Marriage and Family
Carlos Andrés Pérez began courting his cousin Blanca in 1944. He was then working and living in Caracas and would travel to Rubio as he could to visit her. They were wed on 8 June 1948. For the first months, they lived in the provincial city of San Cristóbal but moved to the Venezuelan capital to share a rented house with Julia Pérez, Blanca's mother-in-law.
A few months later, in November 1948, the military launched a coup against the democratically elected government of President Rómulo Gallegos and installed a dictatorship. Carlos Andrés Pérez became the target of harassment and persecution as a member of the Acción Democrática party. Blanca had to endure frequent security police searches of their home as well as tend to her young children while her husband was often on the run or in prison. In 1952, she followed him into exile in San José, Costa Rica.
The couple had six children, five daughters, Sonia, Thais, Martha, María de los Ángeles and María Carolina, and a son, Carlos Manuel.
When the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez was overthrown in 1958, Blanca and Carlos Andrés Pérez returned to Venezuela with the children. Her husband's ascendant political career resulted in Blanca's increasingly prominent role as a politician's wife, one who would be actively involved in supporting his career, campaigning and developing her own charitable activities.
Read more about this topic: Blanca Rodriguez
Famous quotes containing the words marriage and/or family:
“Honor, riches, marriage blessing,
Long continuance, and increasing,
Hourly joys be still upon you!
Juno sings her blessings on you.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Family lore can be a bore, but only when you are hearing it, never when you are relating it to the ones who will be carrying it on for you. A family without a storyteller or two has no way to make sense out of their past and no way to get a sense of themselves.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)