Héctor Mujica
Héctor Mujica (10 April 1927 – 14 February 2002) was a Venezuelan journalist, writer, philosopher, politician and academic. A lifelong member of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), he ran as the party's candidate in the 1978 Venezuelan general election and served as its general secretary in 1990 and 1991. He was also the founding president of Venezuela's (National Association of Journalists).
Early life and education
Mujica was born in Carora, in the western state of Lara, during the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez. His father was the prominent paediatrician Pastor Oropeza. He joined the Communist Party in 1944 and started writing opinion pieces for the Caracas daily El Nacional the same year; his first published article appeared on 3 September 1944.
In 1946 Mujica entered the School of Philosophy of the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), where he graduated in 1950. A scholarship from the Venezuelan-French Cultural Centre took him to Paris in 1948 and 1949: there he earned a certificate in psychology and psychopathology from the University of Paris while working at the Hôpital Sainte-Anne.
Imprisonment and exile
In 1955, during the rule of Marcos Pérez Jiménez, Mujica was held at the Modelo Prison in Caracas and tortured by the regime's Seguridad Nacional secret police. His father's intervention secured his release and exile to Chile later that year. Settling in Santiago, he studied journalism at the University of Chile and wrote for the leftist daily El Siglo—where his weekly column Los hombres y las cosas appeared under the pseudonym "Joaquín Jiménez"—as well as for Las Noticias de Última Hora and La Gaceta de Chile, the latter then edited by Pablo Neruda.
After the fall of Pérez Jiménez in January 1958, Mujica returned to Caracas and joined the UCV as a professor of news and opinion journalism. On 12 February 1958 he was appointed director of its School of Journalism, a post he held until 1964. During this period he launched the book series and is credited with modernising the university's printing operation.
Political career
Mujica was elected substitute deputy in the National Congress for the Federal District for the 1959–1964 term on a Communist Party ticket. He was arrested in 1962 after the Congress lifted parliamentary immunity for left-wing legislators under the government of Rómulo Betancourt.
A decade later he served a full term as deputy for Lara (1969–1974), elected on the slate of Unión Para Avanzar (UPA), then operating as a legal front for the banned PCV. Between 1965 and 1966 he taught at the School of Communication Techniques in Rome, returning to Venezuela the following year.
For the 1978 Venezuelan general election of 3 December 1978, the PCV's central committee chose Mujica as its presidential candidate. He polled 29,305 votes, finishing seventh, and later described the campaign as "political pedagogy".
Mujica was elected general secretary of the Communist Party in 1990 but resigned the following year after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, calling on Venezuelan parties to renew their leadership and make room for younger voices.
Journalism
Beyond El Nacional, Mujica wrote regularly for Fantoches, Aquí está, El Popular, El Heraldo, El País, Últimas Noticias and Tribuna Popular. While he led the UCV School of Journalism he published, in the , an interview with Che Guevara conducted in Havana shortly after the Cuban Revolution; Latin American critics have ranked it among the more notable interviews granted by Guevara.
He was a founding member of the International Centre of Advanced Communication Studies for Latin America and of the International Press Institute in Zürich. In 1966 he was elected president of the Venezuelan Press Workers' Association for the 1967–1968 term, and in 1976 he became the first president of the , serving until 1978.
Literary work
Mujica belonged to the postwar generation of Venezuelan intellectuals who adopted Marxism as a framework for analysing the country and the wider region. He was part of the literary group , devoted to existentialism and psychoanalysis, and in March 1948 edited the first issue of its magazine, also titled Contrapunto.
His fiction debut, the short-story collection El pez dormido, appeared in 1947. A self-described "anti-positivist", he was a sharp critic of the influence of positivism on earlier generations of Venezuelan thinkers. After the 1978 campaign he published Experiencias de un candidato (1979), a chronicle of his contact with voters. The Caracas publisher Cejota issued his El Inquieto Anacobero: Confesiones de Daniel Santos in 1982, a biography of the Puerto Rican singer built from extended conversations Mujica recorded with him.
His best-known essay, El imperio de la noticia (1967), is a critique of Venezuelan and U.S. news agencies and the international circulation of news. Other works include Las tres ventanas (1970), Cuento de todos los diablos, La noche de los ayamanes, Chile desde adentro y Venezuela desde afuera, La historia de una silla (1958)—on Antonio Leocadio Guzmán—Los tres testimonios y otros cuentos (1967), Sociología de la comunicación (1980) and Como a nuestro parecer (1984).
Awards
- Editor of the Year (Venezuela), 1952
- International Prize, International Federation of Journalists, 1962
- Venezuelan National Prize of Journalism for Teaching and Research, 1969
- CONAC Prize for Narrative, 1981
Death
Mujica died of respiratory failure in Mérida on 14 February 2002, aged 74.
See also
- 1978 Venezuelan general election
- Andreína Mujica