Carlos Andrés Pérez Rodríguez (27 October 1922 – 25 December 2010)[1] also known as CAP and often referred to as El Gocho (due to his Andean origins), was a Venezuelan politician who served as the 47th and 50th president of Venezuela from 1974 to 1979 and again from 1989 to 1993.

Carlos Andrés Pérez was born at the hacienda La Argentina, on the Venezuelan-Colombian border near the town of Rubio, Táchira state, the 11th of 12 children in a middle-class family.

His father, Antonio Pérez Lemus, was a Colombian-born coffee planter and pharmacist of Spanish Peninsular and Canary Islander ancestry who emigrated to Venezuela during the last years of the 19th century.

His childhood was spent between the family home in town, a rambling Spanish colonial-style house, and the coffee haciendas owned by his father and maternal grandfather.

Influenced by his grandfather, an avid book collector, Pérez read voraciously from an early age, including French and Spanish classics by Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas.

[citation needed] The combination of falling coffee prices, business disputes, and harassment orchestrated by henchmen allied to dictator Juan Vicente Gómez, led to the financial ruin and physical deterioration of Antonio Pérez, who died of a heart attack in 1936.

The death of his father had a profound impact on the young Pérez, bolstering his convictions that democratic freedoms and rights were the only guarantees against the arbitrary, and tyrannical, use of state power.

[citation needed] In October 1945, a group of civilians and young army officers plotted the overthrow of the government run by General Isaías Medina Angarita.

However, in 1948, when the military staged a coup against the democratically elected government of Rómulo Gallegos, Pérez was forced to go into exile (going to Cuba, Panama and Costa Rica) for a decade.

In Costa Rica, he was active in Venezuelan political refugee circles, worked as Editor in Chief of the newspaper La República and kept in close contact with Betancourt and other AD leaders.

Youthful and energetic, Pérez ran a vibrant and triumphalist campaign, one of the first to use the services of American advertising gurus and political consultants in the country's history.

[citation needed] One of the most radical aspects of Pérez's program for government was the notion that petroleum oil was a tool for developing countries like Venezuela to attain first world status and usher a fairer, more equitable international order.

[6] He also promoted investment in large state-owned industrial projects for the production of aluminium and hydroelectric energy, infrastructure improvements and the funding of social welfare and scholarship programmes, were ambitious and involved massive government spending, to the tune of almost $53 billion.

His measures to protect the environment and foster sustainable development earned the Earth Care award in 1975, the first time a Latin American leader had received this recognition.

He opposed the Somoza and Augusto Pinochet dictatorships and played a crucial role in the finalizing of the agreement for the transfer of the Panama Canal from American to Panamanian control.

In addition, there were allegations of corruption and trafficking of influence, often involving members of Pérez's intimate circle, such as his mistress Cecilia Matos, or financiers and businessmen who donated to his election campaign, known as the "Twelve Apostles".

And whilst per capita income had increased and prosperity was evident in Caracas and other major cities, the country was also more expensive and a significant minority of Venezuelans were still mired in poverty.

Willy Brandt and Carlos Andrés Pérez, together with the Dominican Republic's José Francisco Peña Gómez, expanded the activities of the Socialist International from Europe to Latin America.

[22][23][24][25] a lack of timely intervention by authorities, as the Caracas Metropolitan Police [es] was on a labor strike, led to the protests and rioting quickly spreading to the capital and other towns across the country.

"[33] The human rights group further reported that poor citizens, including minors, were often victims of police raids and arbitrary detention, being subsequently tortured on many occasions.

[35] The most notable auction was CANTV's, a telecommunications company, which was sold at the price of US$1.885 billion to the consortium composed of American AT&T International, General Telephone Electronic and the Venezuelan Electricidad de Caracas and Banco Mercantil.

The privatization ended Venezuela's monopoly over telecommunications and surpassed predictions, selling over US$1 billion above the base price and US$500 million more than the bid offered by its next competitor.

[33] On 20 March 1993, Attorney General Ramón Escovar Salom [es] introduced action against Pérez for the embezzlement of 250 million bolivars belonging to a presidential discretionary fund, or partida secreta.

[37] In 1998 he was prosecuted again, this time on charges of embezzlement on public funds, accused of having secret joint bank accounts held in New York with his mistress, Cecilia Matos.

Matos became a notorious figure in Venezuelan politics beginning in the 1970s and through the 1990s, the result of rumours of corruption and trafficking of influence centred around her role as the President's mistress.

Until his death (see below), Pérez remained legally married to Blanca Rodríguez although he had been living in exile since 1998 with Matos, dividing his time between his homes in Miami, the Dominican Republic and New York.

On 31 March 2008, the secretary general of Acción Democrática, Henry Ramos Allup, announced that Pérez wanted to return to Venezuela from exile, to spend his last years in Caracas.

The casket arrived in a flight originated from Atlanta, Georgia, escorted by Mayor of Caracas Antonio Ledezma, friend of Pérez and member of Democratic Action (AD).