On December 12, 2010, Manuel Caballero died in Caracas of complications after surgery. He left a substantial body of work on contemporary Venezuelan political history, with at least three or four seminal volumes, more than 20 other books, and hundreds of essays and press articles. This academic interest was an extension of his passion for politics not as a contender, although he was an activist for many years, but as an analyst. Teaching history at the university level, writing in the press, and politics were his main activities for a long time, and it was not until the eighties that his major publications gave him a deserved recognition as a historian.
In his youth he lived the typical irregular life of the Latin American university student, mixing books with militant politics that led him to jail during the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez, and to exile in Europe. Back in...