Rafael Antonio Caldera Rodríguez ( ; 24 January 1916 – 24 December 2009) was a Venezuelan politician, academic, and author who served as the 46th and 51st president of Venezuela from 1969 to 1974 and from 1994 to 1999. He co-founded the Christian Democratic party COPEI and helped draft the 1961 Constitution. He was one of the leading figures in Venezuelan democratic politics during the second half of the 20th century and a pioneer of the Christian Democratic movement in Latin America.John D. Martz, "Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador," in Jan Knippers Black, ed. Latin America, Its Problems and Its Promise, 2nd ed. (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1991), 439Rafael Caldera: President of Venezuela who helped forge an era of democracy and political stability in his country – The Independent
During his first presidency, Caldera pursued a policy of national pacification that ended the country's long-running left-wing insurgency. His administration oversaw Venezuela's first peaceful democratic transfer of power from the governing party to the opposition, restored diplomatic relations with socialist countries, and enacted measures that paved the way for the nationalization of the oil industry.
After serving in the Senate and holding leadership positions in several international organizations, Caldera was elected to a second presidential term in 1993. His administration faced a severe banking crisis, recession, and falling oil prices, and implemented economic reforms while promoting anti-corruption initiatives and labour and social security reforms. It also included the pardon of participants in the 1992 coup attempts, including Hugo Chávez, who was elected president in 1998."02 Feb 1994 – 02 Feb 1999 – Rafael Caldera Rodríguez – Global Security"
In addition to his political career, Caldera taught law for over two decades, published numerous books and essays on law, politics, history, and Christian Democracy, and was a member of the Venezuelan National Academy of Language and the Venezuelan National Academy of Political and Social Sciences.
Youth, education and early achievements
Rafael Caldera Rodríguez, the son of Rafael Caldera Izaguirre and Rosa Sofía Rodríguez Rivero, was born on 24 January 1916, in San Felipe, Venezuela. His mother having died when he was two and a half years-old, Caldera was raised by his maternal aunt María Eva Rodríguez Rivero and her husband Tomás Liscano Giménez.
Caldera attended elementary school in his native San Felipe and later in Caracas, at the Jesuit-run Catholic school San Ignacio de Loyola, where he completed his secondary education at the age of fifteen. The following year he began law studies at the Central University of Venezuela.
As a young university student, Caldera exhibited a precocious intellectual brilliance. At the age of nineteen, and after studying the 26 volumes of Andrés Bello's collected works, Caldera published his first book, Andres Bello,Rafael Caldera, Andrés Bello. Caracas: Parra León Hnos., 1935. 167 p. / – 2ª ed. Buenos Aires: Edit. Atalaya, 1946. 148 p. English translation by John Street. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1977. 165 p a comprehensive analysis of the life and works of Bello's literary, linguistic, legal, historic, philosophical, and political texts. This book received an award from the Venezuelan National Academy of Language in 1935, and has remained an indispensable reference for scholarship studies on the most prominent Venezuelan man-of-letters of the 19th century.
Caldera was a student of Manuel Aguirre and was introduced to Luigi Sturzo by Aguirre.
A year later, Venezuelan President López Contreras took notice of newspaper op-ed pieces about labor issues written by the young twenty-year-old Caldera. Contreras appointed him deputy director of the newly created National Labor Office. From this position, Caldera played a major role in the drafting of Venezuela's first Labor Law, which remained current for more than fifty years until its reform in 1990. The international lawyer Wilfred Jenks, who drafted the Declaration of Philadelphia on labor rights and served two terms as Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO), an affiliated agency of the League of Nations, visited Venezuela in 1936 to review the law. He worked closely with Caldera, then Venezuela's first ILO correspondent. Jenks later stated that the International Labor Code published under his guidance on the eve of the Second World War, contained several topics that were arranged in a manner that had originally been employed in the Venezuelan draft Labor Code.Address by His Excellency Mr. Rafael Caldera, President of the Republic of Venezuela −9 June 1998 – ILO
During his university years, Caldera became actively engaged in student politics. He joined the Venezuelan Federation of Students (FEV), which was led by students who had revolted in 1928 against the dictator Juan Vicente Gómez and were known as the Generation of 28. Although significantly younger than his peers, Caldera courageously split from this student federation after its leadership called for anticlerical reforms demanding the expulsion of the Jesuits and other religious orders from Venezuela.Venezuela: Conservative representation without conservative parties. Michael Coppedge. Working Paper #268 – June 1999
In 1936, Caldera founded the National Student Union (UNE), the seed of what eventually became the Venezuelan Christian Democratic movement.Several authors. COPEI: En el principio fue la UNE. (Venezuela: Ediciones Nueva Política y Fracción Parlamentaria de COPEI), 44.
Political life The first thirty years (1939–1969)
After graduating from university, Caldera founded National Action, a political movement formed to participate in municipal elections. Soon after, he founded the National Action Party and was elected in January 1941, at the age of twenty-five, to the Chamber of Deputies for his native state of Yaracuy.
As a congressman, he strongly opposed the bill that led to the 1941 boundary treaty with Colombia. He also had a prominent role in the debates on the partial reform of the 1936 Constitution and revisions to the Civil Code, and was a leading voice in the enactment of progressive labor laws. On 27 October 1945, Caldera was appointed Solicitor General by Rómulo Betancourt, head of the Revolutionary Government Junta that ousted President Isaías Medina Angarita on 18 October 1945.
On 13 January 1946, Caldera co-founded COPEI, Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente (Independent Political Electoral Organization Committee), the Christian Democratic Party that grew to become one of the two largest mass political parties in Venezuela. COPEI's first statement of principles was inspired by the social teaching of the papal encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (1931) and embraced democracy, pluralism and social reform.
Four months later, on 13 April 1946, Caldera resigned from his position as Solicitor General in protest against the continuous violent attacks that members of his newly created party were suffering from government supporters.
In 1946, he was elected as a representative to the National Constituent Assembly, inaugurated on 17 December of that year. This legislative body had the task of drafting a new Constitution guided by the principles of the October Revolution. Venezuelans from every corner of the country came to admire the rhetorical skills of the young politician. Venezuelans were able to listen to Caldera's speeches after Andrés Eloy Blanco, President of the National Constituent Assembly, granted Caldera's request to allow live radio broadcast of the legislative sessions. Caldera played a prominent role in this assembly. He delivered celebrated speeches on the social rights of workers, the social function of private property, agrarian reform, religious freedom, religious education, and the need for direct, popular election of state governors.Rodolfo José Cárdenas: «Primer discurso de Rafael Caldera en la Constituyente», in COPEI en el Trienio Populista 1945–48, La tentación totalitaria de Acción Democrática. (Spain: Hijos de E. Minuesa, S.L., 1987), 35
In the 1947 elections, at the age of 31, he ran for president for the first time and travelled around the country to spread the ideas of his newly created party. The renowned Venezuelan novelist Rómulo Gallegos, candidate of the social democrat party AD (Democratic Action), won this election. Caldera also ran for Congress and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the period 1948–1953. His congressional term, however, was interrupted after Gallegos was ousted by a coup d'état on 24 November 1948.
In 1952, Caldera was elected representative to the National Constituent Assembly. After Colonel Marcos Pérez Jiménez, head of the Military Junta, ignored the electoral triumph of the URD party (Democratic Republican Union), and expelled Jóvito Villalba and other leaders of this party from the country, Caldera and other elected party members of COPEI refused to participate in the new Constituent Assembly.
During the Pérez Jiménez military dictatorship (1952–1958), Caldera was expelled from Universidad Central de Venezuela and arrested several times. On 3 August 1955, agents of the National Security, a large secret police force led by Pedro Estrada that hunted down opponents and ran notorious concentration camps, threw a bomb into Caldera's home, endangering the life of his youngest child, then nine months-old. On 20 August 1957, he was once again imprisoned, but this time in solitary confinement, after Pérez Jiménez learned that Caldera, in all likelihood, would be the consensus candidate for all opposition parties in the presidential election scheduled for December, 1957. With Caldera imprisoned, Pérez Jiménez turned the election into an unconstitutional plebiscite ("Yes" or "No" referendum) to decide his permanence in power.
Following the December 1957 plebiscite, Caldera was exiled by the Pérez Jiménez dictatorship in January 1958. He travelled to New York City and was greeted by Rómulo Betancourt and Jóvito Villalba. His exile, however, only lasted a few days since Marcos Pérez Jiménez was deposed by a civil revolt and military coup on 23 January 1958. Upon returning to Venezuela, the three leaders signed the Puntofijo Pact, named after Caldera's residence where it was signed.
This pact contained important political agreements, especially, the commitment of all major political parties to build, protect and strengthen democratic institutions and the rule of law. According to political science scholar Daniel H. Levine, its aim was to "support democracy, band together to resist challenges to its legitimacy and survival; respect elections; and strive in general to institutionalize politics, channeling participation within democratic vehicles and arenas."Daniel H. Levine, "Venezuela: The Nature, Sources and Prospects of Democracy" in Democracy in Developing Countries – Latin America, Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset eds. (Boulder, Colorado; Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1989), 248
The Puntofijo Pact served as the foundation for the longest period of civil democratic rule in Venezuela (1958–1999).
Unable to reach agreement over a consensus candidate, the three major parties that signed the Puntofijo Pact (AD, URD, and COPEI) competed in the 1958 presidential election with their own candidates and platforms. Rafael Caldera lost to Rómulo Betancourt (AD) and Wolfgang Larrazábal (URD), who came in first and second place respectively. Caldera also ran for Congress and was elected President of the Chamber of Deputies. In this capacity, he co-presided the Bicameral Commission in charge of drafting the new Constitution.