Luis Miquilena

Luis Manuel Miquilena Hernández (July 29, 1919 – November 24, 2016) was a Venezuelan politician. He was involved in politics in the 1940s, and again after the 1958 restoration of democracy, but retired from politics in 1964 until the early 1990s, pursuing a career in business. He was then an early supporter of Hugo Chávez' post-1992 political career, and was the Venezuelan Minister of Interior and Justice from 2001 to 2002, when he resigned.

First political career Miquilena began his political career with the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV) in the 1940s as Secretary General of the Union of Bus Drivers (Spanish: Sindicato de Autobuseros), allied with President Isaías Medina Angarita. He remained with the PCV for the next four years. Later, he became a firm opponent of president Rómulo Betancourt (first presidency 1945–1948). In 1945, he broke with the PCV over their support of Betancourt and formed his own political party, the Revolutionary Party of the Proletariat (PRP). The PRP was short-lived, lasting from the overthrow of the Gallegos government (in office February 1948-November 1948) until the rise of Marcos Pérez Jiménez.

Miquilena opposed Pérez's government as well and as a result was jailed for much of the dictatorship and was initially tortured at a jail in Caracas. Later transferred to a jail in Ciudad Bolivar, Miquilena became friends with Democratic Action politician Simón Alberto Consalvi, stating that "Simon was a man that I think men should be". While imprisoned, family members would communicate cryptically by marking points on letters of books delivered to prisoners, informing Miquilena of the condition of Venezuela outside of prison. His time in prison helped him decide his views on politics. Jiménez was overthrown in 1958, and in an attempt to stabilize the fledgling democracy that succeeded the dictatorship, three Venezuelan political parties entered into the Pacto de Punto Fijo.

In 1959, Miquilena became the owner and director of the newspaper El Clarín. Over time, he progressively became a strong opponent of the government of Rómulo Betancourt (second presidency 1959–1964) over its opposition to the Cuban government under Fidel Castro and its alleged repression of leftwing political groups. However, Miquilena never agreed with guerrillas, calling them a "respectable mistake", saying "A 20 year old who decides to risk his life deserves respect. That's what made me a defender of the people who were fighting the battle against the armed forces, even though in privacy I was a fierce enemy of the guerrilla. It was a mistake that cost us a lot. If we channeled the democratic struggle from the beginning, with all the strength we had, through a rational and institutional way, who knows if the story would be different."

During the first years of the Chávez administration, Miquilena held important government posts: president of the Constituent Assembly (which drafted the 1999 Constitution of Venezuela), president of the National Legislative Commission, Senator (term began 1999), and Minister of Justice and the Interior (February 2001 - January 2002 ). In the latter post, he launched the Citizen Security Plan and promoted the Peaceful Prison Disarmament Plan.

Retirement Disagreements with measures taken by president Chávez led to a political break. In the months before the coup against Chávez in April 2002, Miquilena talked with Fidel Castro and the two agreed that they did not want Venezuela to take the same path as Cuba. Chávez also convinced Miquilena that he was not going to follow a Cuban model, but later took back his word. When Miquilena realized that Chávez was taking a similar path as the Cuban government and Chávez was centralizing power around himself, he decided to retire. He met with Castro and Chávez on Margarita Island, looking to Castro for assistance with Chávez, however "Fidel had discovered the immense vanity of Chavez, and took advantage of it to get the slice of the century. Thereafter he devoted himself, in a roguish way, to take advantage of Chávez, regardless of what happened in Venezuela". In 2007, Miquilena voiced his disagreement with the proposal for constitutional reform.

Later life and death In 2013, at the start of the crisis in Venezuela, Miquilena was interviewed by the Venezuelan news website Runrunes. He stated that he did not feel guilty about helping Chávez gain power but stated that he felt "very sorry" for not being able to fight against the effects of Chávez during the end of his life. When asked how he would fight back against the Bolivarian government, he said that he would be "in the front line, uniting and gathering people to face the disaster we are suffering" and that "the popular struggle is not armed. It is the struggle of the people on the street. In every line of people to buy flour bread and toilet paper should be someone shaking up the people".

Popular culture Miquilena is featured in the Miguel Otero Silva's La Muerte de Honorio, a novel about the anti-Pérez Jiménez resistance movement.