Juan Oropeza
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Juan Oropeza Riera (April 24, 1906 – November 29, 1971) was a Venezuelan writer, lawyer, educator, politician and diplomat. He was born in Carora in the state of Lara, and was the younger brother of pediatrics pioneer, Pastor Oropeza Riera.
In his youth, he opposed the totalitarian regime of President Juan Vicente Gómez and became a member of a student-led movement called "Generation of 1928". He was imprisoned and eventually sent into exile with some of the other group members. Upon his return to Venezuela he became a founding member of Acción Democrática, one of the two most prominent political parties in the nation's republican history, alongside such important figures as Luis Beltrán Prieto Figueroa, Mariano Picón Salas and former Venezuelan President Rómulo Betancourt.
In 1944, he married socialite Alicia Sosa González, the daughter of a prosperous businessman, with whom he only had one son, Serge (b. 1949 in Paris, France). Under Isaias Medina Angarita's presidential term, he was appointed Venezuela's ambassador to the United Kingdom and, subsequently, became the rector of the Universidad Central de Venezuela (Central University of Venezuela). Under Rómulo Gallegos's term he became Venezuela's ambassador in France.
He took up Paris as his permanent residence during the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez, where he befriended such personalities as poet Paul Éluard, writers Jorge Luis Borges, Nicolás Guillén, Miguel Ángel Asturias and painters Salvador Dalí, Marie Laurencin and Pablo Picasso.
He continued his duties as the Venezuelan ambassador under Rómulo Betancourt and Raúl Leoni's presidencies, in the 1960s. During that time, he was also chosen to represent Venezuela as its ambassador before UNESCO and, during Raúl Leoni's presidency, was appointed the Venezuelan ambassador in Bogotá, Colombia, the highest honor a Venezuelan diplomatic official can achieve. He received the Orden del Libertador and the Orden Francisco de Miranda, as well as the Orden del Águila Azteca (Mexico) in 1946, in recognition for his outstanding academic skills. He was a Law professor at the University of Minnesota. Some of his literary works are: Sucre, Cuatro siglos de historia venezolana, Fronteras and Del tiempo en que vivimos.
His close friend Pablo Neruda once said of him: "Juan couldn't possibly be president, let someone else take care of that, it would be a waste of his talent, he's too brilliant and far too honest to be ever president". Arturo Uslar Pietri, one of Juan Oropeza's closest friends and his intellectual peer, once ran for office without much success, on account of his lack of political savy due partly to his impeccable prose, refined manners and strong moral values and points of view, obvious trademarks of his well-to-do upbringing. Everyone agreed on the fact that he was an intellectual force to be reckoned with but not a fierce political leader, so in the end, Neruda's words were proven right.
Juan Oropeza died of cancer in Caracas on November 29, 1971, at the age of 65.
