Ramón J. Velásquez

Ramón José Velásquez was born in the state of Táchira on 28 November 1916, the son of a newspaper journalist and proofreader and a teacher, and was first schooled at home. He finished secondary school at the Liceo Andrés Bello in Caracas and took a doctorate in social and political sciences (1942) and a law degree (1943) at the Central University of Venezuela. A reporter for Últimas Noticias from 1941, he twice presided over the newspaper El Nacional (1964–68 and 1979–81).

Under the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez he was jailed for a year for compiling the Libro negro de la dictadura, whose files helped expose the regime's crimes. With the return of democracy in 1958 he was elected senator for Táchira and later deputy for Miranda, served as Secretary General of the Presidency under Rómulo Betancourt and as Minister of Communications (1969–71) under Rafael Caldera, and chaired the Commission on the Reform of the State (1984–87) and the presidential committee on the Colombian–Venezuelan border (1989–93).

When the impeachment of Carlos Andrés Pérez left the presidency vacant in 1993, Congress chose him by broad consensus to complete the term; he governed from 5 June 1993 to 2 February 1994, managing among other things the emergency after tropical storm Bret. Author of many books on Venezuelan political history and President of the National Academy of History, he was widely regarded as the country's foremost historian. He died on 24 June 2014.

Sources

Facts in this profile are drawn from the Wikipedia article(s) linked below, consulted on 21 September 2026; the text is original. Wikipedia (English) · Wikipedia (Spanish)

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