Enrique Auvert, Venezuelan businessman and liberal thinker (1924-2005)

Abstract

Enrique Auvert is a businessman and liberal thinker from Zulia who was a witness, actor and analyst of the national 20th century. He perceived the change from a poor and backward country to a modern nation. He observed the health, educational and cultural improvement of the population. He knew dictatorships but witnessed the birth, consolidation and crisis of representative democracy.  He was also aware of the exhaustion of the economic model of import substitution industrialization and oil rentism as a mechanism to generate economic growth. He witnessed the crisis that arose in the mid-70s from which the country has not emerged today. Crisis not only economic but also social, political and ethical-moral.  He made his contribution to solve it. The objective of the work is precisely to study the thoughts about the country of this Marabino businessman. The methodology is qualitative, documentary. Among the authors, his business and liberal peers, with whom he has many similarities, are: Henrique Pérez Dupuy, Joaquín Sánchez-Covisa, Hans Neumann and Nicomedes Zuloaga. Enrique Auvert defends economic and political freedom. Freedoms are in solidarity with each other. It is the conviction that to achieve development we have to go towards technological research applied to our industrial processes. Auvert believes in Latin American economic integration but a series of obstacles and difficulties must be overcome. Auvert is of the conviction that the company is not doing well if the community is doing poorly. Auvert promotes corporate social responsibility. He believes that a good example to get out of the national crisis is the Japanese model with its ideas around total quality.