The use of coins as a commercial pattern different from barter arose in Venezuela although it sounds incredible to us. The coin did not emerge in Asia Minor or in China during the sixth century BC, as the ancient history tells. Some historians assert that in the Venezuelan Andes there existed an older culture, which, like the Mayan culture and the Egyptian culture, rendered a special cult to the serpent.
In the archaeological zone of the Tatuy in the Merida State, mysterious anthropomorphic figures with more than four thousand years of antiquity were found, which were looted by German archaeologists for private collectors and museums of the world, where today they are exhibited to the astonishment of the tourists .
The Tatuy was the first universal culture that used gold coins as a commercial pattern. When the Spaniards saw the gold coins, the mythical city of "El Dorado" was born, from where that precious metal narrated by the conqueror Oviedo came, and which the Spaniards searched for uselessly. Indeed, the search for El Dorado became an obsession, which was credible by the gold coins of the Tatuy and the Mayas, which the Spaniards found in the Venezuela of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Another race of Venezuelan aborigines were the Arawaks, who were the first human groups to run into the Spanish conquistadors. They used the pearls of Cubagua as currency for commercial exchange. Also the indigenous natives of the Orinoco, used the so-called "zamuro pepa", as a monetary sign, which they exchanged with another currency of the Mayan culture of Central America. That other currency was the cocoa seed. That is why we say that before the arrival of Columbus, already in America there existed a monetary system that worked effectively, and that unlike the European was not subject to currency fluctuations, and therefore "devaluation" was not known.
The Spanish conquerors and invaders of these pre-Columbian civilizations used barter to achieve colonization through Catholic missionaries. The missionaries gave the Indians glass beads, mirrors, blankets and shoes, to make them submissive through evangelization. In return they received the gold that the natives used as coins. Our Indians did not understand wages as remuneration for their work. The Spaniards interrogated the natives to investigate the location of El Dorado, from where they supposedly obtained gold for their coins and ornaments.
The aborigines never specified the exact place where the gold was extracted. They only pointed vaguely to the region of Guayana, which was distant and diffuse due to the lack of cartographic maps.
When the Indians were exterminated almost in their entirety, the population of slaves from Africa supplanted the Venezuelan workforce. During the first years of the Spanish conquest, foreign currencies circulated as negotiation instruments only among merchants, especially on the islands of the Caribbean. Aboriginal workers and slaves had no access to these foreign currencies. The Welsares began international trade in Venezuela, exporting the products required in Europe such as salt, gold, cocoa, coffee, precious stones, pearls, slaves.
Thus the foreign currencies displaced the pre-Columbian autochthonous currencies, destroying the pre-Columbian monetary economy. So for the occurrence of first attempts for the independence of Venezuela by Gual and Spain, only foreign currencies circulated.
With the wars of independence, how was the bolivar constituted as an official currency?
After the independence cry of April 19, 1810, and the shortage of silver and gold required in the coinage of coins, the government of the First Republic went to paper money as a monetary innovation in Venezuela. In this regard Simón Bolívar said "the issuance of papers without other support than the strength of being a government, was one of the causes of the fall of the Republic."
Then the Liberator ordered the opening of the Mint to mint the silver coin. When losing the Second Republic, Pablo Morillo coined a new currency with the name Morillera. Later, after the Third Republic was consolidated after the Battle of Carabobo on June 24, 1821, the Liberator unified the monetary regime by fixing the weight of silver with the Venezuelan Currency Law.
While the Liberator ruled, our monetary sign was strengthened in such a way that it took foreign currencies out of circulation. The Bolivarian silver coin, had for its manufacture with all the silver of Potosi and the gold mines of Guayana. The Liberator in its macroeconomic conception, worked for the just distribution of wealth, as the only formula to mitigate the misery: broke with all the traditional schemes of productivity controlled by economic powers, by encouraging the incorporation of the working masses into the system of micro-finance, to generate an economic dynamic of supply and demand, based not on excessive consumption (similar to the one that neoliberalism tries to impose on us), but based on productivity, economic independence, the incentive to exports, control of imports, and a monetary system based on huge reserves of precious metals.
Thus the bolivar was born as a currency, which was priced at par and the glory of the Liberator. It must be remembered that Venezuela had won the war against the first world power of that era, which was Spain. Later, in order to give greater strength to the bolivar, the Liberator incorporated the immense mining riches of the country into the gold and silver standard.
On October 24, 1829, Simón Bolívar signed a Decree in Quito where mines of any kind would correspond to the Republic. For the support in gold and silver, the great strength of the bolivar was generated as official currency of the Gran Colombia and later of Venezuela. As we know the dollar began to "penetrate" our economy since José Antonio Páez (1830) as President decreed it as the official currency of Venezuela, after the death of the Liberator.
Despite what the dollar was pursuing, it was simply that it was coined with Venezuelan gold from the immense mines of El Callao, since gold was scarce all over the world at that time. The bolívar was minted with the silver of Potosí and the gold of Guayana, while in the United States there was not enough gold to mint their coins, so in Venezuela the first "morocotas" that were worth 20 dollars gold, which was the coin, were coined. America's most valuable and therefore of limited circulation.
The gold morocota (US gold $ 20,00) circulated in Venezuela as an official currency during the government of Páez. That was the best proof of Páez's submission to the United States. With the bringing of the remains of the Liberator to Caracas, on March 29, 1842, the Congress orders the minting, in London, of Venezuelan copper coins and a national coin denominated cent, which represents one hundredth of a strong peso, and will carry the emblem of the Liberator with the inscription República de Venezuela ".
On June 12, 1865, Congress enacted a new Law on the monetary regime, establishing as a monetary unit the "strong peso" of the name "Venezuelan gold" with the effigy of the Liberator and the Coat of Arms of Venezuela. In the face of such announcement, the United States was once again threatened by the monetary solidity of the Venezuelan market with a currency much stronger than the dollar. After imposing their economic omnipotence, they forced Venezuela to return to the old bimetallism, to give legal course to the dollar.
It was President Antonio Guzmán Blanco, who consolidated the Venezuelan monetary regime by the Decree of March 31, 1879, creating the "silver bolivar" as the monetary unit of Venezuela. The same Decree prohibited the circulation of foreign currencies, which in the future would only be accepted as goods according to their fine metal content. This was a hard blow to the US dollar circulating in Venezuela. The Venezuelan silver coin circulated freely from 1879 until the decade of the 70s of the 20th century, that is, more than 90 years.
The metric system was installed in the monetary system by necessity, to eliminate the European system that used the ratio of 1 kg of gold equal to 16 kg of silver. Guzmán Blanco in 1886, authorized to exploit the huge gold reserves of El Callao, to provide gold to the "Casa de Moneda", where the "bolívar de Oro", popularly called "pachano", was coined, in allusion to its director, General Jacinto Regino Pachano. During the twentieth century, the boom in monetary circulation in both the notes and the coinage of gold and silver, also brings an increase in gold reserves, which is why in the Constitution of June 24, 1918, it was decreed as a national monetary unit: the "golden bolivar".
Everyone wants to invest in the country, and a migration of people from all corners of the planet begins. This arrogance of Venezuela, which was not seen since the time of Simón Bolívar, alerts the United States with its squalid dollar.
By the end of 1929, a political crisis financed by the Americans was generated with the support of the written press. The campaign achieved a devaluation of the bolivar against the dollar, before an audience that went to the banks to change their money. The exchange rate is set at Bs 3.90 per dollar. But such were the reserves of gold and oil revenues that the country had, that the "Bolivar" was revalued in May 1937, to settle at Bs. 3.35 per dollar, exchange rate pattern that remained unchanged for 23 years, as a record in the finances of a nation.
Venezuela in 1960 was the envy of the world, while the US dollar, the British pound sterling, the Japanese yen, the German mark, and the French franc, which constituted the most powerful nations on the planet, fluctuated in the exchange market, the bolivar did not I suffered no variation. It was common to hear in international markets: all of them lower the bolivar less. Venezuela was the country with the pride of being the only country that had silver coins.
Once again the United States sets its strategy against Venezuela, and at the beginning of 1961, faced with a conjunctural crisis in the world oil markets, the government of Rómulo Betancourt established exchange controls to devalue the bolívar at 4.30 per dollar; and the silver that characterized the material par excellence of our coins, was replaced by nickel.
But even so, the strength of the bolivar is unquestionable in world markets and again Venezuela imposes another record of 22 years without currency fluctuation against the dollar; that added to the first 23 years, we became the only country that has achieved an invariable stability of its currency for 45 years (world record).
What is the current state of the bolivar as a measure of our economy?
The US, with its neoliberal economic system and its policy of dollarization, uses the power of money to buy the conscience of the politicians of the day who take the country to a spiral of endless devaluations with an excessive demand of dollars for its operation. In this way, trade requires dollars, agro-industry is replaced by foreign products that demand dollars, all products depend on the dollar. Medicines, food, textiles, manufacturing, white goods, brown line (furniture), computer equipment and software, fixed and mobile telephony equipment, everything that is consumed in the country.
The "port" economy means that most of the Venezuelan companies are assemblers that require imported parts and pieces (CKD), causing a huge flow of foreign currency. The banks bought large amounts of dollars to play the devaluation and the exchange rate. Virtually all the dollars that came to us from the sale of oil, which belongs to Venezuelans, were sold to a privileged sector, which in turn returned them abroad with an inordinate purchase of imported products, or simply as a business to deposit them. in your bank accounts, betting on devaluation.
The balance of payment, that is, the difference in exports minus imports, was negative, international reserves fell, in a speculative market of buying and selling dollars, which ended up breaking the country's finances.
With this scenario occurred the infamous "Black Friday" on February 18, 1983, when the government of Luis Herrera Campins established a system of Regime of Differential Changes, RECADI, to restrict dollars from oil; and from then on, the bolivar fell precipitously into a speculative inflationary spiral sponsored by the successive devaluations, which in 21 years took it from Bs. 4.30 to more than Bs. 1920 per dollar, for the benefit of the economic empires that benefited of the brutal devaluation of the bolivar.
In addition, these economic empires continue in their attempt to continue devaluing Bs. 2150 for the year 2005 as reflected in the budget law for 2005. Meanwhile, most Venezuelans suffer the highest inflation in Latin America as a result of these unfair devaluations. the most disadvantaged are the Venezuelans of the professional middle class and the popular classes.
At present we live a hyperinflation, with commercial blockade. financial and banking of the USA against Venezuela that has the objective of overthrowing the current government but the politicians do not suffer the effects of this economic war but the Venezuelan people who today are suffering from hunger, lack of medicines, lack of spare parts for cars, lack of lubricants and fuels despite having the largest oil reserves on the planet estimated at 25% of the world's oil reserves.
For three years I have proposed a new currency for Venezuela, the Bolivar Oro, with a value of 1/100 of a troy ounce of monetary gold of purity 999. This new currency would allow us to sell our hydrocarbons in Bolívares Oro and at the same time we could buy the goods and necessary services paying with this new currency. For this we proposed the creation of a cryptocurrency associated with the official currency that we baptize BGCOIN whose letters mean Bolivar Gold Coin in the English language.
In other later articles we will give a detailed explanation of this new Venezuelan currency referring to the Gold Standard. It means that Venezuela also has the largest gold reserves in the world estimated at 25,000 tons of which 11,000 tons are certified.
The Bolivar Gold currency would float relative to the price of oil and would be shielded with the value of the troy ounce of gold. In this way the Venezuelan economy would be de-dollarized, avoiding the inexorable worldwide fall of the value of the dollar, which would affect our finances.
Since 1914 Venezuela sells its oil in dollars to the present and this situation means the dollarization of the economy with an intermediate currency, the Bolivar Fuerte today so devalued. Venezuela with the Bolivar Oro currency would resume the strength of the currency that since the times of independence was manifested as the Gold Peso, the Bolivar Gold and the Gold Fort, the latter coined with 32 grams of 900 gold.
Hopefully the Venezuelan authorities will come to accept the convenience of having a currency of its own and of great strength such as the Bolívar Oro currency associated with the cryptocurrency BGCOIN issued by the BCV and assigned to Blockchain block chains.