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Aristóbulo Istúriz, Minister of Education of Venezuela and Maduro's loyal man, dies

2021-05-01T14:00:33.126Z


The politician was in charge of reforming the school texts to incorporate the Chavista narrative Aristobulo Isturiz speaks with the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, at a ceremony in Caracas in 2016. MIGUEL GUTIÉRREZ / EFE Aristóbulo Istúriz, Minister of Education of the Government of Venezuela and one of the men most loyal to Nicolás Maduro, died this Tuesday at the age of 74. Vice President Delcy Rodríguez reported the news via Twitter: “It is with deep regret that we report the depa


Aristobulo Isturiz speaks with the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, at a ceremony in Caracas in 2016. MIGUEL GUTIÉRREZ / EFE

Aristóbulo Istúriz, Minister of Education of the Government of Venezuela and one of the men most loyal to Nicolás Maduro, died this Tuesday at the age of 74.

Vice President Delcy Rodríguez reported the news via Twitter: “It is with deep regret that we report the departure of our teacher, Aristóbulo Istúriz, a fighter from this country to which he dedicated his life.

His hopeful smile accompanied him until the last moment.

Our condolences to his wife, children, friends.

The teacher will live in us ”.

Istúriz (Curiepe, 1946) has been a figure always present in the cabinets and ranks of Chavismo for 22 years, in which he has held the positions of minister in two portfolios (Communes and Education), vice president, governor of the Anzoátegui state, deputy and constituent. A radical teacher who had his space of control in the Ministry of Education, where he was in two periods, with Hugo Chávez and since 2018 with Maduro, just in the worst moment that the union is going through, of which he was an active trade unionist before Chavismo. His detractors accuse him of having left labor activism behind when he reached ministerial office.

Teachers in Venezuela earn less than a dollar a month and for more than two years they have denounced and protested violations of collective bargaining and Istúriz's refusal to discuss their demands. His legacy includes increasing dropouts. In 2020, more than a million children were left out of school, according to data from Unicef. With the management of distance education during the pandemic, Istúriz was harshly criticized. He developed a class system through state television that, in its first broadcasts, featured politicized and flawed content. Venezuelan schoolchildren are among the few in the region who have not been able to return to classrooms at any time since the pandemic began - even with the low official report of cases -,what experts warn as an educational catastrophe for the future.

When he was Hugo Chávez's Minister of Education, between 2001 and 2007, he promoted one of the social policies that led to the spread of the Bolivarian revolution throughout the region. With the baptized Mission Robinson, the Government declared Venezuela "a territory free of illiteracy", using Cuban literacy methods. This program was followed by others to massify secondary and university education. He also promoted the reform of school textbooks to retell the history of Venezuela from the Chavista narrative, although its implementation in the curriculum was made by other officials. They were initiatives that generated a strong tension between the Government and civil society, in addition to being questioned from the academy due to their low quality, strong ideologization and their lack of sustainability. A decade laterall those programs have practically disappeared.

Istúriz had a great political belligerence, in addition to the union one. Notorious figure in Venezuelan politics, he was part of the Democratic Action (AD), La Causa R and the Patria Para Todos (PPT) parties until he became the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela in 2007. He was mayor of the municipality of Caracas between 1993 and 1996. In 2008 he was launched as the metropolitan mayor of Caracas and was defeated by the opposition Antonio Ledezma, today in exile in Spain. In 2014, in one of the years of greatest scarcity of goods generated by years of exchange control and price regulation, he said one of the phrases for which he is remembered: “If we remove exchange control, you (the opposition) they take out the dollars and knock us down ”.In September 2017, he entered the list of officials sanctioned by Canada as a result of the serious human rights violations committed during the anti-government protests that year, which left more than 160 dead.

The senior staff of the Maduro government have expressed their condolences for the loss.

“A man of a thousand battles, he always taught us with his accurate word;

Since we were children, we admire his struggle, he leaves us his example, courage and tireless spirit that, despite the years, continued to fill us with his strength.

Long live the memory and work of Professor Aristobulo, "wrote Maduro on his Twitter.

From moderate sectors of the opposition, leaders such as Henrique Capriles Radonsky also sent messages of mourning to the minister's family.

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Source: elparis

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