Bernardo Álvarez, Hugo Chávez’s Envoy in Washington, Dies at 60

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Bernardo Álvarez Herrera, who was seen as a pragmatist, served as ambassador to the United States from 2003 to 2010.


Carol T. Powers for The New York Times

Bernardo Álvarez Herrera, a longtime ambassador to the United States who led Hugo Chávez’s diplomats in defending Venezuela’s socialist revolution to skeptical foreign governments, died on Thursday in Caracas. He was 60.

President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela announced the death but did not give the cause.

Mr. Álvarez was Venezuela’s ambassador in Washington from 2003 to 2010, a period of deeply strained relations with the United States. But American officials long saw Mr. Álvarez, a former college professor, as a pragmatist who prevented ties between the countries from fraying even further.

“With Bernardo, there was always a willingness to engage in dialogue; that wasn’t necessarily true of others in the government,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, which recently hosted Mr. Álvarez for an event.

For the past year Mr. Álvarez had been Venezuela’s ambassador to the Organization of American States, where he helped stymie a hemispheric push to isolate Mr. Maduro for jailing opponents and quashing an opposition campaign to cut short his term through a recall referendum.

Mr. Maduro said that in recent days Mr. Álvarez had reached out to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition team in a bid to improve Venezuela’s ties with the United States.

The two countries have not exchanged ambassadors since 2010. Mr. Álvarez himself was expelled twice, in 2008 and 2010, in retaliation for Mr. Chávez’s ousting of the United States ambassador, Patrick Duddy, on suspicion of plotting his overthrow, and then his denial of credentials to the Americans’ named successor.

Mr. Álvarez was also ambassador to Spain, deputy foreign minister, and the head of the Bolivarian Alliance, a group of 11 leftist-run Latin America and Caribbean nations created by Mr. Chávez.

Bernardo Álvarez Herrera was born in Carora on Aug. 18, 1956. He earned a degree in political science from the Central University of Venezuela and a master’s degree in development studies from the University of Sussex in England. A Venezuelan Embassy biography said Mr. Álvarez was married and had three children.

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