December 18, 2020
In this more than difficult year, in which we have had to say goodbye to several comrades in the continental and world struggle, this time we must pay tribute to a patriot of our Americas and Caribbean. Venezuelan journalist, José Vicente Rangel, who was a three times candidate to head of state and vice president with Hugo Chávez died this Friday from a heart attack, according to his family. He was 91 years old.
Rangel, a columnist and TV show host, was born in Caracas on July 16, 1929.
He was exiled in Chile during the dictatorship of Marco Pérez Jiménez and returned to the country after the fall of the dictatorial regime in January 1958.
Linked to the more combative left, Rangel was a congressman and candidate for president in the 1970s for the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) and in the early 1980s with other organizations.
An outspoken militant who supported Hugo Chávez after the civil-military uprising in February 1992, it was Rangel who initiated a complaint in the press about some $17 million in unjustified expenditure of official secret funds of the then government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez, who was then tried and dismissed in 1993 for that case.
Rangel accompanied Chávez from the beginning of his government, in February 1999, first as Foreign Minister until February 2001, when he then became the first civilian in the Ministry of Defense.
He was in charge of that ministry until Chavez appointed him as Vice President in May 2002, a position in which he remained until January 2007 when he decided to leave active politics to return to his talk show “José Vicente Hoy” that was broadcasted on Sundays. From there he always articulated the politics of Chavismo and was in support of President Nicolas Maduro’s administration as well.
Rangel was twice the winner of Venezuela’s National Journalism Award. He is the author of the Black File, a book that investigates human rights violations in the country between 1960 and 1970. He also published the works Tiempo de Verdades, Socialismo y Democracia, La Administración de Justicia en Venezuela, among other essays on politics and human rights.
His departure leaves an invaluable legacy in terms of his struggle as a political militant as well as the role he always played as a popular communicator. Above all, he endured “knee to knee”, as Chavistas point out, the hostile pressures of those who have wanted to destroy the Bolivarian Revolution from the orbit of the empire. For the Chavista militancy, Rangel will be remembered in the future as the man who in the worst moments demonstrated his loyalty to Chávez and the revolutionary process.
Until victory always, José Vicente!
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano, translation North America bureau