[News] The Making of Juan Guaidó: How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela's Coup Leader
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Jan 29 18:31:10 EST 2019
https://grayzoneproject.com/2019/01/29/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/
The Making of Juan Guaidó: How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created
Venezuela's Coup Leader
January 29, 2019
<https://grayzoneproject.com/2019/01/29/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Juan Guaidó is the product of a decade-long project overseen by
Washington’s elite regime change trainers. While posing as a
champion of democracy, he has spent years at the forefront of a
violent campaign of destabilization.*
*By Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal*
Before the fateful day of January 22, fewer than one in five
<https://twitter.com/venanalysis/status/1087447663153500166> Venezuelans
had heard of Juan Guaidó. Only a few months ago, the 35-year-old was an
obscure character in a politically marginal far-right group closely
associated with gruesome acts of street violence. Even in his own party,
Guaidó had been a mid-level figure in the opposition-dominated National
Assembly, which is now held under contempt according to Venezuela’s
constitution.
But after a single phone call from from US Vice President Mike Pence,
Guaidó proclaimed himself president of Venezuela. Anointed as the leader
of his country by Washington, a previously unknown political
bottom-dweller was vaulted onto the international stage as the
US-selected leader of the nation with the world’s largest oil reserves.
Echoing the Washington consensus, the New York Times editorial board
hailed
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/opinion/venezuela-guaido-maduro.html>Guaidó
as a “credible rival” to Maduro with a “refreshing style and vision of
taking the country forward.” The Bloomberg News editorial board
applauded
<https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-25/guaido-s-bold-stroke-for-democracy-in-venezuela>him
for seeking “restoration of democracy” and the Wall Street Journal
declared <https://www.wsj.com/articles/revolt-in-venezuela-11548289111>
him “a new democratic leader.” Meanwhile, Canada, numerous European
nations, Israel, and the bloc of right-wing Latin American governments
known as the Lima Group recognized Guaidó as the legitimate leader of
Venezuela.
While Guaidó seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, he was, in
fact, the product of more than a decade of assiduous grooming by the US
government’s elite regime change factories. Alongside a cadre of
right-wing student activists, Guaidó was cultivated to undermine
Venezuela’s socialist-oriented government, destabilize the country, and
one day seize power. Though he has been a minor figure in Venezuelan
politics, he had spent years quietly demonstrated his worthiness in
Washington’s halls of power.
“Juan Guaidó is a character that has been created for this
circumstance,” Marco Teruggi, an Argentinian sociologist and leading
chronicler of Venezuelan politics, told The Grayzone
<https://grayzoneproject.com/>. “It’s the logic of a laboratory – Guaidó
is like a mixture of several elements that create a character who, in
all honesty, oscillates between laughable and worrying.”
Diego Sequera, a Venezuelan journalist and writer for the investigative
outlet Misión Verdad, agreed: “Guaidó is more popular outside Venezuela
than inside, especially in the elite Ivy League and Washington circles,”
Sequera remarked to The Grayzone, “He’s a known character there, is
predictably right-wing, and is considered loyal to the program.”
While Guaidó is today sold as the face of democratic restoration, he
spent his career in the most violent faction of Venezuela’s most radical
opposition party, positioning himself at the forefront of one
destabilization campaign after another. His party has been widely
discredited inside Venezuela, and is held partly responsible for
fragmenting a badly weakened opposition.
“‘These radical leaders have no more than 20 percent in opinion polls,”
wrote
<http://www.caraotadigital.net/nacionales/luis-vicente-leon-la-oposicion-politica-venezolana-vive-su-peor-momento-historico/>
Luis Vicente León, Venezuela’s leading pollster. According to León,
Guaidó’s party remains isolated because the majority of the population
“does not want war. ‘What they want is a solution.’”
But this is precisely why he Guaidó was selected by Washington: He is
not expected to lead Venezuela toward democracy, but to collapse a
country that for the past two decades has been a bulwark of resistance
to US hegemony. His unlikely rise signals the culmination of a two
decades-long project to destroy a robust socialist experiment.
*Targeting the “troika of tyranny”*
Since the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez, the United States has fought to
restore control over Venezuela and is vast oil reserves. Chávez’s
socialist programs may have redistributed the country’s wealth and
helped lift millions out of poverty, but they also earned him a target
on his back.
In 2002, Venezuela’s right-wing opposition briefly ousted Chávez with US
support and recognition, before the military restored his presidency
following a mass popular mobilization. Throughout the administrations of
US Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Chávez survived numerous
assassination plots, before succumbing to cancer in 2013. His successor,
Nicolas Maduro, has survived
<https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/27/maduro-assassination-plot-venezuela_n_3820765.html>
three attempts <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2344973.stm>on his life.
The Trump administration immediately elevated Venezuela to the top of
Washington’s regime change target list, branding it the leader of a
“troika of tyranny.”
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-national-security-advisor-ambassador-john-r-bolton-administrations-policies-latin-america/>Last
year, Trump’s national security team attempted
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/world/americas/donald-trump-venezuela-military-coup.html>to
recruit members of the military brass to mount a military junta, but
that effort failed.
According to the Venezuelan government, the US was also involved in a
plot, codenamed Operation Constitution, to capture Maduro at the
Miraflores presidential palace; and another, called Operation Armageddon
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-27/inside-the-failed-plot-to-overthrow-venezuelan-president-nicolas-maduro>,
to assassinate him at a military parade in July 2017. Just over a year
later, exiled opposition leaders tried and failed to kill Maduro
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J71BT0stT3k>with drone bombs during a
military parade in Caracas.
More than a decade before these intrigues, a group of right-wing
opposition students were hand-selected and groomed by an elite US-funded
regime change training academy to topple Venezuela’s government and
restore the neoliberal order.
*Training from the “‘export-a-revolution’ group that sowed the
seeds for a NUMBER of color revolutions”*
On October 5, 2005, with Chávez’s popularity at its peak and his
government planning sweeping socialist programs, five Venezuelan
“student leaders” arrived
<https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/venezuela-marigold-revolution>in
Belgrade, Serbia to begin training for an insurrection.
The students had arrived from Venezuela courtesy of the Center for
Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies, or CANVAS. This group is
funded
<http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2013/01/14/breaking-desperate-for-destabilization-in-venezuela-us-funded-otpor-rears-its-ugly-head/>largely
through the National Endowment for Democracy
<https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/08/20/inside-americas-meddling-machine-the-us-funded-group-that-interferes-in-elections-around-the-globe/>,
a CIA cut-out that functions as the US government’s main arm of
promoting regime change; and offshoots like the International Republican
Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International
Affairs. According to leaked internal emails
<https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/17/1792423_information-on-canvas-.html>from
Stratfor, an intelligence firm known as the “shadow CIA
<https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/12/15/stratfor-canadian-government_n_4449505.html>,”
CANVAS “may have also received CIA funding and training during the
1999/2000 anti-Milosevic struggle.”
CANVAS is a spinoff of Otpor, a Serbian protest group founded by Srdja
Popovic <http://www.williamengdahl.com/englishNEO1Oct2017.php>in 1998 at
the University of Belgrade. Otpor, which means “resistance” in Serbian,
was the student group that gained international fame — and
Hollywood-level promotion <https://vimeo.com/143379353>— by mobilizing
the protests that eventually toppled Slobodan Milosevic.
This small cell of regime change specialists was operating according to
the theories of the late Gene Sharp, the so-called “Clausewitz of
non-violent struggle.” Sharp had worked with a former Defense
Intelligence Agency analyst, Col. Robert Helvey
<http://peacemagazine.org/archive/v24n1p12.htm>, to conceive a strategic
blueprint that weaponized protest as a form of hybrid warfare, aiming it
at states that resisted Washington’s unipolar domination.
Otpor was supported by the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and
Sharp’s Albert Einstein Institute. Sinisa Sikman, one of Otpor’s main
trainers, once said
<https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/17/1792423_information-on-canvas-.html>the
group even received direct CIA funding.
According to a leaked email
<https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/17/1713359_re-insight-venezuela-canvas-analysis-.html>from
a Stratfor staffer, after running Milosevic out of power, “the kids who
ran OTPOR grew up, got suits and designed CANVAS… or in other words a
‘export-a-revolution’ group that sowed the seeds for a NUMBER of color
revolutions. They are still hooked into U.S. funding and basically go
around the world trying to topple dictators and autocratic governments
(ones that U.S. does not like ;).”
Stratfor revealed that CANVAS “turned its attention to Venezuela” in
2005, after training opposition movements that led pro-NATO regime
change operations across Eastern Europe.
While monitoring the CANVAS training program, Stratfor outlined its
insurrectionist agenda in strikingly blunt language: “Success is by no
means guaranteed, and student movements are only at the beginning of
what could be a years-long effort to trigger a revolution in Venezuela,
but the trainers themselves are the people who cut their teeth on the
‘Butcher of the Balkans.’ They’ve got mad skills. When you see students
at five Venezuelan universities hold simultaneous demonstrations, you
will know that the training is over and the real work has begun.”
*Birthing the “Generation 2007” regime change cadre*
The “real work” began two years later, in 2007, when Guaidó graduated
from Andrés Bello Catholic University of Caracas. He moved to
Washington, DC to enroll in the Governance and Political Management
Program
<http://sri.ucab.edu.ve/sites/default/files/Convenio%20UCAB-%20CAF%20George%20Washington%20University.pdf>at
George Washington University, under the tutelage of Venezuelan economist
Luis Enrique Berrizbeitia, one of the top Latin American neoliberal
economists. Berrizbeitia is a former executive director
<https://www.caf.com/media/3571/resumenexecutive.pdf>of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) who spent more than a decade working
in the Venezuelan energy sector, under the old oligarchic regime that
was ousted by Chávez.
That year, Guaidó helped lead anti-government rallies after the
Venezuelan government declined to
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2424>to renew the license of
Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV). This privately owned station played a
leading role in the 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez. RCTV helped mobilize
anti-government demonstrators, falsified information blaming government
supporters for acts of violence carried out by opposition members, and
banned pro-government reporting amid the coup. The role of RCTV and
other oligarch-owned stations in driving the failed coup attempt was
chronicled in the acclaimed documentary The Revolution Will Not Be
Televised <https://venezuelanalysis.com/video/2611>.
That same year, the students claimed credit for stymying Chavez’s
constitutional referendum for a “21st century socialism” that promised
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2890>“to set the legal framework
for the political and social reorganization of the country, giving
direct power to organized communities as a prerequisite for the
development of a new economic system.”
From the protests around RCTV and the referendum, a specialized cadre
of US-backed class of regime change activists was born. They called
themselves “Generation 2007.”
The Stratfor and CANVAS trainers of this cell identified Guaidó’s ally –
a street organizer named Yon Goicoechea – as a “key factor” in defeating
the constitutional referendum. The following year, Goicochea was
rewarded <https://www.cato.org/friedman-prize/yon-goicoechea>for his
efforts with the Cato Institute’s Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing
Liberty, along with a $500,000 prize, which he promptly invested into
building his own Liberty First (Primero Justicia) political network.
Friedman, of course, was the godfather of the notorious neoliberal
Chicago Boys who were imported into Chile by dictatorial junta leader
Augusto Pinochet to implement policies of radical “shock doctrine”-style
fiscal austerity. And the Cato Institute is the libertarian Washington
DC-based think tank founded by the Koch Brothers, two top Republican
Party donors who have become aggressive supporters
<https://theintercept.com/2017/08/09/atlas-network-alejandro-chafuen-libertarian-think-tank-latin-america-brazil/>of
the right-wing across Latin America.
Wikileaks published a 2007 email
<https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/07CARACAS1128_a.html>from American
ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield sent to the State Department,
National Security Council and Department of Defense Southern Command
praising “Generation of ’07” for having “forced the Venezuelan
president, accustomed to setting the political agenda, to (over)react.”
Among the “emerging leaders” Brownfield identified were Freddy Guevara
and Yon Goicoechea. He applauded the latter figure as “one of the
students’ most articulate defenders of civil liberties.”
Flush with cash from libertarian oligarchs and US government soft power
outfits, the radical Venezuelan cadre took their Otpor tactics to the
streets, along with a version
<https://frentemanuelpiar.blogspot.com/2011/01/nuestro-orgulloso-movimiento.html>of
the group’s logo, as seen below:
*“Galvanizing public unrest…to take advantage of the situation and
spin it against Chavez”*
In 2009, the Generation 2007 youth activists staged their most
provocative demonstration
<https://orhpositivo.wordpress.com/2009/10/03/los-culos-de-la-derecha-venezolana-al-aire-contra-chavez/#jp-carousel-2150>yet,
dropping their pants on public roads and aping the outrageous guerrilla
theater tactics outlined by Gene Sharp in his regime change manuals. The
protesters had mobilized against the arrest of an ally from another
newfangled youth group called JAVU. This far-right group “gathered funds
from a variety of US government sources, which allowed it to gain
notoriety quickly as the hardline wing of opposition street movements,”
according to academic George Ciccariello-Maher’s book, “Building the
Commune.”
While video of the protest is not available, many Venezuelans have
identified <http://www.lechuguinos.com/juan-guaido-pela-nalgas/> Guaidó
as one of its key participants. While the allegation is unconfirmed, it
is certainly plausible; the bare-buttocks protesters were members of the
Generation 2007 inner core that Guaidó belonged to, and were clad in
their trademark Resistencia! Venezuela t-shirts, as seen below:
That year, Guaidó exposed himself to the public in another way, founding
a political party to capture the anti-Chavez energy his Generation 2007
had cultivated. Called Popular Will, it was led by Leopoldo López
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11452>, a Princeton-educated
right-wing firebrand heavily involved in National Endowment for
Democracy programs and elected as the mayor of a district in Caracas
that was one of the wealthiest in the country. Lopez was a portrait of
Venezuelan aristocracy, directly descended from his country’s first
president. He was also the first cousin of Thor Halvorssen
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/oslo-freedom-forum-founders-ties-islamophobes-who-inspired-mass-killer-anders-breivik/12451>,
founder of the US-based Human Rights Foundation that functions as a de
facto publicity shop for US-backed anti-government activists in
countries targeted by Washington for regime change.
Though Lopez’s interests aligned neatly with Washington’s, US diplomatic
cables <https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10388>published by
Wikileaks highlighted the fanatical tendencies that would ultimately
lead to Popular Will’s marginalization. One cable identified Lopez as “a
divisive figure within the opposition… often described as arrogant,
vindictive, and power-hungry.” Others highlighted his obsession with
street confrontations and his “uncompromising approach” as a source of
tension with other opposition leaders who prioritized unity and
participation in the country’s democratic institutions.
By 2010, Popular Will and its foreign backers moved to exploit the worst
drought to hit Venezuela in decades. Massive electricity shortages had
struck the country due the dearth of water, which was needed to power
hydroelectric plants. A global economic recession and declining oil
prices compounded the crisis, driving public discontentment.
Stratfor and CANVAS – key advisors of Guaidó and his anti-government
cadre – devised a shockingly cynical plan
<https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/?viewemailid=218642>to drive a
dagger through the heart of the Bolivarian revolution. The scheme hinged
on a 70% collapse of the country’s electrical system by as early as
April 2010.
“This could be the watershed event, as there is little that Chavez can
do to protect the poor from the failure of that system,” the Stratfor
internal memo declared. “This would likely have the impact of
galvanizing public unrest in a way that no opposition group could ever
hope to generate. At that point in time, an opposition group would be
best served to take advantage of the situation and spin it against
Chavez and towards their needs.”
By this point, the Venezuelan opposition was receiving a staggering
$40-50 million a year from US government organizations like USAID and
the National Endowment for Democracy, according to a report
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5441>by the Spanish think tank,
the FRIDE Institute. It also had massive wealth to draw on from its own
accounts, which were mostly outside the country.
While the scenario envisioned by Statfor did not come to fruition, the
Popular Will party activists and their allies cast aside any pretense of
non-violence and joined a radical plan to destabilize the country.
*Towards violent destabilization*
In November, 2010, according to emails
<https://www.aporrea.org/actualidad/n250229.html>obtained by Venezuelan
security services and presented by former Justice Minister Miguel
Rodríguez Torres, Guaidó, Goicoechea, and several other student
activists attended a secret five-day training at the Fiesta Mexicana
hotel in Mexico City. The sessions were run by Otpor, the Belgrade-based
regime change trainers backed by the US government. Themeeting had
reportedly received the blessing
<https://www.telesurenglish.net/analysis/Who-is-Venezuelan-Terror-Plotter-Lorent-Saleh-Four-Former-Latin-American-Presidents-Just-Might-Know-20140924-0071.html>of
Otto Reich, a fanatically anti-Castro Cuban exile working in George W.
Bush’s Department of State, and the right-wing former Colombian
President Alvaro Uribe.
At the Fiesta Mexicana hotel, the emails stated, Guaidó and his fellow
activists hatched a plan to overthrow President Hugo Chavez by
generating chaos through protracted spasms of street violence.
Three petroleum industry figureheads – Gustavo Torrar, Eligio Cedeño and
Pedro Burelli – allegedly covered the $52,000 tab to hold the meeting.
Torrar is a self-described “human rights activist” and “intellectual”
whose younger brother Reynaldo Tovar Arroyo is the representative in
Venezuela of the private Mexican oil and gas company Petroquimica del
Golfo, which holds a contract with the Venezuelan state.
Cedeño, for his part, is a fugitive Venezuelan businessman who claimed
asylum in the United States, and Pedro Burelli a former JP Morgan
executive and the former director of Venezuela’s national oil company,
Petroleum of Venezuela (PDVSA). He left PDVSA in 1998 as Hugo Chavez
took power and is on the advisory committee
<https://lalp.georgetown.edu/people/pedro-burelli>of Georgetown
University’s Latin America Leadership Program.
Burelli insisted that the emails detailing his participation had been
fabricated
<https://www.scribd.com/document/232153227/Evidence-in-English-Evidencia-en-Castellano>and
even hired a private investigator to prove it. The investigator declared
<https://www.apnews.com/5d93086fccd34d2c8ea5e92ca793da3b>that Google’s
records showed the emails alleged to be his were never transmitted.
Yet today Burelli makes no secret of his desire to see Venezuela’s
current president, Nicolás Maduro, deposed – and even dragged through
the streets and sodomized with a bayonet, as Libyan leader Moammar
Qaddafi was by NATO-backed militiamen.
. at NicolasMaduro
<https://twitter.com/NicolasMaduro?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>, jamas me
has hecho caso. Me has fustigado/perseguido como @chavezcandanga
<https://twitter.com/chavezcandanga?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> jamás osó.
Óyeme, tienes sólo dos opciones en las próximas 24 horas:
1. Como Noriega: pagar pena por narcotráfico y luego a
@IntlCrimCourt
<https://twitter.com/IntlCrimCourt?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> La Haya por
DDHH.
2. O a la Gaddafi.
Escoge ya! pic.twitter.com/pMksCEXEmY <https://t.co/pMksCEXEmY>
— Pedro Mario Burelli (@pburelli) January 17, 2019
<https://twitter.com/pburelli/status/1085781149413228545?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
The alleged Fiesta Mexicana plot flowed into another destabilization
plan revealed in a series of documents
<http://albaciudad.org/2014/05/video-fotos-pruebas-maria-corina-machado-kevin-whitaker-diego-arria-magnicidio-golpe-maduro/>produced
by the Venezuelan government. In May 2014, Caracas released documents
detailing an assassination plot against President Nicolás Maduro. The
leaks identified the Miami-based Maria Corina Machado as a leader of the
scheme. A hardliner with a penchant for extreme rhetoric, Machado has
functioned as an international liaison for the opposition, visiting
President George W. Bush
<https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2005/05/images/20050531_p44959-105jasjpg-2-515h.html>in
2005.
“I think it is time to gather efforts; make the necessary calls, and
obtain financing to annihilate Maduro and the rest will fall apart,”
Machado wrote in an email to former Venezuelan diplomat Diego Arria in 2014.
In another email
<http://albaciudad.org/2014/05/video-fotos-pruebas-maria-corina-machado-kevin-whitaker-diego-arria-magnicidio-golpe-maduro/>,
Machado claimed that the violent plot had the blessing of US Ambassador
to Colombia, Kevin Whitaker. “I have already made up my mind and this
fight will continue until this regime is overthrown and we deliver to
our friends in the world. If I went to San Cristobal and exposed myself
before the OAS, I fear nothing. Kevin Whitaker has already reconfirmed
his support and he pointed out the new steps. We have a checkbook
stronger than the regime’s to break the international security ring.”
*Guaidó heads to the barricades*
That February, student demonstrators acting as shock troops for the
exiled oligarchy erected violent barricades across the country, turning
opposition-controlled quarters into violent fortresses
<http://misionverdad.com/la-guerra-en-venezuela/cronicas-guarimberas-el-asesinato-indirecto-zello-y-el-ramboshow-de-vivas%20>known
as /guarimbas/. While international media portrayed the upheaval as a
spontaneous protest against Maduro’s iron-fisted rule, there was ample
evidence that Popular Will was orchestrating the show.
“None of the protesters at the universities wore their university
t-shirts, they all wore Popular Will or Justice First t-shirts,” a
/guarimba/participant said
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11853>at the time. “They might
have been student groups, but the student councils are affiliated to the
political opposition parties and they are accountable to them.”
Asked who the ringleaders were, the /guarimba/participant said, “Well if
I am totally honest, those guys are legislators now.”
Around 43 were killed during the 2014 /guarimbas/. Three years later,
they erupted again, causing mass destruction of public infrastructure,
the murder of government supporters, and the deaths
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13081>of 126 people, many of whom
were Chavistas. In several cases, supporters of the government were
burned alive by armed gangs.
Guaidó was directly involved in the 2014 /guarimbas/. In fact, he
tweeted video showing himself clad in a helmet and gas mask, surrounded
by masked and armed elements that had shut down a highway that were
engaging in a violent clash with the police. Alluding to his
participation in Generation 2007, he proclaimed, “I remember in 2007, we
proclaimed, ‘Students!’ Now, we shout, ‘Resistance! Resistance!'”
Guaidó has deleted the tweet, demonstrating apparent concern for his
image as a champion of democracy.
On February 12, 2014, during the height of that year’s /guarimbas/,
Guaidó joined Lopez on stage at a rally of Popular Will and Justice
First. During a lengthy diatribe <https://youtu.be/YTlGxofwNLw>against
the government, Lopez urged the crowd to march to the office of Attorney
General Luisa Ortega Diaz. Soon after, Diaz’s office came under attack
by armed gangs who attempted to burn it to the ground. She denounced
what she called “planned and premeditated violence.”
In an televised appearance in 2016, Guaidó dismissed
<https://twitter.com/RedRadioVe/status/1088237230211190790>deaths
resulting from /guayas/– a /guarimba/tactic involving stretching steel
wire across a roadway in order to injure or kill motorcyclists – as a
“myth.” His comments whitewashed a deadly tactic that had killed
<https://www.telesurtv.net/news/Muere-joven-venezolano-por-guaya-colocada-por-grupos-fascistas-20140222-0059.html>unarmed
civilians like Santiago Pedroza and decapitated
<http://notitweet-sucesos.blogspot.com/2014/02/este-es-elvis-duran-el-motorizado.html>a
man named Elvis Durán, among many others.
This callous disregard for human life would define his Popular Will
party in the eyes of much of the public, including many opponents of Maduro.
*Cracking down on Popular Will *
As violence and political polarization escalated across the country, the
government began to act against the Popular Will leaders who helped
stoke it.
Freddy Guevara, the National Assembly Vice-President and second in
command of Popular Will, was a principal leader in the 2017 street
riots. Facing a trial for his role in the violence, Guevara took shelter
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics/venezuela-opposition-leader-guevara-seeks-refuge-in-chile-ambassadors-home-idUSKBN1D50LN>
in the Chilean embassy, where he remains.
Lester Toledo, a Popular Will legislator from the state of Zulia, was
wanted by Venezuelan government in September 2016 on charges of
financing terrorism and plotting
<https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/12395>assassinations. The plans were
said to be made with former Colombian President Álavaro Uribe. Toledo
escaped Venezuela and went on several speaking tours with Human Rights
Watch, the US government-backed Freedom House, the Spanish Congress and
European Parliament.
Carlos Graffe, another Otpor-trained Generation 2007 member who led
Popular Will, was arrested
<http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/oposicion/carlos-graffe-salio-libertad-tras-cinco-meses-prision_217102>in
July 2017. According to police, he was in possession of a bag filled
with nails, C4 explosives and a detonator. He was released on December
27, 2017.
Leopoldo Lopez, the longtime Popular Will leader, is today under house
arrest, accused of a key role in deaths of 13 people during the
/guarimbas/in 2014. Amnesty International lauded
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/07/venezuela-leopoldo-lopez-moved-to-house-arrest-as-repression-deepens/>Lopez
as a “prisoner of conscience” and slammed his transfer from prison to
house as “not good enough.” Meanwhile, family members of
/guarimba/victims introduced <https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/12939>a
petition for more charges against Lopez.
Yon Goicoechea, the Koch Brothers posterboy and US-backed founder of
Justice First, was arrested in 2016 by security forces who claimed they
found found a kilo
<https://www.telesurtv.net/news/Detienen-en-Venezuela-a-opositor-equipado-con-explosivos-20160829-0053.html>of
explosives in his vehicle. In a New York Times op-ed
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/04/opinion/venezuela-prison-democracy.html>,
Goicoechea protested the charges as “trumped-up” and claimed he had been
imprisoned simply for his “dream of a democratic society, free of
Communism.” He was freed
<https://twitter.com/YonGoicoechea/status/926828442594799616?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dw.com%2Fen%2Fvenezuelan-authorities-release-two-anti-maduro-activists-from-prison%2Fa-41241026>in
November 2017.
Hoy, en Caricuao. Llevo 15 años trabajando con @jguaido
<https://twitter.com/jguaido?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>. Confío en él.
Conozco la constancia y la inteligencia con la que se ha construido
a sí mismo. Está haciendo las cosas con bondad, pero sin ingenuidad.
Hay una posibilidad abierta hacia la libertad.
pic.twitter.com/Lidm8y5RTX <https://t.co/Lidm8y5RTX>
— Yon Goicoechea (@YonGoicoechea) January 20, 2019
<https://twitter.com/YonGoicoechea/status/1086793086406152193?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
David Smolansky, also a member of the original Otpor-trained Generation
2007, became Venezuela’s youngest-ever mayor when he was elected in 2013
in the affluent suburb of El Hatillo. But he was stripped of his
position and sentenced to 15 months in prison by the Supreme Court after
it found him culpable of stirring the violent /guarimbas/.
Facing arrest, Smolansky shaved his beard, donned sunglasses and slipped
into Brazil
<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-42270859>disguised as a
priest with a bible in hand and rosary around his neck. He now lives in
Washington, DC, where he was hand picked by Secretary of the
Organization of American States Luis Almagro to lead the working group
on the Venezuelan migrant and refugee crisis.
This July 26, Smolansky held what he called a “cordial reunion” with
Elliot Abrams, the convicted Iran-Contra felon installed by Trump
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/01/26/trumps-axis-evil-pompeo-bolton-abrams>as
special US envoy to Venezuela. Abrams is notorious for overseeing the US
covert policy of arming right-wing death squads during the 1980’s in
Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. His lead role in the Venezuelan
coup has stoked fears that another blood-drenched proxy war might be on
the way.
Cordial reunión en la ONU con Elliott Abrams, enviado especial del
gobierno de EEUU para Venezuela. Reiteramos que la prioridad para el
gobierno interino que preside @jguaido
<https://twitter.com/jguaido?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw> es la asistencia
humanitaria para millones de venezolanos que sufren de la falta de
comida y medicinas. pic.twitter.com/vHfktVKgV4 <https://t.co/vHfktVKgV4>
— David Smolansky (@dsmolansky) January 26, 2019
<https://twitter.com/dsmolansky/status/1089233083839270915?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
Four days earlier, Machado rumbled another violent threat against
Maduro, declaring
<https://twitter.com/ErikaOSanoja/status/1087755816113967104> that if he
“wants to save his life, he should understand that his time is up.”
*A pawn in their game*
The collapse of Popular Will under the weight of the violent campaign of
destabilization it ran alienated large sectors of the public and wound
much of its leadership up in exile or in custody. Guaidó had remained a
relatively minor figure, having spent most of his nine-year career in
the National Assembly as an alternate deputy. Hailing from one of
Venezuela’s least populous states, Guaidó came in second place during
the 2015 parliamentary elections, winning just 26% of votes cast in
order to secure his place in the National Assembly.Indeed, his bottom
may have been better known than his face.
Guaidó is known as the president of the opposition-dominated National
Assembly, but he was never elected to the position. The four opposition
parties that comprised the Assembly’s Democratic Unity Table had decided
to establish a rotating presidency. Popular Will’s turn was on the way,
but its founder, Lopez, was under house arrest. Meanwhile, his
second-in-charge, Guevara, had taken refuge in the Chilean embassy. A
figure named Juan Andrés Mejía would have been next in line but reasons
that are only now clear, Juan Guaido was selected.
“There is a class reasoning that explains Guaidó’s rise,” Sequera, the
Venezuelan analyst, observed. “Mejíais high class, studied at one of the
most expensive private universities in Venezuela, and could not be
easily marketed to the public the way Guaidó could. For one, Guaidóhas
common /mestizo/features like most Venezuelans do, and seems like more
like a man of the people. Also, he had not been overexposed in the
media, so he could be built up into pretty much anything.”
In December 2018, Guaidó sneaked across the border and junketed to
Washington, Colombia and Brazil to coordinate the plan to hold mass
demonstrations during the inauguration of President Maduro. The night
before Maduro’s swearing-in ceremony, both Vice President Mike Pence and
Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland called Guaidó to affirm
their support.
A week later, Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Rick Scott and Rep. Mario
Diaz-Balart – all lawmakers from the Florida base of the right-wing
Cuban exile lobby – joined President Trump and Vice President Pence at
the White House. At their request, Trump agreed
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-call-from-pence-helped-set-an-uncertain-new-course-in-venezuela-11548430259?tesla=y&mod=djemalertNEWS>that
if Guaidó declared himself president, he would back him.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met personally withGuaidó on January 10,
according to the Wall Street Journal. However, Pompeo could not
pronounce Guaidó’s name when he mentioned him in a press briefing on
January 25, referring to him as “Juan Guido.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just called the figure Washington is
attempting to install as Venezuelan President "Juan *Guido*" – as in
the racist term for Italians. America's top diplomat didn't even
bother to learn how to pronounce his puppet's name.
pic.twitter.com/HsanZXuSPR <https://t.co/HsanZXuSPR>
— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) January 25, 2019
<https://twitter.com/dancohen3000/status/1088919163022819329?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
By January 11, Guaidó’s Wikipedia page had been edited
<https://twitter.com/Naldoxx/status/1083847986143248384>37 times,
highlighting the struggle to shape the image of a previously anonymous
figure who was now a tableau for Washington’s regime change ambitions.
In the end, editorial oversight of his page was handed over to
Wikipedia’s elite council of “librarians,” who pronounced him the
“contested” president of Venezuela.
Guaidó might have been an obscure figure, but his combination of
radicalism and opportunism satisfied Washington’s needs. “That internal
piece was missing,” a Trump administration said
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/without-a-road-map-trump-administration-pins-hopes-on-venezuelas-opposition/2019/01/24/e132b3c8-1ff6-11e9-8e21-59a09ff1e2a1_story.html>of
Guaidó. “He was the piece we needed for our strategy to be coherent and
complete.”
“For the first time,” Brownfield, the former American ambassador to
Venezuela, gushed to
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/world/americas/venezuela-news-protests-noticias.html>the
New York Times, “you have an opposition leader who is clearly signaling
to the armed forces and to law enforcement that he wants to keep them on
the side of the angels and with the good guys.”
But Guaidó’s Popular Will party formed the shock troops of the
/guarimbas/that caused the deaths of police officers and common citizens
alike. He had even boasted of his own participation in street riots. And
now, to win the hearts and minds of the military and police, Guaido had
to erase this blood-soaked history.
On January 21, a day before the coup began in earnest, Guaidó’s wife
delivered a video address
<https://twitter.com/LlaneroDigitalV/status/1087502656950714368>calling
on the military to rise up against Maduro. Her performance was wooden
and uninspiring, underscoring the her husband’s limited political
prospects.
At a press conference before supporters four days later, Guaidó
announced <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcGX37FlivY>his solution to
the crisis: “Authorize a humanitarian intervention!”
While he waits on direct assistance, Guaidó remains what he has always
been – a pet project of cynical outside forces. “It doesn’t matter if he
crashes and burns after all these misadventures,” Sequera said of the
coup figurehead. “To the Americans, he is expendable.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*/Max Blumenthal/* /is an award-winning journalist and the author of
several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah
<https://www.amazon.com/Republican-Gomorrah-Inside-Movement-Shattered/dp/1568584172>,
Goliath
<https://www.amazon.com/Goliath-Life-Loathing-Greater-Israel/dp/1568586345>,
The Fifty One Day War
<https://www.amazon.com/51-Day-War-Ruin-Resistance/dp/156858511X>, and
The Management of Savagery
<https://www.versobooks.com/books/2868-the-management-of-savagery>. He
has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video
reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza
<https://killinggaza.com/>. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to
shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its
dangerous domestic repercussions./
Dan Cohen is a journalist and filmmaker. He has produced widely
distributed video reports and print dispatches from across
Israel-Palestine. Dan is a correspondent at RT America and tweets at
@DanCohen3000 <https://twitter.com/dancohen3000>.
--
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20190129/1788564b/attachment.htm>
More information about the News
mailing list