“I am an optimistic person who works,” defined himself as the incomparable Venezuelan businessman Gustavo Cisneros, one of the most influential and richest people in his country and Latin America. His death in New York, at age 78, brought almost everyone into agreement. The revolutionary government and opponents launched in Caracas to highlight his immense business work, leaving in the background the dark clouds that surround his television channel and main banner, Venevisión.
After the truce signed with Hugo Chávez after the failed coup d’état of 2002 and the constant threats from Chavismo, Venevisión has been content to obediently follow the slogans launched by the Bolivarian power until it has become informatively inconsequential, although at the head of local entertainment, with its famous Latin American soap operas breaking one record after another on the continent.
Even Miss Venezuela wore the best clothes of the Cisneros family, who arrived from Cuba to Venezuela last century. From their host country they built a small empire of global dimensions, the Cisneros Group.
Describing Cisneros’s business successes would take an entire master’s degree in Economics. Even for months he has had his own documentary: Gustavo Cisneros, without rest, which can be seen streaming on Prime. An hour and 35 minutes under the motto inherited from his father (“the reward for good work is more work”) seems like little time to unravel some of the most daring business operations of recent decades, analyzed down to the smallest detail. detail by experts and followers. One of his greatest hits is seeing how he was able to turn Pepsi Cola into the most drunk brand in Venezuela and, at a stroke, transform itself into Coca Cola in a few hours to regain the throne of soft drinks.
The purchase of Galerías Preciados in Spain deserves a separate chapter, due to his friendship with Felipe González and the Venezuelan president Carlos Andrés Pérez, the same one that Chávez tried to overthrow and assassinate during his 1992 coup d’état. Those were the times of José María Ruiz Mateos and his confrontation with the socialist cabinet, which ended with the expropriation of Rumasa in 1983 and its sale in parts. One of them was Galerías Preciados, bought and sold years later by Cisneros in an operation with which he earned 28,000 million pesetas.
“Galerías was a classic case: purchase, restructuring and sale of the company. It is what we know how to do,” Cisneros himself explained to EL MUNDO. His friendship with González facilitated that “bet on Spain, which was emerging from Francoism and was still experiencing moments of unrest [Tejero’s coup d’état failed two years before the expropriation]. I believed in Spanish democracy and its free market. I liked the company and there I exported the management that I had, experienced in working in the largest supermarket chain in Venezuela [the then famous CADA].”
That was precisely one of Gustavo Cisneros’ great specialties, buying and optimizing profits to sell later and make good money. The Venezuelan magnate participated in a thousand operations while extending his political and influence networks throughout the world. It became the largest shareholder of Univision, the large Latin American network in the US, along with production companies, Internet channels, breweries, supermarkets, museums, a formidable collection of contemporary Latin American art and even a baseball team, the Lions of Caracas, which In local ball it is equivalent to Real Madrid, of which he was also a fan in soccer. The Cisneros organization has been leading the Caracas team for two decades.
“What do you owe to Venezuela?” Cisneros is asked at the end of his documentary. Without a doubt, a great debt, and not only for him as such an influential character. “I owe him a rational, democratic and intelligent path,” responded who always defined himself as a democratic center.