Juan
Guaidó is the product of a decade-long project overseen by
Washington’s elite regime change trainers. While posing as a
champion of democracy, he has spent years at the forefront of a
violent campaign of destabilization.
by
Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal
Part
8 - Cracking down on Popular Will
As
violence and political polarization escalated across the country, the
government began to act against the Popular Will leaders who helped
stoke it.
Freddy
Guevara, the National Assembly Vice-President and second in command
of Popular Will, was a principal leader in the 2017 street riots.
Facing a trial for his role in the violence, Guevara took shelter in
the Chilean embassy, where he remains.
Lester
Toledo, a Popular Will legislator from the state of Zulia, was wanted
by Venezuelan government in September 2016 on charges of financing
terrorism and plotting assassinations. The plans were said to be made
with former Colombian President Álavaro Uribe. Toledo escaped
Venezuela and went on several speaking tours with Human Rights Watch,
the US government-backed Freedom House, the Spanish Congress and
European Parliament.
Carlos
Graffe, another Otpor-trained Generation 2007 member who led Popular
Will, was arrested in July 2017. According to police, he was in
possession of a bag filled with nails, C4 explosives and a detonator.
He was released on December 27, 2017.
Leopoldo
Lopez, the longtime Popular Will leader, is today under house arrest,
accused of a key role in deaths of 13 people during the guarimbas in
2014. Amnesty International lauded Lopez as a “prisoner of
conscience” and slammed his transfer from prison to house as
“not good enough.” Meanwhile, family members of guarimba
victims introduced a petition for more charges against Lopez.
Yon
Goicoechea, the Koch Brothers posterboy, was arrested in 2016 by
security forces who claimed they found found a kilo of explosives in
his vehicle. In a New York Times op-ed, Goicoechea protested the
charges as “trumped-up” and claimed he had been imprisoned
simply for his “dream of a democratic society, free of
Communism.” He was freed in November 2017.
David
Smolansky, also a member of the original Otpor-trained Generation
2007, became Venezuela’s youngest-ever mayor when he was elected in
2013 in the affluent suburb of El Hatillo. But he was stripped of his
position and sentenced to 15 months in prison by the Supreme Court
after it found him culpable of stirring the violent guarimbas.
Facing
arrest, Smolansky shaved his beard, donned sunglasses and slipped
into Brazil disguised as a priest with a bible in hand and rosary
around his neck. He now lives in Washington, DC, where he was hand
picked by Secretary of the Organization of American States Luis
Almagro to lead the working group on the Venezuelan migrant and
refugee crisis.
This
July 26, Smolansky held what he called a “cordial reunion” with
Elliot Abrams, the convicted Iran-Contra felon installed by Trump as
special US envoy to Venezuela. Abrams is notorious for overseeing the
US covert policy of arming right-wing death squads during the 1980’s
in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. His lead role in the
Venezuelan coup has stoked fears that another blood-drenched proxy
war might be on the way.
Four
days earlier, Machado rumbled another violent threat against Maduro,
declaring that if he “wants to save his life, he should
understand that his time is up.”
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