Background
Raúl Leoni was in Upata on 26 April 1906.
government official lawyer politician president
Raúl Leoni was in Upata on 26 April 1906.
Studied at the Central University of Venezuela.
He got a law degree from the National University of Bogotá, Colombia.
He was a third-year law student at the Central University of Venezuela and president of the Students Federation in February 1928, at the time of the vigorous Student Week protest against the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez. He was jailed and exiled to Baranquilla, Colombia, where he and some colleagues conducted a small business. One of the collaborators of Rómulo Betancourt in organizing the Revolutionary Group of the Left (ARDI), a radical but non-Communist political organization, in 1931, he remained in Colombia until the death of Gómez in December 1935.
Leoni became a leader of the Organización Venezolana (ORVE), the core of a new national revolutionary party, and of the National Democratic Party (PDN), into which the ORVE merged late in 1936. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in January 1937, but his victory was not recognized by the government. He was one of the PDN leaders deported in March 1937 by President Eleazar López Contreras.
After more than a year of exile, Leoni returned home. Upon the deportation of Betancourt in late 1939, he became the ranking figure in the PDN leadership. With legalization and conversion the PDN into Acción Democrática ( AD) early in the administration of President Isaías Medina Angarita in September 1941, Leoni was a major collaborator of Secretary General Rómulo Betancourt in spreading the party organization throughout the country.
When AD sought agreement with President Medina on a joint candidate for his successor in 1945, Leoni and Betancourt went to Washington to convince Ambassador Diogenes Escalante to be that candidate. They succeeded, but Escalante soon became sick and had to withdraw.
When AD was then approached by junior officers concerning possible cooperation in a coup against President Medina, Leoni and Betancourt were the AD leaders who negotiated with them. After the coup, Raúl Leoni became a member of the Revolutionary Government Junta formed on October 19, 1945. He was also minister of labor and supported the rapid spread of unionization; participated in negotiations for the first nationwide collective bargaining agreement in the oil industry in 1946; and formed a strong alliance with the AD leaders in organized labor.
With the overthrow of President Rómulo Gallegos by the military in No¬vember 1948, Leoni went into exile. He spent most of the ensuing nine years
working for the International Labor Organization of the United Nations, while at the same time playing a leading role in the AD exile organization.
After the overthrow of the dictatorship of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez in January 1958, Leoni returned home. He again became a member of AD’s National Executive Committee, in December 1958 was elected senator, and soon afterward president of AD.
In the 1963 election process to choose a successor to President Rómulo Betancourt, Raúl Leoni won the nomination, even though he was not the choice of Betancourt for AD candidate. He won owing to the backing of the Trade Union Bureau of the party. He won a plurality in a widely divided vote and in February 1964 was inaugurated as president. Leoni refused to continue the coalition with the Christian Social Copei Party which had existed during the Betancourt administration; during his term he had several different combinations in his cabinet.
During his last years. President Leoni returned to the practice of law. He also remained active in the leadership of the AD. However, with his health deteriorating, he went abroad for treatment; he died in New York City.