The Making of Leopoldo López - Paul Clark

28/7/2015
TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicy
The Making of Leopoldo Lpez

A closer look at the democratic bona fides of the rock star of Venezuelas opposition.
BY ROBERTO LOVATO
JULY 27, 2015
CARACAS In the nearly year and a half since street protests rocked Caracas, the U.S. press has been kind
to Leopoldo Lpez, the 44-year-old jailed leader of Venezuelas radical opposition. He has been painted as
a combination of Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, and his distant grand uncle, Simn Bolvar, for his magnetic
brand of in-your-face politics. Newsweek wrote of his twinklingchocolate-colored eyes and high
cheekbones and called Lpez a revolutionary who has it all. The New York Times published a photo of
him, jaw out, fist in the air, in front of a crowd of screaming protesters and gave him a platform on its oped page. In New York, when the United Nations met last September, protestors rallied to show support for
Lpez, and President Barack Obama listed him among a group of political prisoners from repressive
countries such as China and Egypt who deserve to be free. Lpez, who has done interviews shirtless,
came to embody freedom and democracy for audiences across the globe, with stars from Kevin Spacey to
Cher rallying to his cause, while the hashtag #freeleopoldo rocketed across Twitter.
But in Venezuela the picture is far more complicated. Lpez has been in jail since February 2014 on
charges of arson, public incitement, and conspiracy related to the first big anti-government protest that
year, on Feb. 12, 2014, which left three protesters dead and kicked off weeks of rallies, street blockades,
vandalism, and violence. The charges against him, which Amnesty International has called politically
motivated, could carry a prison sentence of 10 years. Outside the courtroom, the public debate continues
to swirl between those who believe Lpez is a freedom fighter facing trumped-up charges and those who
believe he is the violent fascista the government of President Nicols Maduro claims.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/
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Compared to that wave of street protests which ultimately left a total of 43 anti-government protesters,
government supporters, and national guardsmen dead Lpezs trial has proceeded largely without
fanfare. The judge has been far from friendly to Lpezs defense, rejecting all but one of the 65 witnesses
his attorneys sought to call, while admitting 108 witnesses for the prosecution. This isnt a trial, Lpez
wrote from jail last summer. Its a firing squad. Last September, by means of his official Twitter handle,
he claimed that Maduro and his interior minister were the ones truly responsible for the violent acts.
Still, when proceedings resumed this February, Venezuelan media barely took note.
Lpezs court dates in Caracas have generally attracted only small groups of supporters outside the
courthouse, led by Lilian Tintori, Lpezs wife. Other key opposition leaders have stayed away, though
they routinely voice support for Lpezs release. A recent campaign by his party, Voluntad Popular, to
convene an assembly to rewrite the constitution and reorganize the government attracted criticism, with
the leader of a rival opposition party calling for responsibility and maturity and one opposition governor
calling for an end to anarchy or guarimbas, the street barricades that were the preferred tactic of Lpezs
youthful followers.
***
During visits to Venezuela last year, it was clear that Lpez remained a rock star among young opposition
activists, even after his arrest. Leopoldo is a person of extremely high democratic and Catholic values,
Alejandro Aguirre, a member of JAVU (United Activist Youth of Venezuela), one of the main student
groups behind the February protests, told me. Hes also an athlete, added Aguirre, who I met at a May 7
opposition forum called Thinking Differently Is Not a Crime that was hosted at El Nacional, one of the
countrys largest newspapers. Athletes are morally clean, unblemished, [and] more mentally sharp than
other people. He also talked about Lpez being a good family man. Leopoldo, he said, is an example
for youth.
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Later that day, the telegenic Tintori, a former model, kite-surfing champion, and reality show star,
appeared at a rally for political prisoners held in Chacao, the Caracas district where her husband once
served as mayor and which has been a center of anti-government opposition. It also happens to be one of
the wealthiest localities in all of Venezuela. Vibrant in a bright orange windbreaker, with her flawless
smile and long blonde hair, Tintoris strengths as standard-bearer for her jailed husbands message were
on full display.
They want to imprison our dream! she shouted, posed next to one of the life-sized cardboard figures of
her husband that had become ubiquitous in the opposition strongholds of wealthy eastern Caracas. She
praised her husbands record as mayor, mentioning a Chacao health clinic where doctors treat you with
love, as if you were someone special. She continued, This is what we Venezuelans are all like, all equal,
rights for all people without distinction and without privileges! Today, the struggle of one is the struggle of
all!
The days events offered a glimpse of the media-powered populism that has helped Lpez and his political
party gain traction where Venezuelas established opposition, led by a coalition called the MUD, or
Democratic Unity Roundtable, has failed. The opposition lost big in 18 of the 19 national and regional
elections and referenda held since former President Hugo Chvez was first elected in 1998. Though rarely
noted in the U.S. media, the deep-seated rifts between the MUD and its leader, Henrique Capriles, and the
younger, more radical flank of the Venezuelan opposition led by Lpez are reported on with the
excitement of a soap opera in Venezuelan media. For the opposition parties, Lopez draws ire second only
to Chavez, Mary Ponte, a leading member of the center-right Primero Justicia opposition party, once said,
according to a 2009 U.S. diplomatic cable. The only difference between the two is that Lpez is a lot
better looking. In a section of the same U.S. embassy cable titled The Lopez Problem, U.S. State
Department officials described Lpez as a divisive figure within the opposition who is often described
as arrogant, vindictive, and power-hungry but party officials also concede his enduring popularity,
charisma, and talent as an organizer. Certainly no previous Venezuelan opposition leader has succeeded
in projecting himself onto the international stage like Lpez has.
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But the international embrace of Lpez has depended heavily on his image as a stalwart defender of
democracy someone at a safe distance from the highly unpopular coup attempt of April 2002, in which
elements of the military and business leaders ousted President Chvez for 47 hours. A July 2014 white
paper about his trial authored by two attorneys who have represented him and his family Jared Genser
and Jos Antonio Maes asserts that Lpez was not a supporter of the coup and he did not sign the Act
Constituting the Government of Democratic Transition and National Unity (Carmona Decree), the
document that attempted to oust Chvez and dissolve the National Assembly and Supreme Court nor
was he allied with the business leaders who led it. Lpez himself often points to his loyalty to the
constitution, as in the New York Times op-ed which appeared in March 2014, in which he wrote, A change
in leadership can be accomplished entirely within a constitutional and legal framework.
But interviews with key figures in the 2002 coup, a look at Lpezs close associates, and a review of
Venezuelan press accounts, videotaped events, and U.S. government documents paint a more complex
picture about these claims.
***
Leopoldo Lpez was born in 1971 to one of Venezuelas most elite families, a direct descendent of both
19th-century revolutionary leader Simn Bolivar and Venezuelas first president, Cristbal Mendoza. His
mother, Antonieta Mendoza de Lpez, is a top executive at the Cisneros Group, a global media
conglomerate. His father, Leopoldo Lpez Gil, is a restaurateur and businessman who sits on the editorial
board of El Nacional.
I belong to one percent of the privileged people, Lpez said as a teenager, long before the Occupy
movement popularized the term, during an interview with a student newspaper at the Hun School of
Princeton, an elite private boarding school in New Jersey. It was at Hun, whose alumni roster includes
Saudi princes, the child of a U.S. president, and the child of a Fortune 500 CEO, that Lpez said he
experienced an awakening of the responsibility I have towards the people of my country.
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Lpez went on from Hun to Kenyon College, a liberal arts college in Ohio, where he developed
relationships that would serve him to this day. It was a former classmate and political consultant, Rob
Gluck, who led the effort to set up Friends of a Free Venezuela, the media-centered advocacy group behind
a high-profile U.S. campaign for Lpezs release. As a testament to the powerful impact [Lpez] has had
on people, Gluck, a spokesperson for the group, told me, within days of the arrest, really within hours,
friends from Kenyon in influential positions in journalism, communications, advocacy, and government
were emailing, connecting, volunteering, [and] asking what could we do.
Some of these classmates went on to found the Free Leopoldo campaign, a well-connected advocacy group
that has run a vibrant PR and social media campaign on Lpezs behalf. Among the Kenyon classmates
helping to power Free Leopoldo in the United States is Republican Party operative Leonardo Alcivar, who
ran communications strategies for the Romney campaign and the 2004 Republican National Convention
and now works at a communications firm that advises companies on their online strategy. No other
element of the Venezuelan opposition has anything resembling the U.S. media operation that Lpez has
through Free Leopoldo.
Gluck is himself also a former Republican strategist who worked on Lamar Alexanders presidential
campaign and the successful campaign to recall California Governor Gray Davis, which resulted in the
election of Arnold Schwarzenegger. He is currently a managing partner at High Lantern Group, a
Pasadena-based communications strategy firm. He said Lpez has always been progressive, and if
measured on the U.S. political spectrum, hed be left of center. Gluck runs Friends of a Free Venezuela
pro bono personal time, passion, and connections drive the work, he said but his communications
firm has also been retained by Lpezs family, he said, to get the message out about [Lpezs] situation.
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After Kenyon, Lpez went to Harvards John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he met another
influential figure who would become a key supporter Venezuelan national Pedro Burelli, a former JP
Morgan executive and pre-Chvez-era member of the board of directors of PDVSA, Venezuelas national
petroleum firm, which controls the worlds largest crude reserves. The two first met, Burelli said, during a
recruiting trip at Harvard while Burelli was still at JP Morgan. Someone called my attention to this young
Venezuelan who was at the Kennedy School where I had graduated many years before, said Burelli, who
is now a corporate consultant with B+V Advisors, and I connected him. Lpez went to work at PDVSA in
1996 and stayed there as an analyst for three years during Burellis tenure on PDVSAs board. In 1998,
Lpezs mother joined PDVSA as well, as vice president of corporate affairs.
Burelli considers himself a very good friend of Lpez, and said he has provided informal advice to the
opposition leader through his many contentious political transitions, from Lpezs time at PDVSA to the
most recent clashes with the Maduro government. Burelli explained that while he was at PDVSA, Lpez
helped found a group called Primero Justicia which led, in 2000, to the formation of an opposition
party of the same name. In 1998, a comptroller general investigation found that Lpezs mother had
channeled $120,000 in corporate donations from PDVSA to Primero Justicia while she and Lpez were at
the firm, in violation of anti-corruption laws. Lpezs attorneys point out that Primero Justicia was a
nonprofit at the time, not yet a party, and Lpez never stood trial on the charges. But the comptroller
general nevertheless barred Lpez from holding office from 2008 until 2014.
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Lpez left Primero Justicia in 2007 over disputes with other party members and then leapt from one
political party to another, leading up to his quixotic run for president in 2012 on the ticket of his current
party, Voluntad Popular. He was also, during these years, playing a pivotal role in Venezuelas rising
student opposition movement. A leaked State Department cable from 2007 reads, in part, the young,
dynamic opposition mayor of Chacao Municipality in Caracas, Leopoldo Lopez, addressed students during
early demonstrations in his jurisdiction, and he is actively advising them behind-the-scenes; another
describes Lpez as the best channel to the student movement. Some JAVU leaders, including one
mentioned in the cables, went on to become active in Voluntad Popular, the party that fueled Lpezs rise
to national prominence.
While Lpez was honing his political skills and building his base, he stayed in the shadow of his former
ally in the Venezuelan opposition, Henrique Capriles, who remained the leader of Primero Justicia,
running for president twice. But Capriles lost badly to Chvez, by more than 1 million votes, in 2012,
contributing to catastrophic losses by the opposition coalition in governors races later that year. In 2013,
Capriles lost again to Maduro, albeit in a tighter race. These losses created new divisions among the
opposition and combined with Venezuelas economic downturn and the long wait until Maduros term
expires in 2019 sparked Lpez and his student allies to take to the streets in February of last year, where
they clamored for Libertad! and Democracia! They also began to call for the salida, or exit, of
Maduro, a cry that was used widely against Chvez in 2002.
***
Democracy is at the heart of the new, more radical movements claim to legitimacy. And central to that
claim is the ability of their charismatic leader to distance himself from Venezuelas brief 2002 coup
attempt, which remains an open political wound.
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In mid-April 2002, in the midst of an opposition-led general strike against PDVSA and mass protests
against (and in support of) President Hugo Chvez, a group of military and business leaders took Chvez
into custody and appointed an interim president, Pedro Carmona, then-president of Venezuelas
Federation of Chambers of Commerce. The key document in which the plotters announced their new
government was signed at Miraflores, the presidential palace, on April 12, 2002, the day Chvez was
arrested and Carmona assumed power. Known as the Carmona Decree, the document dissolved the
National Assembly and the Supreme Court, effectively nullifying the countrys 1999 constitution. The fate
of the coup attempt hinged on the events that unfolded over the surrounding days, as the opposition
movement mounted a general strike, mass protests, and a media campaign to bolster the legitimacy of the
Carmona government at home and abroad. While the attempt was denounced by governments across the
globe, former U.S. President George W. Bushs administration declined to do so, putting wind in
Carmonas sails. For days, military leaders had been pressuring Chvez to willingly step down, and coup
leaders then claimed, falsely, that he had done so. Meanwhile, pro-Chvez forces organized mass
demonstrations of their own; riding that wave, pro-Chvez military officers threatened to remove
Carmona, at which point he resigned, and Chvez was airlifted back to the presidential palace.
The attempted coup remains very unpopular in Venezuela, in no small part because of Carmonas decision
to throw out the constitution, a document that just three years earlier had been approved by an
overwhelming majority of Venezuelans, including many opposition sympathizers. A September 2003 poll
by Datanlisis, one of Venezuelas most prominent polling firms, found that more than 90 percent of
respondents preferred that the countrys political crisis be resolved by legal, democratic, and peaceful
means. The unpopularity of the coup was further confirmed by Chvezs resounding victory in a 2004
recall election. And those two days in 2002 remain a delicate subject among the opposition, according to
Datanlisiss president, Luis Vicente Len. They did something theyve tried to forget, he said, and they
want to keep it that way.
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Lpez and his allies on the radical flank of the opposition have long tried to distance themselves from its
memory. Over the years, Lpez has emphasized that he did not sign Carmonas decree no evidence
indicates that he did and that he had no role in organizing the coup attempt. At no point was Lpez
ever a proponent of the coup, nor was he allied with the business leaders who led it, the white paper by
his attorneys reads. The paper was released on July 21, 2014, at a National Press Club press conference that
featured an emotional appeal by Tintori for solidarity and for her husbands release from jail. It breaks
my heart, she told the gathering of journalists and supporters, having to explain to my daughter after
every visit why her daddy cant come home.
But news reports, parliamentary records, U.S. government documents, video recordings, and interviews
show that Lpez was not quite as remote from the coup attempt and its plotters as he and his
representatives claim. Coup leaders and Carmona signatories included figures who were at the time, or are
now, members of Lpezs inner circle. Harvard-educated Leopoldo Martnez, for several years an
opposition leader in parliament, led Primero Justicia with Lpez; he was designated finance minister of
the short-lived Carmona government. Maria Corina Machado, Lpezs closest ally, who joined him in
calling for last Februarys protests, was a signatory; as was Manuel Rosales, a former leader of Un Nuevo
Tiempo, a party that Lpez joined and helped build in 2007 (and was expelled from in 2009). Also among
the roughly 400 business, military, media, and political figures to sign the decree during a raucous
ceremony in April 2002 at Miraflores while Chvez was being held, not far away, at a military
installation was Leopoldo Lpez Gil, Lpezs father.
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Last May, at the rally for political prisoners in Caracas, I approached Lpez Sr. to ask about his decision to
sign. I didnt, none of us who were there, signed any decree, he said. What they passed around was an
attendance sheet that later was misrepresented. How were we going to sign something we hadnt even
seen? But video of the Carmona signing on April 12, which only came to light in recent years, speaks to a
different reality: A crowded room of men in suits cheer as the parts of the decree dissolving all branches of
government are read to thundering applause by Daniel Romero, Carmonas attorney general designate.
The video also shows Carmona being sworn in as president, and Romero inviting the attendees to sign the
decree that was just read, in support of the process.
At the time of the coup attempt, the younger Lpez, then 30, was mayor of Chacao, a Caracas subdivision.
He supported both the general strike of April 9-10 and the massive opposition march on April 11 that
immediately preceded Chvezs removal. Both events were pivotal to the coups brief success, and Lpez
and Primero Justicia offered its leaders both legitimacy and a crucial base of popular support.
At parliamentary hearings on the coup, convened in June of that year, video from a broadcast of 24 Horas,
a news show on Venevision, was shown, in which the younger Lpez seems to be celebrating Chvezs
removal. (Venevision said that it could not locate any footage from 2002.) That day, for me, from the
beginning was a day of not turning back, he says, according to the official parliamentary transcript. That
was a day where we said, here is where the mask of the dictatorship fell, and we bet it all. (A member of
Lpezs legal team, asked to respond to these lines, said by email, There is nothing in what Leopoldo said
that indicates his support for a coup. He never called for the removal or overthrow of President Chavez.
He added, And you definitely cannot rely on what the Government of Venezuela has said he said.)
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Other contemporaneous video evidence seems to indicate enormous enthusiasm by Lpez for Chvezs
ouster. In one news broadcast of the pivotal PDVSA protest rally in Caracas on April 9, 2002, a baseballcapped Lpez steps onto the stage to lead the crowd of tens of thousands in a chorus of Not one step
backwards! At the top of his voice, he yells: Well be here all night and tomorrow all day until the
president leaves! (The protests and march, said Lpezs attorney, were not an attempted coup they
only were transformed into that later, and not by him.) In a video communiqu from Primero Justicia
released as the coup was unfolding on April 11, Lpez and other party leaders flank their spokesperson,
opposition parliament member Julio Borges, who says he and other MPs are ready to resign their positions
and demand that Supreme Court, the president, and his cabinet resign their posts as well, a tactic to
legitimize the dissolution of the Chvez government. Lpez repeatedly uses the same word, renuncia, or
resignation, as well as salida, the favored terms of the coup leaders, during an April 11 interview on
Venevisions popular Napoleon Bravo morning talk show. According to available video excerpts from that
interview, Lpez also briefly describes what a transition government might look like and proposes only
two ways out of the political crisis: a coup or the dissolution of the government. What are the possibilities
we have in Venezuela? he asks rhetorically. Either we will have a coup, quick and dry, or another kind, or
the proposal were making [for the Chvez government to step down]. Theres no other way to get past the
deadlock being played out here in Venezuela. Of course, Chvez never did resign. He was arrested
instead.
In his book chronicling the events of April 2002, My Testimony Before History, Carmona indicates that the
April 11 march was originally headed to PDVSA headquarters but was rerouted to the presidential palace,
where pro-Chvez protesters had already gathered. When the two sides met near the palace, the conflict
turned deadly, with 19 protesters from both sides shot and killed. Carmona writes that he consulted
with Lpez and that the protests fatal route change was authorized by Mayor Leopoldo Lpez.
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Yet a month and a half after that violent confrontation, during testimony before the parliamentary
commission investigating the overthrow attempt, Lpez insisted that at no moment did we have any
contact with spokespeople of the transition government the decisions we made were totally and
absolutely autonomous.
Lpezs most controversial episode remains the April 12 arrest and detention of then-Interior Minister
Ramn Rodrguez Chacn. Lpez, mayor of Chacao at the time, and Capriles, then-mayor of Baruta
(another Caracas municipality), saying they had been tipped off by neighbors, showed up at a house where
Chacn was staying, unguarded, to personally charge him with responsibility for the 19 shooting deaths
that had taken place the previous day. As opposition supporters and media gathered outside the house in
Baruta, the two mayors took him into custody. (The deaths remain unresolved; both sides maintain the
other was responsible.) Lpez told reporters at the time that he and Capriles had obtained a search warrant
of the house and had coordinated with the Baruta police on Chacns arrest. Moments after Chacn was
taken away, news video captures Lpez telling a reporter that President Carmona knows of the arrest,
another possible indication of coordination with the coups leader, something that Lpez has denied in
general terms many times since. (After Chvez was returned to power, Capriles and Lpez were indicted
for illegal detention in conjunction with the incident, but they were later pardoned as part of a farreaching and controversial amnesty. Questioned on a pro-government talk show in 2012, Lpez conceded
that the arrest had been an error.)
In March 2014, I sat down with Chacn, now governor of the state of Gurico, to discuss that days events.
I had recently met with Carmona in his home, trying to negotiate with him to figure out how to reach an
agreement to bring peace to the country, he said. The arrest, just a week later, took him by surprise.
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Leopoldo Lpez began rallying the neighbors with his megaphone, saying I was a murderer, that I was
responsible for the killings, said Chacn. He was gathering them in, telling them I would be brought to
justice for the murders of the past few days. A news clip of the incident shows Chacn being beaten by the
crowd. But according to the transcript of those June 2002 parliamentary hearings about the coup, other
news video from that day quotes Lpez claiming that the Chvez government is in hiding, but here,
justice will be imposed, because what Venezuela is calling for right now is justice.
Chacn continued, They said they were going to detain me and that they were going to do it anyway
because this is a coup dtat, and Chvez had resigned. I told them, No. Chvez did not resign.
***
Lpez has never been formally charged with plotting a coup. But the fact that he played some role in the
contentious events of 2002 is widely known in his home country and has likely colored how many
Venezuelans view his role in the protests that erupted in Caracas last February. Last March, with the
guarimbas, or street barricades, still in place in the citys elite opposition strongholds, I spoke with
Hermann Escarr, a constitutional attorney and former opposition activist, who was one of the principal
architects of the 1999 Venezuelan constitution. Though Escarr is reviled by some Chavistas for his
opposition to President Chvez and his supporters over their plan in 2009 to extend the presidents term
indefinitely, Escarr calls the events of 2002 a rupture of the constitutional order.
Escarr said he respects Lpez personally but does not share what he calls Lpezs disregard for the
constitution. He sat next to Lpez at an opposition gathering in February 2004, an event captured on
videotape, as the young politician declared, We should feel proud of April 11, when we toppled Chvez
with a march! The man resigned on the 11th, he put his tail between his legs and he left a striking
assertion, nearly two years after the coup, when it was no longer plausible to claim that Chvez had ever
resigned.
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I asked him to reflect on the protests that were then still roiling the city and on the governments
allegations that Lpez was responsible for some of the violence. Escarr wouldnt comment on the current
charges against Lpez, saying he wasnt familiar enough with the details of the case, and he defended the
oppositions right to peaceful protest. But he expressed grave concern about the recent opposition protests
that had turned lawless and violent. In the United States, whats happening now in Venezuela would not
have happened and wont happen. No one would think to burn cars or tires, set fire to a street leading up
to the White House, because the punishment would be truly serious, Escarr said. Here, there are
barricades called guarimbas where theyve found armaments for war, where theyve found Molotov
cocktails.
Over the past year, a series of fresh government allegations have begun to take the shine off 2014s wave of
protests. It began with a thinly sourced government report, issued in May of last year. Called Coup dtat
and Assassination Plan Unveiled in Venezuela, the report places the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, Kevin
Whitaker, and two close Lpez allies Mara Corina Machado, now leader of the Vente Venezuela party,
and Lpezs old friend and mentor from Harvard, Pedro Burelli as part of a conspiracy to annihilate
Maduro and overthrow the government. The plot, according to then-Justice Minister Miguel Rodrguez
Torres, included political, business, and military leaders, who, he claimed, were the true forces behind the
February 2014 street protests. Burelli, who currently lives in McLean, Virginia, is now considered a fugitive
from justice by Venezuelan authorities.
To back its claims, the government released emails between the alleged plotters, as well as recorded
conversations involving Burelli. Burelli denies all charges and hired forensic investigators who say that
the emails were forged and that Google has no record of some of them having been sent. A U.S. State
Department spokesperson called the allegations against Whitaker false accusations in a long line of
baseless allegations against U.S. diplomats by the Venezuelan government. Machado has dismissed the
charges as a fantasy.
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But Burelli has not denied the authenticity of the voice recordings of his conversations released by two
local elected officials,who say they took place between Feb. 20 and March 14 of last year, in the middle of
the wave of protests that launched Lpez onto the international stage.
Whats happened? I keep seeing lots of protests, lots of people in the streets. Whats happening inside
your colectivo? Burelli asks in one conversation with an unidentified military officer, using a term often
used to refer to a political cell. (Burelli says the officer is retired and wont name him.) I think the world is
extremely activated, Burelli tells the officer in a voicemail. All thats missing is for this part of the
military to make the decisions it needs to make.
I think that theres another Leopoldo Lpez in the armed forces who understands that the time has come
to clean the scum of Chavismo, the scum of complicity, the scum of corruption, Burelli continues. Any
group that stands up and says this now will generate a crisis, I guarantee it. But it must be linked to the
struggle of the people, to Leos struggle and in solidarity with Leo. This is the moment. Theres no risk if
its done right.
When I asked Burelli about the recordings, he said, Those are my recordings, but those recordings do not
prove anything. People whove read the whole thing say this is a conversation one could have with
anybody.
By September 2014, Lorent Saleh, a founder of JAVU, one of the student groups most closely identified
with last years protests, was also facing charges. Venezuelas Ministry of Justice arrested Saleh, accusing
him of terrorism, and released videos in which Saleh can be seen talking about bombing discos and liquor
stores, burning buildings, and bringing in snipers to kill grassroots leaders. Though barely reported in the
U.S. media, last years protests were marked by several such incidents, including the firebombing of
government ministries, child care centers, city buses, and television stations and the fatal shootings of
security forces and Chavista sympathizers.
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Finally, in February of this year, Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma, who was, along with Lpez and
Machado, one of the three leading figures behind the previous Februarys upheavals, was arrested on
charges of sedition and conspiracy as part of yet another alleged coup attempt. Both Saleh and Ledezma
deny all of the charges; the latters attorney said the charges against Ledezma are based on falsifications
[and] evidence tampering. (The two figures are linked by Saleh, who says, in one of the videos, Ledezma
is key. The politician who has most supported the resistance has always been Ledezma.)
The allegations against Saleh and Ledezma rattled the opposition. Both its moderate and radical wings
closed ranks in defending Ledezma, whose arrest drew international attention and renewed calls for
Lpezs release. But Salehs case was more divisive, with some of Lpezs closest allies in Voluntad Popular
expressing concerns about the violation of [Salehs] human rights and others rapidly distancing
themselves, saying Saleh owes the country an explanation. (When asked about Lpezs links to Burelli,
Saleh, and Ledezma, the Lpez attorney said, There is every reason to have serious questions about the
authenticity of these claims.)
The arrest of Ledezma took place just a week after he, Lpez, and Machado had joined forces to release
on the anniversary of last years upheavals a Call on Venezuelans for a National Accord for the
Transition. It calls for a peaceful transition of the Maduro government, which, the document says, is in
its terminal phase.
President Maduro responded by releasing, on March 4, what he claims is another opposition document;
this one lays out a detailed 100-day transition plan whose blueprint contains echoes of 2002. He claimed,
obliquely, that the document had been authored by the violent ones who are in prison.
***
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Conspiracy and counter-conspiracy may be a constant in Venezuela today, but these left-right political
dramas have been overshadowed by Venezuelas mounting economic crisis and its pressure cooker effects
on Venezuelan politics. On March 9, the Obama administration piled on, declaring the situation in
Venezuela an extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. (The
administration has since backed away from this statement.)
These winds would seem to favor the Venezuelan opposition. Luis Vicente Len, the Datanlisis pollster,
told me that recent polls show that the figure paying the biggest political price for the current crisis is
Maduro, whose popularity dropped in January to 23 percent, his lowest ever, while, as of March, approval
of Lpez and Capriles had each risen to 40 percent. (Maduros approval rebounded to 28 percent in
March.) The governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela remains the best organized, and its support
remains strong in Venezuelas poor communities, a segment that will be key in the upcoming
parliamentary elections, scheduled for later this year. But Maduros personal unpopularity has eroded the
partys base, which now claims the loyalty of only 17 percent of the electorate (from a high of 42 percent
under Chvez), the same as the combined total of those who identify with one of Venezuelas many
opposition parties.
The figure who gained the most from last years upheavals, says Len, is, without a doubt, Leopoldo
Lpez.Jail has boosted Lpezs public image, Len says, with some seeing a valiant martyr who was
unjustly imprisoned, without a doubt unjustly and without a doubt a political prisoner who generates
singular solidarity.
His rising star, however, may also contribute to a further fracturing of the opposition, Len says, as
Lpez now shares the stage and popular support on an equal level with Capriles. Opposition standardbearer Capriles finds himself struggling to keep his more moderate opposition coalition, the MUD, from
fracturing further in the face of the growing influence of Lpez and his radical flank.
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Just this past May, these schisms were on full display, following a hunger strike by Lpez and his call for a
mass protest. A year and three months on from our call [to protest], the situation is worse than last year,
said Lpez on May 23 in a video recording released from Ramo Verde prison. Brother and sister
Venezuelans, we want to call on you for a protest, a resounding protest, massive, pacific, without any kind
[of] violence, on the streets of Venezuela this Saturday. The hunger strike, joined by a handful of student
supporters, represents the suffering of all Venezuelans, declared Lpezs wife, Lilian. She was joined by
Ledezmas wife for the Caracas protest on May 30, which attracted an estimated 3,000 followers a sliver
of the mass actions last year.
The MUD coalition issued a statement declaring it would not participate (though Capriles tweeted that he
would personally attend), even taking a jab at what they called Lpezs unilateral approach: The best
decisions are those that are arrived at together, because unity has no substitute, the release stated.
What becomes of the Venezuelan opposition may not be determined by the outcome of Lpezs legal case,
which appears to have no end in sight. Much will hinge on Leopoldo Lpezs credibility: whether the court
of national opinion will continue to see Lpez and his flank of the opposition as a serious new voice for
democratic change or as a movement marked by unpopular strains of radicalism.
This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, with support
from the Puffin Foundation.
Image credit: CRISTIAN HERNANDEZ/AFP/Getty Images
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Down
Angola's corrupt leaders keep trying to silence Rafael Marques. So far, without success.
BY DANIEL METCALFE
JUNE 24, 2015 - 2:53 PM
19/28
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The defamation trial of Angolan journalist Rafael Marques on March 23 did not go well. As crowds of his
supporters shrieked Criminals, murderers! and Free Rafael, the 200-odd police officers attached to the
courthouse struggled to impose authority. When Marques emerged coolly from the building, even some of
the officers couldnt resist asking for an autograph. Unsurprisingly, when the court reconvened a month
later, it was behind closed doors.
At issue were allegations in Marques book, Diamantes de Sangue: Corrupo e Tortura em Angola (Blood
Diamonds: Corruption and Torture in Angola), published in Lisbon in 2011. It details a litany of human
rights abuses and killings perpetrated in diamond mines owned by seven high-ranking generals, including
General Manuel Hlder Vieira Dias Jnior, head of the military wing of the presidency and, by popular
reckoning, the second-most-powerful figure in the country. Now these generals, embarrassed by Marques
painstaking documentation of their crimes, were demanding damages to the tune of $1.2 million.
Rafael Marques de Morais is the single most important voice in Angolan independent journalism, and his
latest sensational trial was a test case for how far the regime was willing to go to defend its prestige.
Conscious of the worlds gaze, the government has lately borne his tireless attacks with gritted teeth. A
previous jail sentence in 1999 for criticizing the president had turned Marques into a household name.
Within a few more years he had become a popular hero.
Underlying all of Marques work is a brutal honesty about whats happening in Angola, especially the
corruption and crony capitalism that continues to dog this country. The articles on his crusading website,
Maka Angola, (in Kimbundu, Maka means a delicate problem) have found a wide local and international
following. They have not only tarnished the reputations of the Angolan elite, but have also changed what
the public expects of its democratically elected leaders. Marques has made meals of the military top brass,
the political establishment, unscrupulous foreign investors, the business oligarchy and the presidential
family, leaving whole swathes of the upper sets in anxious expectation of the next set of revelations. But
Marques is no haranguer. His investigations stand out for their meticulous research and his tight grasp of
Angolas statute books, to which many members of Angolas elite appear to be absolutely indifferent.
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After publishing his book in 2011, Marques went further and launched criminal complaints against the
seven generals and two affiliated companies for crimes against humanity in the Lunda region. The
generals reciprocated in 2012 with defamation lawsuits against both him and his Lisbon publisher, Tintada-China.
I interviewed Marques in a flat in south London on the same day he was announced joint winner of the
prestigious Index on Censorship award. It was less than a week before his first court appearance. Dressed
in a baggy top and trainers, and apparently unruffled by either the award or the trial of his life, Marques
sipped tea and spoke about his career with precise and moderated diction. Occasionally he would let out a
winning laugh as he recalled the exploits of his early career, but he restored his poise with a quiet
intensity.
Marques was born into poverty in 1971 in Malanje and grew up in Angolas much larger capital, Luanda.
Brought up by his mother, a market vendor, he learned about journalism by poring over the daily
newspaper she brought home from work. With the end of communism in 1991, the state newspaper Jornal
de Angola opened its doors to new recruits. It was a narrow window of opportunity, not repeated since,
and Marques was taken on as a journalist on the political affairs desk.
As Marques explained, his headstrong independence would soon get him into trouble. In the first of many
demotions, Marques was transferred to the Luanda city desk. He concentrated on aspects of the city that
the press purposefully ignored, such as the gathering piles of garbage and the infamous potholes.
Demoted again, Marques was assigned the mundane task of comparing food prices in the citys shops. He
visited Roque Santeiro, a vast, sprawling market that was then the biggest in Africa, and wrote of the
dazzling array of weaponry on offer and the illicit trade in donated food enjoyed by government officials.
This was the final straw. His supervisors banned him from writing altogether and, out of nowhere, he
received an order to report to a military unit to train for battle. Powerful figures linked to the newspaper
were clearly trying to get him out of the way.
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The unit he joined turned out to be a high-risk commando unit that trained with live grenades, routinely
resulting in a 30 percent mortality rate. The beleaguered trainees often had to make do with half-rations,
or no rations at all. The reason soon became clear: There was a scam going on, said Marques. Food
trucks arrived, and were then depleted sold on by the commander and then his deputy and so on down
the food chain, until there was hardly any food for the soldiers. The half-starved conscripts were on the
verge of mutiny. The skittish officers, by now fully aware of the young journalists articles and his
penchant for causing trouble, suspected that Marques was responsible. Preferring to rid themselves of the
journalist than risk turning him into a commando, they ordered him home. Not without my
demobilization papers, insisted Marques, to which they reluctantly assented, and he made it to Luanda
unscathed.
Marques spell with the commando recruits was a brief episode in one of Africas longest wars. Its roots lay
in an earlier guerrilla conflict against Portuguese colonial rule that began in 1961 and ended abruptly with
the fall of Portugals Salazar dictatorship in 1974. Angola gained its independence, which was soon
contested among three factions. The Marxist MPLA took power in the capital, Luanda, in 1975, with the
heavy backing of its Eastern Bloc advisors and Cuban troops. Once its smaller rival, the FNLA, was out of
the way, the Marxist government was soon was fighting a full-scale war with its main challenger, the anticommunist UNITA, lavishly funded and equipped by the United States and South Africa, and led by its
charismatic though eventually unhinged leader, Jonas Savimbi.
The war went through many phases: the MPLA transitioned from communism to democracy, UNITA
descended into tyranny, and the country rumbled through several shaky United Nations brokered ceasefires. While the MPLA had near limitless oil waiting to be tapped offshore, UNITA ruthlessly exploited the
diamond fields in the Lunda provinces, putting garimpeiros (diamond panners) to work in abhorrent
conditions. As the 1990s wore on, and international opprobrium gained traction, UNITA found it harder to
smuggle diamonds onto the international market. The stalemate was broken for good when government
troops re-launched the war in 1998 and within a couple of years had overrun the main diamond areas,
depriving UNITA of its main source of funding.
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The senseless grind of the war motivated Marques to write an article for the private newspaper Folha 8
called Cannon Fodder, a passionate piece about how Angolan mothers were treated as breeding
machines for the war effort. What to me was most incredible was that the government never cared to set
up a system to inform these mothers of these families when their beloved sons died. It wasnt lack of
capacity, it was neglect sheer disregard for life. He was interrogated and put on a black list: his articles
were gaining notoriety, and not just within Angola. On a trip to South Africa in 1998, the magnate and
philanthropist George Soros asked Marques to set up the Open Society Initiative in Luanda, a privatelyfunded NGO tasked with championing democratic ideals, as a part of the Soros Foundation. This way
Marques was able to reenter the public discourse without relying on state-sponsored media. It proved an
unlikely success: the debates the organization aired on the Catholic station Rdio Ecclsia provided a
forum where legislators, religious leaders and administration officials could talk things out in a way that
was impossible in parliament.
At the turn of the new century, the narrow window of freer debate was closing and the government
stepped up the use of its oil wealth to dominate the media, bribing the countrys best journalists with
money and houses. To this day this the creation of a hub of mediocrity, as Marques puts it has been
the most effective means to destroy freedom of expression Angola. Anyone who stands out as being
morally strong, intellectually strong, that has a voice, is co-opted or destroyed, he said. This is creating a
vacuum in society where you dont have singers who are inspiring, you dont have artists who are
inspiring, you dont have academics who are inspiring. You never hear an Angolan doctor talking about
the need to improve the health sector because that would be the end of him.
The state finally tired of Marques writings. In 1999, after he published an article called The Lipstick of
Dictatorship, in which he described president Jos Eduardo dos Santos as a dictator, Marques was
charged with defamation and served 43 days in prison, 11 of them in solitary confinement.
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He was held in a small cell which had been built by the Stasi, the East German secret police, and designed
sothat he could neither lean nor stand upright. The concrete bed swarmed with cockroaches.
Nevertheless, Marques was able to carry on his work. The leading prisoner recognized him from his
broadcasts on Rdio Ecclsia, and allowed a stream of prisoners into his cell. Provided with pen and paper,
Marques wrote their testimonies and smuggled the notes out again.
With the killing of Savimbi in 2002 and the subsequent surrender of UNITA, the government finally
secured victory (leaving aside a smoldering rebellion in the northern exclave of Cabinda). The country was
in ruins, a million were dead, and the land was sown with perhaps ten million landmines. The
governments immediate task was to rebuild a country that had ceased to function. Fortunately, it had oil,
sales of which accounted for over 90 percent of exports. As a result, in the mid-2000s, Angola enjoyed
staggering economic growth averaging 16 percent a year. Luanda thronged with oil and infrastructure
companies jockeying for lucrative contracts. New developments, office blocks, port facilities and hotels
transformed the skyline, and Chinese-built roads began to crisscross the country. But there was little
trickle-down. The post-war windfall has been confined to a tiny percentage of the population, leaving the
vast majority to perform the miracle of living on about $2 a day. Despite some improvements, thirteen
years after the wars end, the country is still built on patronage and clientelism, there are shockingly high
levels of child mortality, and the quality of education and public health is pitiful.
As the conflict ended, senior army officers joined the other members of the ruling party, gliding
comfortably from the barrack room to the boardroom, their positions affording them easy access to
lucrative shares in telecommunication, construction, and diamond mining companies, whose operations
they generally ignored: management was always left to others. They migrated seasonally to beach houses
in Cascais, Miami and Rio de Janeiro, employed discreet English nannies, and generally tried to keep out
of the public eye.
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Marques 2015 trial changed all that. For the first time, images appeared of the well-fed generals sitting in
court alongside the witnesses: thin, wizened Lunda tribespeople, in traditional outfits and beaded
headdresses, the manifest victims of a rotten system who had been harassed throughout the whole legal
process. One witness, Alida Moises da Rosa, was interrogated by police about why she insisted on going to
court. You killed my two sons, she replied. Now you can kill me too.
Had Marques been an average blogger or troublemaker, the authorities would likely have threatened him
into silence, or bought him up, as they have with countless other radio journalists, poets, musicians and
commentators. But Marques would not be bribed and he was not afraid of jail. Years ago they had tried to
isolate him by steering international organizations to other critics of the regime (naturally, of their
choice). But by the 2010s he was such a renowned figure that no boilerplate process could possibly deal
with him. Put him in jail and the world would cry for his release. Dispose of him, and the government
would sink in the eyes of the world a prospect that, at a time of scant respectability, it cannot abide.
Keeping him at large risked further embarrassment.
These are difficult times for the MPLA. President dos Santos, now in his 37th year of rule, must finally
account for the last decade. Blaming slow progress on war damage is now wearing thin. There is acute
pressure to deliver for the 2017 elections, and unexpectedly low oil prices have massively curtailed his
ability to do so without a painful restructuring of the patronage and corruption that underlies the system.
And pressure is building. In 2011 the unthinkable started to happen: Angolans, long silenced by decades of
war and an unchallengeable state power, went onto the streets to voice their anger: youths too young to
have participated in war and veterans tired of waiting for late pension payments. The demonstrators were
quickly quashed by state security, but they would soon appear again, sometimes only very few at a time.
Led by musicians, activists, lawyers and an increasingly vocal political opposition, these crowds have
since reappeared persistently, fearlessly flaunting their disapproval of a government that is unsure what
to do with them.
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28/7/2015
But Rafael Marques is their biggest irritant of all. Operating out of his house in Luanda, he has grown used
to heavy surveillance, threats, and periodic house arrests. As a precaution against poisoning, he must take
his own food with him if he goes out of the house.
They bug my house, he said. They once recruited my cleaner. But I enjoy being in isolation because I
have more time to write and more time to investigate them because Im not socializing. So actually they
create the conditions for me to do my work well. I can go for two weeks without going to my gate.
Marques should count himself lucky the regime isnt always so lenient to its challengers. One need only
think of the tragic fate of two young protesters, Antnio Alves Kamulingue and Isaas Sebastio Cassule,
who disappeared without a trace in 2012. It later emerged that the men had been abducted, tortured, and
murdered by the security services. Cassule was thrown to the crocodiles in the Bengo river.
Marques defamation trial was concluded on May 28 following a series of legal irregularities not least
that the allegations in Diamantes do Sangue were never even addressed by the court. Though the judge
declared that Marques had fabricated the material in the book, all charges were dropped. In what Marques
subsequently described as a trap, the judge made an about-turn: the court proceeded with a different
charge of slanderous denunciation, condemning Marques first to a month, and then to a six-month jail
sentence, suspended for two years. These unexpected turns carried a note of revenge, while offering the
illusion of leniency compared to the sentence Marques could have received. In reality, the sentence is
nothing more than an attempt to keep him quiet, at least for a while. Marques is making efforts to appeal,
so far without success.
[The sentence] was designed to stop him writing, said one columnist for a Luanda weekly. But if the
trial was meant to make the generals look good, they have failed. Every Angolan who has access to the
internet has downloaded the book. Everyone can see that MPLA is supporting the interests of these
generals against the people.
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28/7/2015
The states victory may have left Marques temporarily defanged. But the irregularities of the trial, the
craven behavior of the prosecution, and public outrage on behalf of the victims leave nobody in any doubt
as to the real victor. Marques has spent over twenty years confronting the state, so it would be premature
to assume that he has given up. The question now is who will make the next move.
Daniel Metcalfe is the author of Blue Dahlia, Black Gold: A Journey Into Angola.
Photo credit:REUTERS/Herculano Coroado
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The Making of Leopoldo Lpez

JULY 27, 2015

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