Former Venezuelan president Carlos Andres Perez, who nationalized the oil industry and then survived a coup attempt by current Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, has died in Miami, his daughter told local media.
As a two-term president, Perez led Venezuela through rising fortunes as well as deeply turbulent times — including the country’s worst-ever riots that left hundreds dead in 1989 after he initiated economic reforms — and eventually was driven out of office on corruption allegations.
Maria Francia Perez told Venezuela’s Globovision television network that her 88-year-old father, who had been living in the US for the past decade, passed away unexpectedly at 2:41pm on Christmas Day of an apparent heart attack.
“It was very sudden. He woke up in very good spirits this Dec. 25. He was very chatty; he was talking to us,” she said.
However, by mid-afternoon her father was gone, she said, dying “from one moment to the next.”
The leftist leader governed Venezuela twice — from 1974 to 1979 and 1989 to 1993.
During his first term, Perez oversaw the formation of state-run Petroleos de Venezuela, which allowed the oil-rich nation to benefit dramatically from the soaring energy prices of the early 1970s.
As his country’s stature on the oil industry’s international stage grew, Perez’s first presidency earned the nickname “Saudi Venezuela.” Just weeks after his victory in the 1988 election for his second term, Perez struck a deal with the IMF to embrace more free market policies in order to secure a multi-billion-dollar IMF loan to help pay down Venezuela’s external debt.
He was sworn in on Feb. 2, 1989, but within weeks there were massive street riots to protest the economic reforms, which included spikes in fuel and public transport prices.
The uprising, which became known as the “Caracazo,” was the strongest anti-government protest in modern Venezuelan history. It was put down with force, and the revolt’s suppression officially left 276 people dead.
On several occasions, Chavez has looked back at the Caracazo and described it as a protest against the social inequalities that sowed the seeds for his own socialist “Bolivarian revolution.”
It was in 1992 during Perez’s second term that Chavez — at the time a little-known army lieutenant colonel — led an abortive 1992 military coup, several years before being democratically elected to lead Venezuela.
Perez survived that and another coup attempt the same year, but in March 1993 the attorney general called on the Supreme Court to impeach the president for misappropriation and embezzlement of 250 million Bolivars (US$17 million).
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