Eduardo Arcila Farías (1912-1996) is one of the most important historians of 20th century Venezuela. His extensive work covers the field of literature and the history of the modern (or colonial) period of the South American province. This essay analyzes his social vision from two books: Sudor, cuentos del mar y de la tierra, Mexico, 1941, full of ordinary individuals who lived the transition from the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez and the beginnings of democracy, and Economía colonial de Venezuela, Mexico, 1946, also full of subjects who lived in the province in those colonial times. Both artifacts show the historian Ediardo Arcila Farías in his social yearning for change in a modern Venezuela that was slowly following the onslaught of the twentieth century.