Ali Rodríguez Araque

Alí Rodríguez Araque (Ejido, Mérida, September 9, 1937 - Havana, November 19, 2018) was a Venezuelan lawyer, politician and diplomat. He held, among other positions, the Secretary General of Unasur (2012-2014) and Minister of Electric Energy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Former communist guerrilla leader, he held various positions in the government of President Hugo Chávez, such as Minister of Energy and Mines (petroleum), Chancellor (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Minister of Economy and Finance, Secretary General of OPEC, president of PDVSA, and Venezuelan ambassador to Cuba.

Biography

Alí Rodríguez was born in Ejido, Mérida State, on September 9, 1937. Graduated as a lawyer, he graduated from the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas in 1961. He studied Economics, specializing in oil matters and has written several works about the energy sector.

First political activities

During the 60s and 70s of the XX century, he was an active guerrilla member of the armed groups of the FALN that fought against the governments of the so-called Puntofijo Pact, which formed the exclusive alternation of the bipartisan COPEI and AD. Rodríguez Araque adopted the pseudonym "Comandante Fausto", leading guerrilla fronts, standing out as an expert in explosives. In 1966 he joined the Marxist-leaning Party of the Venezuelan Revolution (PRV), where he actively collaborated with the guerrilla leader Douglas Bravo.

In August 1979, and after a deep internal structural crisis of the PRV, he left the ranks of this organization and with the majority of militants created "Revolutionary Tendency", a semi-legal group that initially maintained a position pro-war warrior but who in reality failed to consolidate as a revolutionary nucleus at that time.

In 1983, Rodríguez decided to lay down his arms, although more than a decade ago in 1971 President Rafael Caldera had decreed an amnesty and pacification. Rodríguez followed peaceful parliamentary politics through a split from the Communist Party of Venezuela: Causa R, from 1983 to 1997, during this last year he was a dissident from his party and allied himself with Pablo Medina's current, from which a new organization Patria Para emerged. All, made up of the Causaerristas who supported the Caracazo. Rodríguez had supported the coup attempt of February 4, 1992, as well as the leader of the rebellion, Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez, as a presidential candidate in the December 1998 elections, which he won.

Rodríguez acquired a reputation as a negotiator and consensus seeker, although he was a firm opponent of privatization in the oil sector during the 1990s (the oil packages of the governments of Carlos Andrés Pérez and Rafael Caldera).

Political career

Rodríguez was elected energy minister of Venezuela in 1999, when Chávez became president, remaining in that position until 2000. In that same year he was elected secretary general of OPEC, promoting the reduction of oil to achieve an increase in its value in the markets, he was relieved of his position on June 31, 2002 by his compatriot Álvaro Silva Calderón. Going on to serve as president of the oil company owned by the Venezuelan government Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), where he failed in his efforts to resolve the internal conflict that the company's management faced with the government, and finally had to remove payroll of more than fifteen thousand workers who abandoned their jobs in a prolonged two-month general strike that affected PDVSA, described by Chavismo as an oil coup.

Rodríguez remained in that position until November 2004. In a change of his cabinet, Chávez appointed him Minister of Foreign Affairs, replacing Roy Chaderton, who left the position due to health problems. In this position, Rodríguez defended the government of Chávez in international organizations such as the UN and the OAS together with his colleague Jorge Valero, Venezuelan ambassador to the OAS, in the face of diplomatic pressure from the United States. He directed many of President Chávez's trips abroad, he strongly opposed the implementation of the FTAA trade agreement, he promoted the ALBA trade agreement between Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia, and in his position he managed to make Venezuela a full member of Mercosur. In 2006 he suffered a heart attack that forced him to leave office, being replaced by Nicolás Maduro, until then a deputy and President of the National Assembly and considered a harder liner and closer to Chávez. On September 1, 2006 he was assigned Ambassador of Venezuela in Havana, Cuba. A year later, in 2007, he left the PPT and joined the newly founded United Socialist Party of Venezuela, in charge of bringing together the majority of pro-government organizations. In June 2008 he ceased his position as ambassador and returned to President Chávez's ministerial cabinet as Minister of Economy and Finance, due to which he is Venezuela's representative before the IMF.

In 2010 he was appointed Minister of Electric Energy, and remained in that position during Venezuela's energy crisis of 2009-2010. He was briefly replaced in January 2011 by his until then vice-minister Héctor Navarro, due to health problems. In 2012 he held the General Secretariat of Unasur until 2014, the year in which he was appointed as Venezuela's ambassador to Cuba, a position that He held it until his death, which occurred on November 19, 2018.