Herrera won the December 1978 presidential elections for COPEI, replacing the social democratCarlos Andrés Pérez of the Democratic Action party, who had nationalised the oil industry at the height of the boom in 1975. Oil revenues continued to rise during the early years of Herrera's presidency. Herrera had a dirigiste view of the Government's economic role, which involved channelling public funds into agricultural and industrial projects, paying generous subsidies and controlling the prices of many goods. His Government continued President Pérez's policy of borrowing on a world market awash with petrodollars, and by the early 1980s Venezuela owed the banks more than $20 billion. The Government's tacit assumption was that oil prices would remain high forever, and would sustain high levels of public and private consumption. As president, Herrera implemented cultural development programs and education reforms. He liberalised prices, resulting in rapid changes in the value of the Venezuelan bolívar. Moved in part by territorial claims, Herrera developed a muscular foreign policy. He signed an agreement with Mexico in 1980 to jointly provide Central American and Caribbean countries with a steady flow of oil, a precursor of Hugo Chávez's wide-reaching oil diplomacy in the developing world. In 1982 Herrera sided with Argentina in its war with the United Kingdom over the Falkland Islands or Islas Malvinas, adroitly exploiting anti-British and anti-American sentiment to boost his flagging popularity. His support for Argentina came while he was asserting Venezuela's longstanding claim to more than half of neighboring Guyana, a former British colony. His government also recognized the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic as the sovereign state in Western Sahara. In December 1982, PDVSA signed a cooperation agreement with the german oil company VEBA for the establishment of a Joint Venture Ruhr Oel GmbH. This fact are considered the beginning of the Internationalization of PDVSA.
Later life
By the time Herrera's term ended, the economy was in meltdown, poverty and hardship were widespread and the voters turned on the ruling Christian Democrat, ejecting the party from office in the elections of December 1983. After the end of his presidency, Herrera remained influential in the Copei party, becoming its president in 1995. In 2001, Herrera made headlines when gunmen stole his car. Afterward, he could be seen on foot wearing old clothes and carrying his own groceries. He underwent a series of surgeries for an abdominal aneurysm that led to a kidney infection and other complications. Herrera died on 9 November 2007 in Caracas at the age of 82, at a juncture by which he had already retired from Venezuelan politics. He was survived by his wife Betty Urdaneta and three sons.
