Arturo Uslar Pietri was born in Caracas on May 16, 1906 and died on February 26, 2001 at the age of 94. He studied law at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, but dedicated himself to public service, literature, television, advertising, journalism and university teaching. Arturo Uslar lived in Paris between 1929 and 1934, lived in New York during his political exile, between 1945 and 1950, and returned to Paris in 1975 until 1979.
At an early age, he had already acquired resonance both in Venezuela and in France, for his novel "Las Lanzas Coloradas" (The Red Spears). In Paris, he dusted off from his unconscious the term Magical Realism. The Red Spears opened the door to what would later become the recognition of the Latin American novel all over the world.
Arturo Uslar Pietri dedicated part of his life to politics where he had several participations among which are: Civil Attaché of the Venezuelan Embassy in France, Minister of Education, Minister of Finance, Venezuelan Ambassador to UNESCO, Senator, and Candidate for the Presidency of the Republic.
He defended the identity of the Venezuelan, and the image of the country, rescuing our past and defending the mestizaje in very diverse essays and articles, and from different perspectives, covering topics such as religious syncretism and the mobilizing American myths such as El Dorado.
He criticized the Oil Rentism, and warned already in 1936 what could happen in the country if the national economy was not diversified. He coined a famous phrase in Venezuela that says: "we must sow the oil" which is still being criticized and analyzed today. This phrase means that we should not abandon ourselves to the oil industry, but on the contrary, we should channel it so that with its strength and wealth it can animate and mobilize all the economic activities of the country.
Unfortunately, it was not possible to implement such an intelligent growth model that would have avoided the successive political and monetary crises that the Venezuelan people have been dragging along.
Aruro Uslar Pietri has the merit of having contributed significantly to the beginning of the studies of the national economy, when in support of his Chair of Political Economy at the Law School of the Central University of Venezuela he published what is considered the first economic text adapted to the Venezuelan reality.
He had a very participative career, not only at the political level, but also as a journalist he worked as editor of the newspaper Ahora and columnist for 50 years in the newspaper El Nacional, where he was also director. For more than 30 years Arturo had a pedagogical television program called Valores Humanos (Human Values) which took more than one Venezuelan to know the paths of history and universal arts, as well as important events in Venezuelan history.
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Writer, intellectual, lawyer, philosopher, and politician, Arturo Uslar Pietri left his knowledge and works that today are part of the Venezuelan education being one of our most illustrious Venezuelans. These are more than enough reasons to choose him as a worthy representative of my country that for a long time deserves to have his face reproduced on money bills and coins of my country.
I must say that at the present time, the level of inflation is so high that the value of the currencies in my country is derisory. In the last 16 years, the Venezuelan government has removed 14 zeros, claiming that this is done for reconversion processes, and to stop the inflationary effects. It still has not been able to stop hyperinflation, which has become the highest in the world.
I comment this because at the moment there is no currency circulation in the country. Digital money is used as a means of payment, circulating with electronic cards, by internet or by cell phone. There are still money bills of Bs. 100,00, Bs. 50,00, Bs. 20,00, Bs. 10,00, and Bs. 5,00 (Bs. is the abbreviation of Bolivares, the name of the coins and money bills in Venezuela).
How right Arturo Uslar Pietri was when in 1948 from exile he published the article ¨The bolivars of ice¨, I allow myself four paragraphs from it:
¨One of the most visible and serious forms of this other erosion of oil that is deforming and destroying the whole life of Venezuela, is the monetary inflation.
The Government's imperfection has caused the increase in oil production to turn into that deadly disease of monetary inflation.
There has been a rush to convert oil into money and there has been an even greater rush to throw that money around, without any plan or concert. Every day more and more money is flowing, sounding, corrupting, distracting, intoxicating. And every day, fatally, money is worth less. It serves to acquire fewer things.
It is as if the bolivar were getting smaller every day, as if it were continually melting in your hands, as if it were made of ice and not of anything else, and one fine day there would be nothing left of it but a little bit of dirty water.¨
Thank you for allowing me to let you know part of the great work that this great man did for my country.