SPECIAL SEMINAR ON THE VENEZUELAN CRISIS: THE OTHER VENEZUELA: The Current Crisis in Historical Context

Convener: Eduardo Posada-Carbo

Speaker: Malcolm Deas, St. Antony’s College

Malcolm Deas is an Emeritus Fellow of St. Antony’s College.  He graduated from New College in modern History in 1962, and was a Fellow of All Souls College from 1962-1966.  He was one of the original staff of the Latin American Centre, founded at that time by Sir Raymond Carr with support from the Ford Foundation, and was a Fellow of St Antony’s College and University Lecturer in the Government and Politics of Latin America from 1966 until his retirement in 2008. For a number of stretches he was also Director of the Centre, and for approaching fifty years he has taken a particular interest in building up the University’s Latin American collections, in the Bodleian Library and in the Centre. His own research has been chiefly on the nineteenth and twentieth century history of Colombia, where he first spent two years in 1964 and 1965, and where he has been a frequent visitor and resident since. He has also written on Ecuador, Argentina and Venezuela – his most recent book, Las fuerzas del orden  (2017) includes several essays on the history of Venezuela.  He has written on caciquismo, the history of taxation, civil wars, coffee, insecurity and its economic consequences, the interaction of local and national politics, the interpretation of violence and many other themes.  He has at times contributed to The New Statesman, The Listener, The Spectator, The London Review of Books and The Times, for which last he wrote the leaders on Latin America for five years from the end of the Falklands War. He served for a decade as Managing Editor of the Cambridge University Press monographs on Latin America.  From 1990 to 1994 he was an advisor in Colombia to President César Gaviria’s Consejería de Seguridad y Defensa, which worked to design policies to reduce Colombia’s high levels of violence. For this he was awarded Colombia’s Cruz de Boyacá, and an O.B.E. He is also a member of the Orden Andrés Bello (Venezuela) and the Orden de Mérito (Ecuador). He has an Honorary Doctorate from the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá. He was the University’s Senior Proctor, 1986-1987.