a twenty of ministries.

- Almost all the people who have entered there (to the government) are agits props, communist militants who had right the necessary thing to make agitation and propaganda in unions and universities. They did not happen of there in their formation and, in addition, they had the misfortune to happen in a while through the UCV when this one was a training apparatus of Communists. Thus, who studied in the Faculty of Economy were well-educated to work in the Soviet Union and many graduated when that one already had stopped existing. So that they learned a science that does not have application in the reality.

- Without embargo, the University was more democratic and low that rule was born the concept from the masificación of the education.

At that time, within the University, the selection fell under a very peculiar sign that existed neither in the Soviet Union nor in Cuba: the scorn and the horror to the excellence and the competition because that, was said, been to marginalize the students. Thus, one looked for the individuals most faithful but, to the time, grosser.

-He is that what it has come making Chávez?

- It is that it is not the guilty because also comprises of that and in addition, I have understood, because me it said to its main examiner, that it had not passed examinations, in the Command staff school to it. In addition, the people who he knows, through PCV, come to the University and have been aupados to high positions in spite of their mediocrity.

-She will not be she looks for that them thus because fears to see itself surpassed in intelligence and capacity by its subordinates?

- I do not create it. Simply the volume of knowledge of the people who collaborate with him is very little for the government responsibilities. They never thought about governing, but solely about making agitation and propaganda.

- But in the Soviet Union there was very well prepared people.

- Not only that. When I was there I could appreciate how the system of selection for the enter the universities was of an extreme hardness. In the Lomonósov University, of Moscow, they asked to me what had made an impression to me of that house of studies and I responded to them that it did not see but adult people and not one face of predegree boy. “There are no them”, answered to me. “This university is only for students of posgrado and investigating”. In addition, the Soviet Communist Party was of a total effectiveness. The ex- ambassador of the USSR in Washington, Anatoli Dobrinin, told me like him, who was a province engineer, was taken by the party (Communist) to Moscow in the heat of war study of diplomacy. There they taught to them, among others many matters, something that they did not have: good modal. The person in charge of the course was one old countess who taught to label norms before a fine table of cubertería but with plates and empty glasses.

- there is who they compare the triennium adeco from the no 45 to the 48, described in his book, with this was chavista. The genesis of those governments was in a coup d'etat. That one was called a revolution, this of now also. In both cases it got to govern people who were outside the circles of being able. One accused the adecos of sectarians and on the chavistas also they fall accusations of that type.

- I have trained not to answer that question because she does not happen to be a imbecility of great size. The difference, not only is in the lack of capacity of the people who look for the President to administer. The Revolutionary Meeting of then had a very different problem: to choose between very competent people.

-Where formed that so competent people, taking into account that Venezuela was rural country and that had freed of a dictatorship hardly ten years before?

- In the universities. The economic universe and social very small era, but the baccalaureate, created in 1913 by a great minister (Red Guevara), was copied of the French educative system and had an incredible amount of knowledge. The university did not receive but young people who had happened through that baccalaureate and in addition éramos few students with magnificent professors. Soon the Revolution of October (as we called and the Communists made fun of) extended the horizon of the public administration with the incorporation of professional young people, some originating ones of foreign countries, like Argentina or the United States. That, gathered in the book, took to the North American ambassador to inform to the Department of State that professional and technical replaced the poets in ministries like the one of Agriculture. It was a true Renaissance of the scientific and administrative knowledge, everything in the middle of an aggressive honesty.

-And the sectarianism?

- The sectarianism was strong. But it was a moderate sectarianism by men like Betancourt, Leoni and Perez Alfonso. This, in the Ministry of Public Works and the Economy, it practically did not remove to anybody. The great oil experts who we found remained in their positions. So that the government was far better, product, also, of an administrative tradition.

- That came from the gomecismo.

- Del gomecismo no, of the medinismo and the government of Lopez Contreras. It is not necessary to fall in the Marxist idea according to which the Lopez Contreras and Medina were the continuation of the gomecismo. They were two governments entirely different from the one from the different Go'mez and to each other.

-How it is possible that a university as the one of 30 and 40 years outside able to form a generation more effective than the exit of the classrooms of the modern university in years 70, 80 and 90?

- That is product of the masificación, but as far as quality of education it has improved. The Faculty of Right of the UCV is better now than when I was student. The professors, then, were of first class. Today perhaps not because there is to look for a professor by each forty students. In any case the methodology and the amplitude of education, nowadays, are greater, but we left better preparations.

rgiusti@eluniversal.com