The four chaotic years that follow Guzmán's…

The four chaotic years that follow Guzmán's rule are marked by several failed attempts to consolidate a civilian government.

A colorless military regime, led by General Joaquin Crespo, spends most of its energies between 1892 and 1898 fighting to remain in power.

Crespo is killed in 1898; in 1899 General Cipriano Castro, the first of four military rulers from the Andean state of Tachira, marched on Caracas with a private army that becomes a strong national army and assumes the vacant presidency.

Castro is characterized as "a crazy brute" by United States secretary of state Elihu Root and as "probably the worst of [Venezuela's] many dictators" by historian Edwin Lieuwen.