Venezuela ex-prez Perez dies in Miami: daughter

As a two-term president, Perez led Venezuela through rising fortunes as well as deeply turbulent times — including the country’s worst-ever riots that left hundreds dead in 1989 after he initiated economic reforms — and eventually was driven out of the office on corruption allegations.

Maria Francia Perez told Venezuela’s Globovision television network that her father, who had been living in the United States for the past decade, passed away unexpectedly at 2:41 pm (0011 IST) on Christmas day of an apparent heart attack.

“It was very sudden. He woke up in very good spirits on Saturday. He was very chatty, he was talking to us,” she said.

But by mid-afternoon her father was gone, she said, dying “from one moment to the next.”

The leftist leader governed Venezuela twice — from 1974 to 1979 and 1989-1993. During his first term, Perez oversaw the formation of state-run Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), which allowed the oil-rich nation to benefit dramatically from the soaring energy prices of the early 1970s.

As his country’s stature on the oil industry’s international stage grew, Perez’s first presidency earned the nickname “Saudi Venezuela.”

Just weeks after his victory in the 1988 election for his second term, Perez struck a deal with the International Monetary Fund to embrace more free market policies in order to secure a multi-billion-dollar IMF loan to help pay down Venezuela’s external debt.

He was sworn-in on February 2, 1989, but within weeks there were massive street riots to protest the economic reforms, which included spikes in fuel and public transport prices.
The uprising, which became known as the “Caracazo,” was the strongest anti-government protest in modern Venezuelan history. It was put down with force, and the revolt’s suppression officially left 276 people dead.

On several occasions, current President Hugo Chavez has looked back at the Caracazo and described it as a protest against the social inequalities which sowed the seeds for his own socialist “Bolivarian revolution.”

It was in 1992 during Perez’s second term that Chavez — at the time a little-known army lieutenant colonel — led an abortive 1992 military coup, several years before being democratically elected to lead Venezuela.