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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
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href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/20/the-violent-history-of-the-venezuelan-opposition/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/20/the-violent-history-of-the-venezuelan-opposition/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">The Violent History of the Venezuelan
Opposition</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/valerie-reynoso/"
rel="nofollow">Valerie Reynoso</a> - May 20, 2019</span></div>
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<p>The West alleges that the Venezuelan opposition is
peaceful and democratic; however, their extensive
history of right-wing violence proves otherwise.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.<br>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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