Carlos Andrés Pérez

Carlos Andrés Pérez
Pérez at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in 1989.
President of Venezuela
In office 12 March 1974 – 12 March 1979
Preceded by	Rafael Caldera
Succeeded by	Luis Herrera Campins
In office 2 February 1989 – 20 May 1993
Preceded by	Jaime Lusinchi
Succeeded by	Octavio Lepage (Acting)
Senator of the Republic of Venezuela For Life
In office 12 February 1999 – 28 March 2000
In office 12 March 1974 – 2 February 1994
Vice President of the Socialist International
In office 30 January 1976 – 30 January 1992
President	Willy Brandt
Minister of Home Affairs of Venezuela
In office 12 March 1962 – 12 August 1963
President	Rómulo Betancourt
Preceded by	Luis Augusto Dubuc
Succeeded by	Manuel Mantilla
Member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Republic of Venezuela
In office 5 January 1964 – 5 January 1968
Constituency	Táchira
In office 5 January 1958 – 2 February 1960
Constituency	Táchira
In office 5 January 1947 – 24 November 1948
Constituency	Táchira
Personal details
Born	Carlos Andrés Pérez Rodríguez (1922-10-27)27 October 1922 Rubio, Táchira, Venezuela
Died	25 December 2010(2010-12-25) (aged 88) Miami, Florida, United States
Political party	Acción Democrática
Spouse(s)	Blanca Rodriguez Cecilia Matos
Children	Sonia, Thais, Martha, Carlos Manuel, María de Los Ángeles, Carolina, María Francia and Cecilia Victoria.
Religion	Roman Catholicism
Signature

Carlos Andrés Pérez Rodríguez (27 October 1922 – 25 December 2010), also known as CAP and often referred to as El Gocho (due to his Andean origins), was a Venezuelan politician, President of Venezuela from 1974 to 1979 and again from 1989 to 1993. His first presidency was known as the Saudi Venezuela due to its economic and social prosperity thanks to enormous income from petroleum exportation. However, his second period saw a continuation of the economic crisis of the 1980s, and saw a series of social crises, a popular revolt (denominated Caracazo) and two coup attempts in 1992. In May 1993 he became the first Venezuelan president to be forced out of the office by the Supreme Court, for the embezzlement of 250 million bolívars belonging to a presidential discretionary fund.

Carlos Andrés Pérez was born at the hacienda La Argentina, on the Venezuelan-Colombian border near the town of Rubio, Táchira state, the 11th of 12 children in a middle-class family. His father, Antonio Pérez Lemus, was a Colombian-born coffee planter and pharmacist of Spanish and Canary Islander ancestry who emigrated to Venezuela during the last years of the 19th century. His mother, Julia Rodríguez, was the daughter of a prominent landowner in the town of Rubio and the granddaughter of Venezuelan refugees who had fled to the Andes and Colombia in the wake of the civil war that ravaged Venezuela in the 1860s.

Pérez was educated at the María Inmaculada School in Rubio, run by Dominican friars. His childhood was spent between the family home in town, a rambling Spanish colonial-style house, and the coffee haciendas owned by his father and maternal grandfather. Influenced by his grandfather, an avid book collector, Pérez read voraciously from an early age, including French and Spanish classics by Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas. As he grew older, Pérez also became politically aware and managed to read Voltaire, Rousseau, and Marx without the knowledge of his deeply conservative parents.