Luis Herrera Campins

Luis Herrera Campíns
56th President of Venezuela
In office March 12, 1979 – February 2, 1984
Preceded by	Carlos Andrés Pérez
Succeeded by	Jaime Lusinchi
Senator for life
In office February 2, 1984 – December 20, 1999
Born	4 May 1925 Acarigua, Portuguesa, Venezuela
Died	9 November 2007 (aged 82) Caracas, Venezuela
Political party	Copei
Spouse(s)	Betty Urdaneta
Religion	Roman Catholic
Signature

Luis Herrera Campins (May 4, 1925 – November 9, 2007) was President of Venezuela from 1979 to 1984. He was elected to one five-year term in 1978. He was a member of the COPEI party.

Early Life and career

Luis Herrera at the age of 15

Luis Herrera was born in Acarigua, Portuguesa. He was 21 years old when the Social Christian Party Copei was created, being one of its founders in Acarigua, Portuguesa. At La Salle school of Barquisimeto, completed his high school degree in 1942. During that time, at the age of fifteen, started to work at politics and journalism, working for the newspapers El impulso, Surcos and the weekly magazine of the Student National Union. His law studies from the Central University of Venezuela were suspended in 1952 and he was imprisoned for four months in the Cárcel Modelo (Model Prison) by the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez. Shortly after, he continued pursuing his college degree, graduating as lawyer in 1955, at the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela.

Luis Herrera started parliamentary work in 1947, when was elected deputy to the Legislative Assembly of Portuguesa. From 1959 to 1979, in four constitutional periods, was deputy or senator representing Lara and Portuguesa at the National Congress. In March 12, 1979, became the President of Venezuela after his election on December 3, 1978.

Presidency

Luis Herrera won the December 1978 presidential elections for COPEI, replacing the social democrat Carlos Andrés Pérez of the Democratic Action (AD) party, who had nationalised the oil industry at the height of the boom in 1975. Oil revenues continued to rise during the early years of Herrera's presidency. Herrera had a dirigiste view of the Government's economic role, which involved channelling public funds into agricultural and industrial projects, paying generous subsidies and controlling the prices of many goods. His Government continued President Pérez's policy of borrowing on a world market awash with petrodollars, and by the early 1980s Venezuela owed the banks more than $20 billion. The Government's tacit assumption was that oil prices would remain high forever, and would sustain high levels of public and private consumption.

Meeting between Luis Herrera Campíns, president of Venezuela, and Ronald Reagan in the Cabinet Room at the White House. Date: November 18, 1981

Luis Herrera developed a program of cultural development and reformed the education program, implementing the common basic cycle of nine years. He also tried to make adjustments to the democratic system. In regard to economics, he began with the policy of liberalisation of prices and at the end of his mandate introduced a series of exchange measures with dramatic results. The Venezuelan bolívar had been pegged at 4.30 to the dollar, but ended up something more than 15 bolivars by unit (Black Friday, 28 February 1983) - this produced a misalignment in the national economy. This was apparently the result of a “computational error” at the Central bank of Venezuela, declaring “collapsed” the international reserves.

Moved in part by territorial claims, Herrera developed a muscular foreign policy. He signed an agreement with Mexico in 1980 to jointly provide Central American and Caribbean countries with a steady flow of oil, a precursor of Hugo Chávez’s wide-reaching oil diplomacy in the developing world. In 1982 Luis Herrera sided with Argentina in its war with Britain over the Falklands, adroitly exploiting anti-British and anti-American sentiment to boost his flagging popularity. His support for Argentina came while he was asserting Venezuela’s longstanding claim to more than half of neighboring Guyana, a former British colony.

Later life

By the time Herrera's term ended, the economy was in meltdown, poverty and hardship were widespread and the voters turned on the ruling Christian Democrat, ejecting him from office in the December 1983 elections. After the end of his presidency Herrera remained influential in the Copei party, becoming its president in 1995.

In 2001 Herrera made headlines when gunmen stole his car. Afterward, he could be seen on foot wearing old clothes and carrying his own groceries. He underwent surgery for two years for an abdominal aneurysm that led to a kidney infection and other complications. By the time he died, he was already retired from Venezuelan politics. Luis Herrera is survived by his wife Betty Urdaneta and three sons.

See also

• Venezuela
• Presidents of Venezuela

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Luis Herrera Campíns

• (Spanish) Luis Herrera Campins — Official biography (but rather biased, based on historical view of current Venezuelan administration)
• (Spanish) Luis Herrera Campins
• Obituary in The Times, 14 November 2007
• Obituary from the International Herald Tribune