José Gil Fortoul

José Gil Fortoul was a Venezuelan writer, historian, and politician, who was briefly the acting president of Venezuela. As a political scientist and legal scholar, he is closely identified with the movement of Venezuelan positivism. He was an ally of the dictator Juan Vicente Gómez, supporting his regime both politically and in his social and historical writing. In 1913 Fortoul was appointed provisional President of Venezuela, serving for less than a year.