Under Gómez, Venezuela completed a degree of independence and financial progress. After oil become determined close to Lake Maracaibo in 1914, Gómez bargained shrewdly with the petroleum corporations of the United States, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands for the gain of Venezuela. He persevered to preserve precise family members with overseas countries and controlled to cast off all overseas indebtedness. He exercised control over the neighborhood caudillos ("bosses") and the Roman Catholic Church, launched many public works programs, and prepared a 'green' administration. A staunch anticommunist, Gómez viewed both communism and trade unions as a threat to regime and suppressed both, denouncing the former as a "plague" and the latter as "a tool of the devil."Lavin, John, A Halo for Gomez (1954), pp. 244–45
