Germán Cardozo Galué: The man, the region and the history

Abstract

An approximation is made to the academic career and historiographical work of Professor Germán Cardozo Galué (1940-2017). For its elaboration was used the method of historical-documentary research. It is concluded that, during his academic career, Professor Germán Cardozo Galué promoted and consolidated regional and local historical studies in Venezuela and an authentic history school in Zulia through the Center for Historical Studies of LUZ, with a historiographic tendency that will confront the exclusionary, homogeneous and linear vision of the "historiographic centralism" prevalent in the History of Venezuela and that will equally question the "local centralism" of the histories of the states, elaborated in the same way during the first half of the twentieth century. His historiographical work and that of the group of researchers who formed the Center for Historical Studies of LUZ during its first two decades of operation, corresponded to the need for historical knowledge about the Zulian region, as well as to claim its uniqueness, diversity and participation in the process of formation of the nation and the Venezuelan state, cementing the historical consciousness, giving sense and content to the regional identity zuliana.