José Vicente Rangel, historical figure of the Venezuelan left, dies at 91 | International

José Vicente Rangel, an emblematic figure of the Venezuelan left, a politician, presidential candidate, lawyer and journalist, vice president of Venezuela for seven years in the era of Hugo Chávez, died in Caracas at the age of 91. Rangel was married to artist Ana Avalos and had two children, Gisela and José Vicente, the latter being a figure of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and mayor of Sucre, east of Caracas.

Born in Caracas in 1929, in political activity from an early age, in 1946 he joined the Democratic Republican Union party, URD, founded by Jóvito Villalba, historical leader of the Venezuelan democratic cause, of which he became political secretary. Forced into exile with the arrival of the Marcos Pérez Jiménez dictatorship in the 1950s, Rangel lived in Santiago de Chile for several years. He returned to Venezuela to join the resistance activities and participated in the organization of the Junta Patriótica, the clandestine platform for the conquest of democracy, in 1957.

Rangel left the URD in 1963, a party that signed the Punto Fijo Pact, with which Venezuelan democracy began, and whose deputy was elected, as the position of the Castro national left radicalized. At that time he was the editor of a popular political agitation newspaper called Clarion. An enemy of the system, he resigned from the party to protest against the official decision to join the coalition government headed by Raúl Leoni, of Acción Democrática.

From now on, from the perspective of revolutionary nationalism, José Vicente Rangel became one of the first spokesmen of the so-called The Venezuelan road to socialism, a current that proclaimed autonomy against Soviet influences and postulated the development of electoral strategies for taking power.

From 1965 to 1968, Rangel was a member of the Revolutionary Party of Nationalist Integration and carried out a famous parliamentary activity to denounce military excesses in the fight against guerrilla outbreaks at the time. Some of these accusations are collected in one of his most read books, Black file, published in 1972.

The defeat and permanent withdrawal of the guerrilla movements in 1970 made Rangel one of the symbols of the Venezuelan left. He twice ran as a candidate for the Movement for Socialism, founded by Teodoro Petkoff, a post-Castro movement that provoked the Soviet Union and defended the democratic game. His relations with Petkoff cooled, Rangel aspired once again to the presidency in 1983, accompanied by the Communist Party of Venezuela, La Nueva Alternativa and the Popular Electoral Movement.

The modest results obtained in all those elections, in a stable and prosperous country, politically protected by the two great parties of democracy (Democratic Action and the Christian Socialist Cup), undermined Rangel’s militant spirit.

An intellectually educated man, around 1984 he reduced his political discourse, moved away from partisan activity and expanded his spectrum of press articles, political analyst and reporter. Rangel holds the position of journalist who defends democracy and the rule of law. Moderate and wise, he established relations with almost the entire national country of that Venezuela and became an integral part of the democratic society of that time, as an analyst and television figure. His program José Vicente Hoy, aired on Televen shortly before his death, it became a cult date.

The arrival of Hugo Chávez

Its influence on public opinion increased in the 1990s, as did the democratic experiment in crisis. Especially after February 4, the day of Hugo Chávez’s failed coup. Rangel became famous for his attitude of overseeing the governments of democracy, a kind of symbol of civil society in the face of power.

Hugo Chávez amnestied, two years after that coup attempt, José Vicente Rangel and the army establish an immediate friendship and communion of interests as soon as he entered politics in 1994. This alliance will never crack. Following a complaint by José Vicente Rangel, Carlos Andrés Pérez, the then president, is forced to resign, a process that today is already unanimously appreciated as an unfounded artifice.

José Vicente Rangel was one of the great political influences of Hugo Chávez, one of his first teachers and one of its main operators until his death in 2013. Connoisseur and friend of the entire mass society in the nineties, a pampered public From that moment on, Rangel persuaded Chávez to take the electoral path to power, running for office in the 1998 elections. Since then, Chávez has become a political phenomenon that has produced a long hegemony in the country.

Rangel was chancellor, defense minister and vice president between 2002 and 2007. Rangel’s transition to Chavism turned him into a kind of “black beast” of the Venezuelan opposition, part of which he felt betrayed, because Rangel only now has liberal values. which he had invoked in his years as a freelance journalist. Rangel accompanied Chavista decisions to close Radio Caracas Televisión, the country’s oldest channel, to close dozens of radio stations, harass journalists and weaken the structure of the national private media.

Once out of government in 2007, he continued as an adviser to Chávez and then to Nicolás Maduro, whose defender he was also determined. After being the prosecutor of the anti-corruption debate in Venezuela, Rangel silently contemplated the most sordid cases of corruption in the years of the current government, almost all of which go unpunished today.