In this first chapter of his book Del buen salvaje al buen revolucionario, Carlos Rangel Guevara presents the Europeans’ mythical view of the Americas. He emphasizes that even today, the myth of the “noble savage,” associated with a Golden Age or Age of Innocence, has come to shore up another myth: that of the “good revolutionary,” linked to utopias. In his opinion, as American colonies achieved independence, it was expected that this would strengthen Native societies, which had been corrupted by the colonizers. However, by the late 19th century, European positivism had turned the Natives into the reason why Latin America was underdeveloped. Later, in the 20th century, the ills of Latin America would be blamed on U.S. imperialism. To liberate these countries from the misery caused by their dependence, there arose the good revolutionary, who would move society as a whole toward well-being, where there would be neither ownership nor violence.

Carlos Rangel Guevara (1929–88) was a political expert and historian and Venezuelan journalist, who wrote two highly important books on Latin America: Del buen salvaje al buen revolucionario (which was already in its ninth edition in 1977) and El tercermundismo (1982). The writer was a defender of Western values—the market economy and the freedom of expression that had led many countries to wealth and to exercise democracy—as opposed to his long-term criticism from the leftist intellectual collective. That is why Rangel represented the opposition to the mid-20th century leftist intellectuals. His book, which has the same title as this first chapter, was a strong call to pay attention to the “victimhood” that leads Latin Americans to see the underdevelopment status of our countries in relation to the First World, particularly the United States. The example Rangel uses is the theory of dependence or underdevelopment promoted by several writers such as Theotônio dos Santos, Fernando Henrique Cardozo, André Gunder Frank and Paul Baran. According to this theory, which reduces the problem to its simplest form, we are poor because they are rich. In his incisive analysis of the revolutionary processes undergone by some of our countries, the writer reveals that the errors have basically been ours, in large part attributable to this mythic vision of a utopian society, dominated by the “good revolutionary,” who sacrifices freedom in the quest for equality. Rangel’s book, rooted in [economic] liberalism, went beyond vindicating the “aprismo” (popular revolutionary party led by the Peruvian Víctor Haya de la Torre), which had distanced itself from the hegemonic plans of Soviet communism in the 1930s (followed by Cuba’s). In this regard, the writer is in the Venezuelan humanist tradition of Augusto Mijares, Mariano Picón Salas and Arturo Uslar Pietri. By the time the book was published, the country had entered into a period of political good will, with the guerilla violence now behind it. There was a clear improvement in the living conditions of the masses owing to an increase in the price of oil worldwide. The art world was benefitting from the expansion of museums and galleries, and young artists were electing to take their scholarships in Anglo-Saxon countries. These countries would now be hosts to the debate about the new avant-gardes (happenings, performances, Conceptual art and minimalism); this entailed taking Venezuelan art out into the world and freely accepting what was taking place outside Venezuela. The best example of the change in attitude may be found in the decision by the painter Jacobo Borges (the most representative artist of the leftist opposition) to seek markets for his work in New York.