His mother having died when he was two and a half years-old, Caldera was raised by his maternal aunt María Eva Rodríguez Rivero and her husband Tomás Liscano Giménez.

Although significantly younger than his peers, Caldera courageously split from this student federation after its leadership called for anticlerical reforms demanding the expulsion of the Jesuits and other religious orders from Venezuela.

[10] Four months later, on 13 April 1946, Caldera resigned from his position as Solicitor General in protest against the continuous violent attacks that members of his newly created party were suffering from government supporters.

[citation needed] During the Pérez Jiménez military dictatorship (1952–1958), Caldera was expelled from Universidad Central de Venezuela and arrested several times.

On 3 August 1955, agents of the National Security, a large secret police force led by Pedro Estrada that hunted down opponents and ran notorious concentration camps, threw a bomb into Caldera's home, endangering the life of his youngest child, then nine months-old.

On 20 August 1957, he was once again imprisoned, but this time in solitary confinement, after Pérez Jiménez learned that Caldera, in all likelihood, would be the consensus candidate for all opposition parties in the presidential election scheduled for December, 1957.

For four decades, he explains, "Venezuelans built a political system marked by high participation, strong leadership, institutional continuity, and genuine pervasive competition.

[21] In his official visit to the U.S. in 1970, Caldera obtained a commitment from the Nixon administration to increase the market share of Venezuelan petroleum exports to the United States.

Hailed for his role in maintaining democracy and stability in an era when most other Latin American countries experienced political upheaval, Caldera served as President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union from 1979 to 1982.

[26] In 1979, he was elected President of the World Congress of Agrarian Reform and Rural Development, which met in Rome under the auspices of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.

[28] In March 1987, Caldera was invited by Pope John Paul II to deliver a speech before the College of Cardinals to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Papal Encyclical Populorum Progressio.

His main concern was to denounce the injustice of placing the heavy burden of servicing the debt on the shoulders of the most impoverished and vulnerable people of third-world countries.

After years of deliberations with workers, legal experts, labor unions, and representatives from industry and commerce chambers, the bill was presented in 1989 and passed by Congress at the end of 1990.

These changes had been demanded by most sectors of Venezuela's society, in light of corruption in the administration of justice and insufficient means for citizens to directly participate in governmental decisions.

The political events that later unfolded in 1999, and particularly President Chávez' call for a constituent assembly during the first year of his administration, reflect how consequential Congress' dismissal of this reform bill would eventually become.

[citation needed] Caldera's second administration inherited and faced three adversities of great magnitude: a steep decrease in oil prices, the economic recession and high inflation of 1993, and a huge banking crisis.

[36] In agreement with the International Monetary Fund, Caldera implemented in 1996 a new economic plan, called Agenda Venezuela [es], which "increased domestic fuel prices, liberalized interest rates, unified the exchange rate system under a temporary float, abolished controls on current and capital transactions, eliminated price controls (except for medicines), and strengthened the social safety net".

The 1997 Asian financial crisis, however, brought oil prices to dramatic low levels, forcing government to make large budget cuts.

[6] President Caldera also insisted on making corruption the central theme of the VII Ibero-American Summit of Heads State and Government, hosted by Venezuela in 1997.

[38] Notwithstanding federal budget limitations, Caldera's administration developed major infrastructure projects, including two water dams the Macagua II in Guayana and the Taguaza in Caracas; the regional central aqueduct in Valencia; the Mérida-El Vigía superhighway and portions of the Centro-Occidental, José Antonio Páez, and Rómulo Betancourt highways.

This administration also concluded Line 3 of the Caracas Metro, the Jacobo Borges and the Cruz-Diez museums, and brought to near completion the Caracas-Cúa railroad and the Yacambú-Quíbor hydrological complex.

Caldera rejected Marxist ideas of dialectical materialism and class struggle, but he was also convinced that Capitalism without social safeguards produces a grossly inequitable society.

[citation needed] This understanding of democracy, Caldera explains, rests upon foundational principles of Christian philosophy: affirmation of the spiritual, the subordination of politics to ethical norms, the dignity of the human person, the primacy of the common good, and the perfectibility of civil society.

It opened roads to the establishment of a new balance and protected the organization of the weak so that they could be on a par, in doing juridical business, with those who had more strength, especially in those things related to economic power.

But the victory of social justice is still incomplete, confined to the limits of the domestic law of each country… The obligation of parties in international relations are based on the old laissez-faire underpinning.

[49] Perhaps there is no statement that better captures the essence of Caldera's political ideals than the words that Pope John Paul II used in his address to President Caldera on 5 May 1995, on the occasion of the Venezuelan President's visit to the Vatican: In the last few decades, Venezuela has known how to combine the reality of significant economic progress with the development of a program of freedom in the framework of a constitutional state and a sound democratic system, with the traditional yearning to implement Simon Bolivar's commitment to America and his dream to build a great nation, "less because of its size and wealth than because of its freedom and glory (cf.

It is just as important to stress the validity of the principle of the common good, with the double objective of serving each and every Venezuelan man and woman, and meeting their most basic needs, their noblest expectations, their loftiest personal and family aspirations on the one hand, and on the other, "to promote a human State," that is, to draft and implement policies destined to combat extreme wretchedness and poverty until they are totally eradicated to overcome unemployment and social marginalization by the creation of work and a just distribution of wealth…[50]Long viewed as the most principled and legally minded of Venezuela's presidents,[51] Caldera was a man of learning, and an accomplished essayist and orator.

His induction speech was entitled "Idea de una sociología venezolana",[52] an exposition of key elements for the development of sociological studies in the country.

[60] The various texts Caldera devoted to reflections on the intersection between faith and public service are key to understand the spiritual drive behind his unwavering commitment to political and intellectual pursuits.

Allan Brewer-Carías, a Venezuelan legal scholar and elected member of this assembly, explains that this constitution-making body was an instrument for the gradual dismantling of democratic institutions and values.