Politician and ex-guerilla leader dies

Teodoro Petkoff, a giant of Venezuela’s politics who led a band of communist guerrillas before becoming a critic of socialist president Hugo Chavez, has died. Despite the Communism of his youth, he won the praise of Wall Street in a top government post, then launched a newspaper that fearlessly attacked Mr Chavez. Xabier Coscojuela, editor of the newspaper Tal Cual, said the paper’s founder died after a long illness, aged 86. Mr Petkoff was celebrated as a critical thinker who kept his political independence within an opposition movement weakened by cronyism and infighting. He promoted conservative economic policies that Latin leftists considered a betrayal. “Teodoro Petkoff was a mentor to at least three generations of Venezuelans. I count myself among them,” playwright, essayist and former Tal Cual columnist Ibsen Martinez said. “He instilled in us the idea that democracy and tolerance are the essence of social justice.” Mr Petkoff’s life story is marked by daring prison escapes, bank heists and failed presidential campaigns in the South American petro state. Born to a Bulgarian father and Polish mother of Jewish origin who immigrated to Venezuela, Mr Petkoff ’s political rise began as a student leader. He then joined the Communist Party and took up arms in the 1950s against dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez. Mr Petkoff spent three years in prison and escaped twice, once by slipping through a tunnel on to the streets of Caracas, where costumed carnival-goers provided ample cover. With other former rebels, Mr Petkoff formed the left-leading Movement Toward Socialism and was elected to the Senate. He joined the government in the late 1990s when Rafael Caldera in his second term as president, tapped the former rebel as planning minister during an economic crisis. He launched Tal Cual in 2000 during the rise of Hugo Chavez’s socialist movement, which maintains power today. And he unsuccessfully challenged Hugo Chavez for the presidency in 2006. Mr Petkoff was “the greatest democrat of the left in Latin America”, said Enrique Krause, a Mexican historian and critic of current Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

STALWART: Teodora Petkoff has died