3 ideas
The group mixed veteran caudillos with young students. Their commander, General Román Delgado Chalbaud, had spent years in Gómez's prison. He was killed almost immediately in the landing at Cumaná, and the invasion collapsed within hours without triggering the popular uprising it was built on.
Exile movements plan against the country as it was when they left, and assume that a spark from outside will set off discontent that is already there. Meanwhile the regime at home has absorbed, frightened or co-opted the population. The gap between the imagined country and the real one makes a seaborne invasion depend on a rising that never comes. Once the charismatic leader falls, nothing is left to hold the operation together.
An uprising can fail at its stated goal and still succeed as a formative school for its youngest members. They survive the defeat of their elders, and for them the fiasco becomes an initiation into politics, violence and responsibility. The failure's lasting effect is carried forward by the people who later build civic and democratic institutions.