Find out who is who on the Venezuelan diplomatic map, what positions they have previously held, their profession and what ties they have to power

PATRICIA MARCANO | PABLO LOPEZ HURTADO

There are ambassadors whose names are unknown but with a decades-long diplomatic career behind them. There are also heads of missions who, before arriving at the embassy, ​​had never held any diplomatic post. And there are many others who cannot hide their political ties to the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and who held positions of trust in the government of Hugo Chávez.
Knowing who is who on the Venezuelan diplomatic map, what positions they have previously held, their profession and what ties they have to power, is an investigation that has been possible thanks to Vendata, a collaborative data opening project led by the Press and Society Institute (Ipys) and Transparencia Venezuela, which has allowed the review of more than 2.763 official gazettes of the last 10 years.
Based on these documents, it has been possible to build the minimum history of the Venezuelan ambassadors and heads of mission, with official information that must be in the public domain for the sake of transparency that must prevail in the exercise of public office. In a first installment, the faces of the representatives of Venezuela in Europe are presented, a continent where important and controversial characters have gone to reside at the time. Lucas Rincón Romero, Jesee Chacón, Isaías Rodríguez and Germán Mundaraín are some of the former Chávez government officials who are there.
Venezuela currently has diplomatic representation in 98 countries: 11 in South America, 7 in Central America, 3 in North America, 12 in the Caribbean, 18 in Africa, 27 in Europe, 10 in the Middle East, 9 in Asia and 1 in Oceania.

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