[News] The Violent History of the Venezuelan Opposition

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/20/the-violent-history-of-the-venezuelan-opposition/ 



  The Violent History of the Venezuelan Opposition

by Valerie Reynoso 
<https://www.counterpunch.org/author/valerie-reynoso/> - May 20, 2019
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The West alleges that the Venezuelan opposition is peaceful and 
democratic; however, their extensive history of right-wing violence 
proves otherwise.

The Venezuelan opposition is led by a predominately white bourgeoisie, 
the US state department and its allies. The US state department has 
provided at least $49 million since 2009 in aid for Venezuelan 
right-wing opposition forces who have sparked violent protests and 
murders of innocent civilians with the hopes of removing the 
democratically elected President Maduro. The US government has also 
provided $4.26 million for Venezuela through the US Agency for 
International Development (USAID) in 2015 in order to fund organizations 
that engage in anti-government work.

Contrary to Western narratives, these anti-government protestors have a 
history of escalating to extreme forms of violence, such as their 
burning of Venezuelan youth Orlando Jose Figuera, who was stabbed and 
set on fire on May 20th, 2018. This occurred in the Altamira 
neighborhood of Caracas, one of the wealthiest regions of the capital, 
after the anti-government protestors suspected he was a Chavista because 
he was Black. 80% of his body suffered burns and stab wounds as a result 
and he unfortunately died from this hate crime. This heinous act even 
drew the attention of Ernesto Vega, Venezuela’s Minister of 
Communication and Information, who issued a statement on his Twitter 
account following the death of Figuera, his statement is, as quoted: 
“Orlando Figuera, stabbed and burned alive by minds diseased by the hate 
in Altamira on May 20, just died of cardiopulmonary arrest,” he also 
elaborated that international mainstream media has failed to expose the 
opposition for how violent it truly is in its protests as opposed to 
“peaceful.”

Mainstream media has also failed to expose the reactionary nature of 
prominent Venezuelan bourgeois opposition leaders such as Leopoldo 
Lopez, who are romanticized as heroes fallen victim to a brutal regime 
when the reality is quite the contrary.

Leopoldo Lopez is a main figure of the Venezuelan opposition who was 
placed under house arrest after 3 years in prison due to health concerns.

He was imprisoned at first due to his planning and promotion of violent 
protests to topple the democratically elected Maduro government, these 
protests resulted in 43 casualties. Lopez is a wealthy white Venezuelan 
elite man who is directly descended from 19th century bourgeois 
liberator Simon Bolivar and Venezuela’s first president Cristobal 
Mendoza. He culminated his education in prestigious institutions in the 
US such as the Hun School of Princeton, which he attended alongside 
Saudi princes and the children of US Presidents and well known CEOS.

He was then admitted to Kenyon College followed by Harvard John F 
Kennedy School of Government. Some investigators speculate that he 
initiated a relationship with the CIA while at Kenyon. Lopez founded the 
group Primero Justicia while in school in 1992, which grew into a 
significant political party in right-wing Venezuelan politics.

Prior to becoming involved again in Venezuelan politics after his return 
to the country in 1996, he became an analyst at the quasi-privatized 
Venezuelan state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) where he 
worked until 1999 and while he worked there, he and his mother illegally 
sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to Primero Justicia, which breaks 
Venezuela’s anti-corruption laws. This act was not revealed until 2007 
when an investigation conducted demonstrated what Lopez had done and 
banned him from obtaining political office titles for years.

After culminating his job at PDVSA, he was elected mayor of the Chachao 
department of Caracas in 2000, which is one of the wealthiest provinces 
in Venezuela. In 2002, Lopez started to regularly visit the headquarters 
of International Republican Institute (IRI) in Washington DC and meet 
with officials from the Bush administration. The IRI makes up one third 
of the National Endowment for Democracy, which is a US government funded 
NGO that was chaired by John Mccain and that has played a role in 
numerous US-sanctioned regime changes.
Both the IRI and the National Democratic Institute have financed Lopez’s 
Primero Justicia party as well as his other party Voluntad Popular which 
he established in 2010.

During his term as mayor of Chachao, Lopez participated in the 2002 US 
coup attempt against democratically elected president Hugo Chavez. The 
key role Lopez played in this coup attempt was in the illegal 
sequestration of former Minister of the Interior and Justice Ramon 
Rodriguez Chacin, along with engaging in violent attacks aimed at the 
Cuban Embassy in Caracas, which him and other violent 
counterrevolutionaries cut off water and electricity to and smashed 
windows and vehicles.

In 2007, Chavez forgave Lopez for his participation in the coup and 
prohibited him from holding political office from 2008 to 2014. Lopez 
has then tried to disassociate himself from the 2002 coup attempt which 
was generally not well received by anyone including the Venezuelan 
opposition. In 2014 Lopez’s lawyers tried to deny his involvement in the 
coup, but this was not successful as there was video evidence of him 
kidnapping Chacin and that his father, Leopoldo Lopez Gil, was a 
business leader who suspended the Venezuelan constitution that was 
provided by the fickle coup government.

This legacy of right-wing violence has continued to this day. On March 
10th, 2019, the New York Times reported that the USAID that the 
Venezuelan government, UN and Red Cross rejected that was believed to 
have been burned by the Maduro administration, was in fact burned by the 
right-wing guarimberos, who were recently caught on camera throwing a 
molotov cocktail at the USAID truck. Juan Guaido, the interim figure 
backed by the US, recorded himself in now deleted videos of himself 
participating in violent guarimba riots back in 2014.

As much as the west wants to paint Venezuelan opposition as peaceful 
heroes and Maduro as a villain that needs to be taken down, neither is 
the actual case and are indeed imperialist propaganda.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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