Federico Brito Figueroa

Who was Federico Brito Figueroa?

Federico Britto Figueroa was a renowned Venezuelan Marxist historian and anthropologist. Brito's ideas and writings played an important role in the ideological formation of Hugo Chavez, former president of Venezuela.

Born in La Victoria in Venezuela, Brito was a member of Venezuela's National Democratic Party in 1936. Britto later, after profound schisms appeared in the Venezuelan left, joined the Venezuelan Communist Party, together with Domingo Maza Zavala and Luis Miquilena.

In 1946 Britto entered the Instituto Pedagógico Nacional in order to obtain the title of professor of social sciences. Britto later travelled to México. There, he studied in the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Along with Wenceslao Roces and François Chavalier, Brito graduated with a degree in ethnology and anthropology. Britto returned to Venezuela in 1959, after Marcos Pérez Jiménez's toppling, and began studies at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and was licensed as a historian and obtained his doctorate in anthropology. Britto's doctoral thesis was the renowned and influential work La estructura económica de Venezuela colonial, which he wrote in 1963 and published in 1978.