Juan Oropeza

Who was Juan Oropeza?

Juan Oropeza Riera was a Venezuelan lawyer, diplomat, writer, educator and political scientist. 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 the student-led movement called "Generation of 1928". He was imprisoned and eventually sent into exile with some of the other group members. In 1931, he worked as a correspondent for Élite Magazine in Madrid, Spain. 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 later Venezuelan President Rómulo Betancourt.

In 1944, he married Venezuelan Alicia Sosa in Mexico City, in 1944. After the coup d'état that ousted Isaias Medina Angarita, he became the rector of the Universidad Central de Venezuela and was subsequently appointed Venezuela's ambassador to the United Kingdom under President Rómulo Gallegos's term.