28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 1/28The Making of Leopoldo LpezAcl oserl ookatthedemocrati cbonafi desoftherockstarofVenezuel a sopposi ti on.JULY27, 2015 BYROBERTOLOVATOCARACAS In the nearly year and a half since street protests rocked Caracas, the U.S. press has been kindto Leopoldo Lpez, the 44-year-old jailed leader of Venezuelas radical opposition. He has been painted asa combination of Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, and his distant grand uncle, Simn Bolvar, for his magneticbrand of in-your-face politics. Newsweek wrote of his twinklingchocolate-colored eyes and highcheekbones and called Lpez a revolutionary who has it all. The New York Times published a photo ofhim, jaw out, fist in the air, in front of a crowd of screaming protesters and gave him a platform on its op-ed page. In New York, when the United Nations met last September, protestors rallied to show support forLpez, and President Barack Obama listed him among a group of political prisoners from repressivecountries 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 toCher 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 oncharges of arson, public incitement, and conspiracy related to the first big anti-government protest thatyear, 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 politicallymotivated, could carry a prison sentence of 10 years. Outside the courtroom, the public debate continuesto swirl between those who believe Lpez is a freedom fighter facing trumped-up charges and those whobelieve he is the violent fascista the government of President Nicols Maduro claims.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 2/28Compared 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 withoutfanfare. The judge has been far from friendly to Lpezs defense, rejecting all but one of the 65 witnesseshis attorneys sought to call, while admitting 108 witnesses for the prosecution. This isnt a trial, Lpezwrote 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 thecourthouse, led by Lilian Tintori, Lpezs wife. Other key opposition leaders have stayed away, thoughthey routinely voice support for Lpezs release. A recent campaign by his party, Voluntad Popular, toconvene an assembly to rewrite the constitution and reorganize the government attracted criticism, withthe leader of a rival opposition party calling for responsibility and maturity and one opposition governorcalling for an end to anarchy or guarimbas, the street barricades that were the preferred tactic of Lpezsyouthful followers.* * *During visits to Venezuela last year, it was clear that Lpez remained a rock star among young oppositionactivists, 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 studentgroups behind the February protests, told me. Hes also an athlete, added Aguirre, who I met at a May 7opposition forum called Thinking Differently Is Not a Crime that was hosted at El Nacional, one of thecountrys largest newspapers. Athletes are morally clean, unblemished, [and] more mentally sharp thanother people. He also talked about Lpez being a good family man. Leopoldo, he said, is an examplefor youth.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 3/28Later 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 onceserved as mayor and which has been a center of anti-government opposition. It also happens to be one ofthe wealthiest localities in all of Venezuela. Vibrant in a bright orange windbreaker, with her flawlesssmile and long blonde hair, Tintoris strengths as standard-bearer for her jailed husbands message wereon full display.They want to imprison our dream! she shouted, posed next to one of the life-sized cardboard figures ofher husband that had become ubiquitous in the opposition strongholds of wealthy eastern Caracas. Shepraised her husbands record as mayor, mentioning a Chacao health clinic where doctors treat you withlove, 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 ofall!The days events offered a glimpse of the media-powered populism that has helped Lpez and his politicalparty gain traction where Venezuelas established opposition, led by a coalition called the MUD, orDemocratic Unity Roundtable, has failed. The opposition lost big in 18 of the 19 national and regionalelections and referenda held since former President Hugo Chvez was first elected in 1998. Though rarelynoted in the U.S. media, the deep-seated rifts between the MUD and its leader, Henrique Capriles, and theyounger, more radical flank of the Venezuelan opposition led by Lpez are reported on with theexcitement of a soap opera in Venezuelan media. For the opposition parties, Lopez draws ire second onlyto 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 lotbetter looking. In a section of the same U.S. embassy cable titled The Lopez Problem, U.S. StateDepartment officials described Lpez as a divisive figure within the opposition who is often describedas 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 succeededin projecting himself onto the international stage like Lpez has.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 4/28But the international embrace of Lpez has depended heavily on his image as a stalwart defender ofdemocracy someone at a safe distance from the highly unpopular coup attempt of April 2002, in whichelements of the military and business leaders ousted President Chvez for 47 hours. A July 2014 whitepaper about his trial authored by two attorneys who have represented him and his family Jared Genserand Jos Antonio Maes asserts that Lpez was not a supporter of the coup and he did not sign the ActConstituting the Government of Democratic Transition and National Unity (Carmona Decree), thedocument that attempted to oust Chvez and dissolve the National Assembly and Supreme Court norwas he allied with the business leaders who led it. Lpez himself often points to his loyalty to theconstitution, as in the New York Times op-ed which appeared in March 2014, in which he wrote, A changein 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 ofVenezuelan press accounts, videotaped events, and U.S. government documents paint a more complexpicture about these claims.* * *Leopoldo Lpez was born in 1971 to one of Venezuelas most elite families, a direct descendent of both19th-century revolutionary leader Simn Bolivar and Venezuelas first president, Cristbal Mendoza. Hismother, Antonieta Mendoza de Lpez, is a top executive at the Cisneros Group, a global mediaconglomerate. His father, Leopoldo Lpez Gil, is a restaurateur and businessman who sits on the editorialboard of El Nacional.I belong to one percent of the privileged people, Lpez said as a teenager, long before the Occupymovement popularized the term, during an interview with a student newspaper at the Hun School ofPrinceton, an elite private boarding school in New Jersey. It was at Hun, whose alumni roster includesSaudi princes, the child of a U.S. president, and the child of a Fortune 500 CEO, that Lpez said heexperienced an awakening of the responsibility I have towards the people of my country.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 5/28Lpez went on from Hun to Kenyon College, a liberal arts college in Ohio, where he developedrelationships that would serve him to this day. It was a former classmate and political consultant, RobGluck, who led the effort to set up Friends of a Free Venezuela, the media-centered advocacy group behinda high-profile U.S. campaign for Lpezs release. As a testament to the powerful impact [Lpez] has hadon 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 governmentwere 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 groupthat has run a vibrant PR and social media campaign on Lpezs behalf. Among the Kenyon classmateshelping to power Free Leopoldo in the United States is Republican Party operative Leonardo Alcivar, whoran communications strategies for the Romney campaign and the 2004 Republican National Conventionand now works at a communications firm that advises companies on their online strategy. No otherelement of the Venezuelan opposition has anything resembling the U.S. media operation that Lpez hasthrough Free Leopoldo.Gluck is himself also a former Republican strategist who worked on Lamar Alexanders presidentialcampaign and the successful campaign to recall California Governor Gray Davis, which resulted in theelection of Arnold Schwarzenegger. He is currently a managing partner at High Lantern Group, aPasadena-based communications strategy firm. He said Lpez has always been progressive, and ifmeasured on the U.S. political spectrum, hed be left of center. Gluck runs Friends of a Free Venezuelapro bono personal time, passion, and connections drive the work, he said but his communicationsfirm has also been retained by Lpezs family, he said, to get the message out about [Lpezs] situation.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 6/28After Kenyon, Lpez went to Harvards John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he met anotherinfluential figure who would become a key supporter Venezuelan national Pedro Burelli, a former JPMorgan executive and pre-Chvez-era member of the board of directors of PDVSA, Venezuelas nationalpetroleum firm, which controls the worlds largest crude reserves. The two first met, Burelli said, during arecruiting trip at Harvard while Burelli was still at JP Morgan. Someone called my attention to this youngVenezuelan who was at the Kennedy School where I had graduated many years before, said Burelli, whois now a corporate consultant with B+V Advisors, and I connected him. Lpez went to work at PDVSA in1996 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 theopposition leader through his many contentious political transitions, from Lpezs time at PDVSA to themost recent clashes with the Maduro government. Burelli explained that while he was at PDVSA, Lpezhelped found a group called Primero Justicia which led, in 2000, to the formation of an oppositionparty of the same name. In 1998, a comptroller general investigation found that Lpezs mother hadchanneled $120,000 in corporate donations from PDVSA to Primero Justicia while she and Lpez were atthe firm, in violation of anti-corruption laws. Lpezs attorneys point out that Primero Justicia was anonprofit at the time, not yet a party, and Lpez never stood trial on the charges. But the comptrollergeneral nevertheless barred Lpez from holding office from 2008 until 2014.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 7/28Lpez left Primero Justicia in 2007 over disputes with other party members and then leapt from onepolitical party to another, leading up to his quixotic run for president in 2012 on the ticket of his currentparty, Voluntad Popular. He was also, during these years, playing a pivotal role in Venezuelas risingstudent 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 duringearly demonstrations in his jurisdiction, and he is actively advising them behind-the-scenes; anotherdescribes Lpez as the best channel to the student movement. Some JAVU leaders, including onementioned in the cables, went on to become active in Voluntad Popular, the party that fueled Lpezs riseto national prominence.While Lpez was honing his political skills and building his base, he stayed in the shadow of his formerally 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 theopposition and combined with Venezuelas economic downturn and the long wait until Maduros termexpires in 2019 sparked Lpez and his student allies to take to the streets in February of last year, wherethey clamored for Libertad! and Democracia! They also began to call for the salida, or exit, ofMaduro, 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 thatclaim is the ability of their charismatic leader to distance himself from Venezuelas brief 2002 coupattempt, which remains an open political wound.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 8/28In mid-April 2002, in the midst of an opposition-led general strike against PDVSA and mass protestsagainst (and in support of) President Hugo Chvez, a group of military and business leaders took Chvezinto custody and appointed an interim president, Pedro Carmona, then-president of VenezuelasFederation of Chambers of Commerce. The key document in which the plotters announced their newgovernment was signed at Miraflores, the presidential palace, on April 12, 2002, the day Chvez wasarrested and Carmona assumed power. Known as the Carmona Decree, the document dissolved theNational Assembly and the Supreme Court, effectively nullifying the countrys 1999 constitution. The fateof the coup attempt hinged on the events that unfolded over the surrounding days, as the oppositionmovement mounted a general strike, mass protests, and a media campaign to bolster the legitimacy of theCarmona government at home and abroad. While the attempt was denounced by governments across theglobe, former U.S. President George W. Bushs administration declined to do so, putting wind inCarmonas sails. For days, military leaders had been pressuring Chvez to willingly step down, and coupleaders then claimed, falsely, that he had done so. Meanwhile, pro-Chvez forces organized massdemonstrations of their own; riding that wave, pro-Chvez military officers threatened to removeCarmona, 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 decisionto throw out the constitution, a document that just three years earlier had been approved by anoverwhelming majority of Venezuelans, including many opposition sympathizers. A September 2003 pollby Datanlisis, one of Venezuelas most prominent polling firms, found that more than 90 percent ofrespondents preferred that the countrys political crisis be resolved by legal, democratic, and peacefulmeans. The unpopularity of the coup was further confirmed by Chvezs resounding victory in a 2004recall election. And those two days in 2002 remain a delicate subject among the opposition, according toDatanlisiss president, Luis Vicente Len. They did something theyve tried to forget, he said, and theywant to keep it that way.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 9/28Lpez and his allies on the radical flank of the opposition have long tried to distance themselves from itsmemory. Over the years, Lpez has emphasized that he did not sign Carmonas decree no evidenceindicates that he did and that he had no role in organizing the coup attempt. At no point was Lpezever a proponent of the coup, nor was he allied with the business leaders who led it, the white paper byhis attorneys reads. The paper was released on July 21, 2014, at a National Press Club press conference thatfeatured an emotional appeal by Tintori for solidarity and for her husbands release from jail. It breaksmy heart, she told the gathering of journalists and supporters, having to explain to my daughter afterevery visit why her daddy cant come home.But news reports, parliamentary records, U.S. government documents, video recordings, and interviewsshow that Lpez was not quite as remote from the coup attempt and its plotters as he and hisrepresentatives claim. Coup leaders and Carmona signatories included figures who were at the time, or arenow, members of Lpezs inner circle. Harvard-educated Leopoldo Martnez, for several years anopposition leader in parliament, led Primero Justicia with Lpez; he was designated finance minister ofthe short-lived Carmona government. Maria Corina Machado, Lpezs closest ally, who joined him incalling for last Februarys protests, was a signatory; as was Manuel Rosales, a former leader of Un NuevoTiempo, a party that Lpez joined and helped build in 2007 (and was expelled from in 2009). Also amongthe roughly 400 business, military, media, and political figures to sign the decree during a raucousceremony in April 2002 at Miraflores while Chvez was being held, not far away, at a militaryinstallation was Leopoldo Lpez Gil, Lpezs father.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 10/28Last May, at the rally for political prisoners in Caracas, I approached Lpez Sr. to ask about his decision tosign. I didnt, none of us who were there, signed any decree, he said. What they passed around was anattendance sheet that later was misrepresented. How were we going to sign something we hadnt evenseen? But video of the Carmona signing on April 12, which only came to light in recent years, speaks to adifferent reality: A crowded room of men in suits cheer as the parts of the decree dissolving all branches ofgovernment 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 thedecree 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 thatimmediately preceded Chvezs removal. Both events were pivotal to the coups brief success, and Lpezand 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 Chvezsremoval. (Venevision said that it could not locate any footage from 2002.) That day, for me, from thebeginning was a day of not turning back, he says, according to the official parliamentary transcript. Thatwas a day where we said, here is where the mask of the dictatorship fell, and we bet it all. (A member ofLpezs legal team, asked to respond to these lines, said by email, There is nothing in what Leopoldo saidthat 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.)28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 11/28Other contemporaneous video evidence seems to indicate enormous enthusiasm by Lpez for Chvezsouster. In one news broadcast of the pivotal PDVSA protest rally in Caracas on April 9, 2002, a baseball-capped Lpez steps onto the stage to lead the crowd of tens of thousands in a chorus of Not one stepbackwards! At the top of his voice, he yells: Well be here all night and tomorrow all day until thepresident leaves! (The protests and march, said Lpezs attorney, were not an attempted coup theyonly were transformed into that later, and not by him.) In a video communiqu from Primero Justiciareleased 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 positionsand demand that Supreme Court, the president, and his cabinet resign their posts as well, a tactic tolegitimize the dissolution of the Chvez government. Lpez repeatedly uses the same word, renuncia, orresignation, as well as salida, the favored terms of the coup leaders, during an April 11 interview onVenevisions popular Napoleon Bravo morning talk show. According to available video excerpts from thatinterview, Lpez also briefly describes what a transition government might look like and proposes onlytwo ways out of the political crisis: a coup or the dissolution of the government. What are the possibilitieswe have in Venezuela? he asks rhetorically. Either we will have a coup, quick and dry, or another kind, orthe proposal were making [for the Chvez government to step down]. Theres no other way to get past thedeadlock being played out here in Venezuela. Of course, Chvez never did resign. He was arrestedinstead.In his book chronicling the events of April 2002, My Testimony Before History, Carmona indicates that theApril 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 conflictturned deadly, with 19 protesters from both sides shot and killed. Carmona writes that he consultedwith Lpez and that the protests fatal route change was authorized by Mayor Leopoldo Lpez.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 12/28Yet a month and a half after that violent confrontation, during testimony before the parliamentarycommission investigating the overthrow attempt, Lpez insisted that at no moment did we have anycontact with spokespeople of the transition government the decisions we made were totally andabsolutely autonomous.Lpezs most controversial episode remains the April 12 arrest and detention of then-Interior MinisterRamn 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 whereChacn was staying, unguarded, to personally charge him with responsibility for the 19 shooting deathsthat had taken place the previous day. As opposition supporters and media gathered outside the house inBaruta, the two mayors took him into custody. (The deaths remain unresolved; both sides maintain theother was responsible.) Lpez told reporters at the time that he and Capriles had obtained a search warrantof the house and had coordinated with the Baruta police on Chacns arrest. Moments after Chacn wastaken 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 ingeneral terms many times since. (After Chvez was returned to power, Capriles and Lpez were indictedfor illegal detention in conjunction with the incident, but they were later pardoned as part of a far-reaching and controversial amnesty. Questioned on a pro-government talk show in 2012, Lpez concededthat 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 anagreement to bring peace to the country, he said. The arrest, just a week later, took him by surprise.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 13/28Leopoldo Lpez began rallying the neighbors with his megaphone, saying I was a murderer, that I wasresponsible for the killings, said Chacn. He was gathering them in, telling them I would be brought tojustice for the murders of the past few days. A news clip of the incident shows Chacn being beaten by thecrowd. But according to the transcript of those June 2002 parliamentary hearings about the coup, othernews 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 anywaybecause 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 thecontentious events of 2002 is widely known in his home country and has likely colored how manyVenezuelans view his role in the protests that erupted in Caracas last February. Last March, with theguarimbas, or street barricades, still in place in the citys elite opposition strongholds, I spoke withHermann Escarr, a constitutional attorney and former opposition activist, who was one of the principalarchitects of the 1999 Venezuelan constitution. Though Escarr is reviled by some Chavistas for hisopposition to President Chvez and his supporters over their plan in 2009 to extend the presidents termindefinitely, 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 theconstitution. He sat next to Lpez at an opposition gathering in February 2004, an event captured onvideotape, as the young politician declared, We should feel proud of April 11, when we toppled Chvezwith a march! The man resigned on the 11th, he put his tail between his legs and he left a strikingassertion, nearly two years after the coup, when it was no longer plausible to claim that Chvez had everresigned.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 14/28I asked him to reflect on the protests that were then still roiling the city and on the governmentsallegations that Lpez was responsible for some of the violence. Escarr wouldnt comment on the currentcharges against Lpez, saying he wasnt familiar enough with the details of the case, and he defended theoppositions right to peaceful protest. But he expressed grave concern about the recent opposition proteststhat had turned lawless and violent. In the United States, whats happening now in Venezuela would nothave happened and wont happen. No one would think to burn cars or tires, set fire to a street leading upto the White House, because the punishment would be truly serious, Escarr said. Here, there arebarricades called guarimbas where theyve found armaments for war, where theyve found Molotovcocktails.Over the past year, a series of fresh government allegations have begun to take the shine off 2014s wave ofprotests. It began with a thinly sourced government report, issued in May of last year. Called Coup dtatand Assassination Plan Unveiled in Venezuela, the report places the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, KevinWhitaker, 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 annihilateMaduro and overthrow the government. The plot, according to then-Justice Minister Miguel RodrguezTorres, included political, business, and military leaders, who, he claimed, were the true forces behind theFebruary 2014 street protests. Burelli, who currently lives in McLean, Virginia, is now considered a fugitivefrom justice by Venezuelan authorities.To back its claims, the government released emails between the alleged plotters, as well as recordedconversations involving Burelli. Burelli denies all charges and hired forensic investigators who say thatthe emails were forged and that Google has no record of some of them having been sent. A U.S. StateDepartment spokesperson called the allegations against Whitaker false accusations in a long line ofbaseless allegations against U.S. diplomats by the Venezuelan government. Machado has dismissed thecharges as a fantasy.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 15/28But Burelli has not denied the authenticity of the voice recordings of his conversations released by twolocal elected officials,who say they took place between Feb. 20 and March 14 of last year, in the middle ofthe 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 insideyour colectivo? Burelli asks in one conversation with an unidentified military officer, using a term oftenused to refer to a political cell. (Burelli says the officer is retired and wont name him.) I think the world isextremely activated, Burelli tells the officer in a voicemail. All thats missing is for this part of themilitary 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 cometo clean the scum of Chavismo, the scum of complicity, the scum of corruption, Burelli continues. Anygroup that stands up and says this now will generate a crisis, I guarantee it. But it must be linked to thestruggle of the people, to Leos struggle and in solidarity with Leo. This is the moment. Theres no risk ifits done right.When I asked Burelli about the recordings, he said, Those are my recordings, but those recordings do notprove anything. People whove read the whole thing say this is a conversation one could have withanybody.By September 2014, Lorent Saleh, a founder of JAVU, one of the student groups most closely identifiedwith last years protests, was also facing charges. Venezuelas Ministry of Justice arrested Saleh, accusinghim of terrorism, and released videos in which Saleh can be seen talking about bombing discos and liquorstores, burning buildings, and bringing in snipers to kill grassroots leaders. Though barely reported in theU.S. media, last years protests were marked by several such incidents, including the firebombing ofgovernment ministries, child care centers, city buses, and television stations and the fatal shootings ofsecurity forces and Chavista sympathizers.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 16/28Finally, in February of this year, Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma, who was, along with Lpez andMachado, one of the three leading figures behind the previous Februarys upheavals, was arrested oncharges of sedition and conspiracy as part of yet another alleged coup attempt. Both Saleh and Ledezmadeny 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, Ledezmais 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 wingsclosed ranks in defending Ledezma, whose arrest drew international attention and renewed calls forLpezs release. But Salehs case was more divisive, with some of Lpezs closest allies in Voluntad Popularexpressing concerns about the violation of [Salehs] human rights and others rapidly distancingthemselves, 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 theauthenticity 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 theTransition. It calls for a peaceful transition of the Maduro government, which, the document says, is inits 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.* * *28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 17/28Conspiracy and counter-conspiracy may be a constant in Venezuela today, but these left-right politicaldramas have been overshadowed by Venezuelas mounting economic crisis and its pressure cooker effectson Venezuelan politics. On March 9, the Obama administration piled on, declaring the situation inVenezuela an extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. (Theadministration 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 isMaduro, whose popularity dropped in January to 23 percent, his lowest ever, while, as of March, approvalof Lpez and Capriles had each risen to 40 percent. (Maduros approval rebounded to 28 percent inMarch.) The governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela remains the best organized, and its supportremains strong in Venezuelas poor communities, a segment that will be key in the upcomingparliamentary elections, scheduled for later this year. But Maduros personal unpopularity has eroded thepartys base, which now claims the loyalty of only 17 percent of the electorate (from a high of 42 percentunder Chvez), the same as the combined total of those who identify with one of Venezuelas manyopposition parties.The figure who gained the most from last years upheavals, says Len, is, without a doubt, LeopoldoLpez.Jail has boosted Lpezs public image, Len says, with some seeing a valiant martyr who wasunjustly imprisoned, without a doubt unjustly and without a doubt a political prisoner who generatessingular solidarity.His rising star, however, may also contribute to a further fracturing of the opposition, Len says, asLpez now shares the stage and popular support on an equal level with Capriles. Opposition standard-bearer Capriles finds himself struggling to keep his more moderate opposition coalition, the MUD, fromfracturing further in the face of the growing influence of Lpez and his radical flank.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 18/28Just this past May, these schisms were on full display, following a hunger strike by Lpez and his call for amass 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 sisterVenezuelans, 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 studentsupporters, represents the suffering of all Venezuelans, declared Lpezs wife, Lilian. She was joined byLedezmas wife for the Caracas protest on May 30, which attracted an estimated 3,000 followers a sliverof the mass actions last year.The MUD coalition issued a statement declaring it would not participate (though Capriles tweeted that hewould personally attend), even taking a jab at what they called Lpezs unilateral approach: The bestdecisions 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 courtof national opinion will continue to see Lpez and his flank of the opposition as a serious new voice fordemocratic 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 supportfrom the Puffin Foundation.Image credit: CRISTIAN HERNANDEZ/AFP/Getty ImagesMORE FROM FOREIGN POLICYBY TABOOLAJIMMY CARTER GETS IT WRONG ON VENEZUELA, AGAINIS THIS SCANDAL THE PROOF THAT VENEZUELA HAS FINALLY BECOME A NARCO-STATE?28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 19/28BRING THEM HOMEBUSTING MYTHS ABOUT THE LATEST U.S. SANCTIONS ON VENEZUELANSSOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF VENEZUELAPOVERTY SHOOTS UP IN VENEZUELAWhy Angolas Star Reporter Wont StayDownAngol a' scorruptl eaderskeeptryi ngtosi l enceRafael Marques. Sofar, wi thoutsuccess.JUNE24, 2015-2: 53PM BYDANIELMETCALFE28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 20/28The defamation trial of Angolan journalist Rafael Marques on March 23 did not go well. As crowds of hissupporters shrieked Criminals, murderers! and Free Rafael, the 200-odd police officers attached to thecourthouse struggled to impose authority. When Marques emerged coolly from the building, even some ofthe officers couldnt resist asking for an autograph. Unsurprisingly, when the court reconvened a monthlater, it was behind closed doors.At issue were allegations in Marques book, Diamantes de Sangue: Corrupo e Tortura em Angola (BloodDiamonds: Corruption and Torture in Angola), published in Lisbon in 2011. It details a litany of humanrights abuses and killings perpetrated in diamond mines owned by seven high-ranking generals, includingGeneral Manuel Hlder Vieira Dias Jnior, head of the military wing of the presidency and, by popularreckoning, the second-most-powerful figure in the country. Now these generals, embarrassed by Marquespainstaking 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 hislatest 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. Aprevious 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 thecorruption 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 internationalfollowing. They have not only tarnished the reputations of the Angolan elite, but have also changed whatthe 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 presidentialfamily, leaving whole swathes of the upper sets in anxious expectation of the next set of revelations. ButMarques is no haranguer. His investigations stand out for their meticulous research and his tight grasp ofAngolas statute books, to which many members of Angolas elite appear to be absolutely indifferent.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 21/28After publishing his book in 2011, Marques went further and launched criminal complaints against theseven generals and two affiliated companies for crimes against humanity in the Lunda region. Thegenerals reciprocated in 2012 with defamation lawsuits against both him and his Lisbon publisher, Tinta-da-China.I interviewed Marques in a flat in south London on the same day he was announced joint winner of theprestigious Index on Censorship award. It was less than a week before his first court appearance. Dressedin a baggy top and trainers, and apparently unruffled by either the award or the trial of his life, Marquessipped tea and spoke about his career with precise and moderated diction. Occasionally he would let out awinning laugh as he recalled the exploits of his early career, but he restored his poise with a quietintensity.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 dailynewspaper she brought home from work. With the end of communism in 1991, the state newspaper Jornalde 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 manydemotions, Marques was transferred to the Luanda city desk. He concentrated on aspects of the city thatthe 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. Hevisited Roque Santeiro, a vast, sprawling market that was then the biggest in Africa, and wrote of thedazzling 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, hereceived an order to report to a military unit to train for battle. Powerful figures linked to the newspaperwere clearly trying to get him out of the way.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 22/28The unit he joined turned out to be a high-risk commando unit that trained with live grenades, routinelyresulting 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. Foodtrucks arrived, and were then depleted sold on by the commander and then his deputy and so on downthe food chain, until there was hardly any food for the soldiers. The half-starved conscripts were on theverge of mutiny. The skittish officers, by now fully aware of the young journalists articles and hispenchant for causing trouble, suspected that Marques was responsible. Preferring to rid themselves of thejournalist than risk turning him into a commando, they ordered him home. Not without mydemobilization papers, insisted Marques, to which they reluctantly assented, and he made it to Luandaunscathed.Marques spell with the commando recruits was a brief episode in one of Africas longest wars. Its roots layin an earlier guerrilla conflict against Portuguese colonial rule that began in 1961 and ended abruptly withthe fall of Portugals Salazar dictatorship in 1974. Angola gained its independence, which was sooncontested among three factions. The Marxist MPLA took power in the capital, Luanda, in 1975, with theheavy backing of its Eastern Bloc advisors and Cuban troops. Once its smaller rival, the FNLA, was out ofthe way, the Marxist government was soon was fighting a full-scale war with its main challenger, the anti-communist UNITA, lavishly funded and equipped by the United States and South Africa, and led by itscharismatic though eventually unhinged leader, Jonas Savimbi.The war went through many phases: the MPLA transitioned from communism to democracy, UNITAdescended into tyranny, and the country rumbled through several shaky United Nations brokered cease-fires. While the MPLA had near limitless oil waiting to be tapped offshore, UNITA ruthlessly exploited thediamond fields in the Lunda provinces, putting garimpeiros (diamond panners) to work in abhorrentconditions. As the 1990s wore on, and international opprobrium gained traction, UNITA found it harder tosmuggle diamonds onto the international market. The stalemate was broken for good when governmenttroops 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.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 23/28The senseless grind of the war motivated Marques to write an article for the private newspaper Folha 8called Cannon Fodder, a passionate piece about how Angolan mothers were treated as breedingmachines for the war effort. What to me was most incredible was that the government never cared to setup a system to inform these mothers of these families when their beloved sons died. It wasnt lack ofcapacity, it was neglect sheer disregard for life. He was interrogated and put on a black list: his articleswere gaining notoriety, and not just within Angola. On a trip to South Africa in 1998, the magnate andphilanthropist George Soros asked Marques to set up the Open Society Initiative in Luanda, a privately-funded NGO tasked with championing democratic ideals, as a part of the Soros Foundation. This wayMarques was able to reenter the public discourse without relying on state-sponsored media. It proved anunlikely success: the debates the organization aired on the Catholic station Rdio Ecclsia provided aforum where legislators, religious leaders and administration officials could talk things out in a way thatwas impossible in parliament.At the turn of the new century, the narrow window of freer debate was closing and the governmentstepped up the use of its oil wealth to dominate the media, bribing the countrys best journalists withmoney and houses. To this day this the creation of a hub of mediocrity, as Marques puts it has beenthe most effective means to destroy freedom of expression Angola. Anyone who stands out as beingmorally strong, intellectually strong, that has a voice, is co-opted or destroyed, he said. This is creating avacuum in society where you dont have singers who are inspiring, you dont have artists who areinspiring, you dont have academics who are inspiring. You never hear an Angolan doctor talking aboutthe 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 ofDictatorship, in which he described president Jos Eduardo dos Santos as a dictator, Marques wascharged with defamation and served 43 days in prison, 11 of them in solitary confinement.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 24/28He was held in a small cell which had been built by the Stasi, the East German secret police, and designedsothat 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 hisbroadcasts 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 finallysecured victory (leaving aside a smoldering rebellion in the northern exclave of Cabinda). The country wasin ruins, a million were dead, and the land was sown with perhaps ten million landmines. Thegovernments 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 enjoyedstaggering economic growth averaging 16 percent a year. Luanda thronged with oil and infrastructurecompanies jockeying for lucrative contracts. New developments, office blocks, port facilities and hotelstransformed the skyline, and Chinese-built roads began to crisscross the country. But there was littletrickle-down. The post-war windfall has been confined to a tiny percentage of the population, leaving thevast majority to perform the miracle of living on about $2 a day. Despite some improvements, thirteenyears after the wars end, the country is still built on patronage and clientelism, there are shockingly highlevels 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, glidingcomfortably from the barrack room to the boardroom, their positions affording them easy access tolucrative shares in telecommunication, construction, and diamond mining companies, whose operationsthey generally ignored: management was always left to others. They migrated seasonally to beach housesin Cascais, Miami and Rio de Janeiro, employed discreet English nannies, and generally tried to keep outof the public eye.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 25/28Marques 2015 trial changed all that. For the first time, images appeared of the well-fed generals sitting incourt alongside the witnesses: thin, wizened Lunda tribespeople, in traditional outfits and beadedheaddresses, the manifest victims of a rotten system who had been harassed throughout the whole legalprocess. One witness, Alida Moises da Rosa, was interrogated by police about why she insisted on going tocourt. 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 himinto silence, or bought him up, as they have with countless other radio journalists, poets, musicians andcommentators. But Marques would not be bribed and he was not afraid of jail. Years ago they had tried toisolate him by steering international organizations to other critics of the regime (naturally, of theirchoice). But by the 2010s he was such a renowned figure that no boilerplate process could possibly dealwith him. Put him in jail and the world would cry for his release. Dispose of him, and the governmentwould 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 finallyaccount for the last decade. Blaming slow progress on war damage is now wearing thin. There is acutepressure to deliver for the 2017 elections, and unexpectedly low oil prices have massively curtailed hisability 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 ofwar and an unchallengeable state power, went onto the streets to voice their anger: youths too young tohave participated in war and veterans tired of waiting for late pension payments. The demonstrators werequickly 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 havesince reappeared persistently, fearlessly flaunting their disapproval of a government that is unsure whatto do with them.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 26/28But Rafael Marques is their biggest irritant of all. Operating out of his house in Luanda, he has grown usedto heavy surveillance, threats, and periodic house arrests. As a precaution against poisoning, he must takehis 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 Ihave more time to write and more time to investigate them because Im not socializing. So actually theycreate 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 onlythink 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, andmurdered 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 leastthat the allegations in Diamantes do Sangue were never even addressed by the court. Though the judgedeclared that Marques had fabricated the material in the book, all charges were dropped. In what Marquessubsequently described as a trap, the judge made an about-turn: the court proceeded with a differentcharge of slanderous denunciation, condemning Marques first to a month, and then to a six-month jailsentence, suspended for two years. These unexpected turns carried a note of revenge, while offering theillusion of leniency compared to the sentence Marques could have received. In reality, the sentence isnothing 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 thetrial was meant to make the generals look good, they have failed. Every Angolan who has access to theinternet has downloaded the book. Everyone can see that MPLA is supporting the interests of thesegenerals against the people.28/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 27/28The states victory may have left Marques temporarily defanged. But the irregularities of the trial, thecraven behavior of the prosecution, and public outrage on behalf of the victims leave nobody in any doubtas to the real victor. Marques has spent over twenty years confronting the state, so it would be prematureto 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 CoroadoMORE FROM FOREIGN POLICYBY TABOOLAJIMMY CARTER GETS IT WRONG ON VENEZUELA, AGAINTHE REAL SHAME IN PAKISTANTHE 750 MILLION DOLLAR MANANNALS OF WARS WE DONT KNOW ABOUT: THE SOUTH AFRICAN BORDER WAR OF 1966-1989LINKED OUTINTRODUCING THE MOST DYNAMIC CITIES OF 202528/7/2015 TheMakingofLeopoldoLpez|ForeignPolicyhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/27/themakingofleopoldolopezdemocraticvenezuelaopposition/ 28/28