The "Twelve Apostles" (''Los Doce Apóstoles'') were a group of
Venezuela
Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...
n businessmen close to President
Carlos Andrés Pérez
Carlos Andrés Pérez Rodríguez (27 October 1922 – 25 December 2010) also known as CAP and often referred to as ''Venezuelan Spanish#Some examples of Spanish words common in Venezuela.2C including some native Venezuelanisms .28slang.29, El ...
. The term was coined by
Pedro Duno (1975) and became part of the Venezuelan political language.
[Jonathan Di John. ''From Windfall to Curse?: Oil and Industrialization in Venezuela, 1920 to the Present'', Penn State Press, 2009. p212] The group included
Pedro Tinoco
Pedro Tinoco (1927–1993) was a Venezuelan businessman and politician.
Career
Tinoco was Minister of Finance from 1969 to 1972, under President Rafael Caldera. He was then chairman of the Board of Banco Latino from 1975, and one of Ca ...
and
Carmelo Lauria Lesseur.
[Fernando Coronil. ]
The magical state: nature, money, and modernity in Venezuela
', University of Chicago Press, 1997. p247 Of the various family groups involved, the
Cisneros Group
Grupo Cisneros is a privately held, family owned business headquartered in Coral Gables, Florida, historically based in Venezuela, with a focus on Latin American and Spanish-speaking people worldwide. It is a conglomerate of media entertainment ...
of
Gustavo Cisneros
Gustavo Alfredo Jiménez de Cisneros y Rendiles (1 June 1945 – 29 December 2023) was a Venezuelan businessman and Chairman of '' Grupo Cisneros''.
A onetime billionaire, according to ''Forbes,'' his net worth peaked at US$6.0 billion in 2007 ...
was the most successful by the 1990s.
[
The links between Pérez and the apostles go back to Pérez' struggle for the Democratic Action presidential candidacy in 1973. Lacking a power base in the party, Pérez allied himself with businessmen outside it. After he attained the presidency, the names of these businessmen appeared on "many of the financially most lucrative contracts awarded in the period 1974-78, including the ]Guri Dam
The Simón Bolívar Hydroelectric Plant, also Guri Dam ( or ''Represa de Guri''), previously known as the Raúl Leoni Hydroelectric Plant, is a concrete gravity and embankment dam in Bolívar State, Venezuela, on the Caroni River, built from 19 ...
, Cementos Caribe (the licensing of a new cement factory), the new Zulia steel mill, the Pentacom petrochemical project, and the construction of Parque Central (the largest shopping mall/office complex in South America at the time), among many others"[
]
Books
* Duno, Pedro. 1975. ''Los Doce Apóstoles: Proceso a la Degradación Política.'' Valencia: Vadell Hermanos Editores.
* Tarver Denova, Hollis Micheal. 2004. ''The Rise and Fall of Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez
Carlos Andrés Pérez Rodríguez (27 October 1922 – 25 December 2010) also known as CAP and often referred to as ''Venezuelan Spanish#Some examples of Spanish words common in Venezuela.2C including some native Venezuelanisms .28slang.29, El ...
: An Historical Examination, Volume II: The Later Years, 1973-2004.'' Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen.
References
Venezuelan businesspeople
Carlos Andrés Pérez
{{Venezuela-business-bio-stub