{"id":127722,"date":"2019-02-11T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2019-02-11T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=127722"},"modified":"2019-02-18T10:52:59","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T10:52:59","slug":"the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/02\/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader\/","title":{"rendered":"The Making of Juan Guaid\u00f3: How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela\u2019s Coup Leader"},"content":{"rendered":"

Juan Guaid\u00f3 is the product of a decade-long project overseen by Washington\u2019s elite regime change trainers. While posing as a champion of democracy, he has spent years at the forefront of a violent campaign of destabilization.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

29 Jan 2019 – <\/em>Before the fateful day of January 22, fewer than one in five<\/a> Venezuelans had heard of Juan Guaid\u00f3. Only a few months ago, the 35-year-old was an obscure character in a politically marginal far-right group closely associated with gruesome acts of street violence. Even in his own party, Guaid\u00f3 had been a mid-level figure in the opposition-dominated National Assembly, which is now held under contempt according to Venezuela\u2019s constitution.<\/p>\n

But after a single phone call from from US Vice President Mike Pence, Guaid\u00f3 proclaimed himself president of Venezuela. Anointed as the leader of his country by Washington, a previously unknown political bottom-dweller was vaulted onto the international stage as the US-selected leader of the nation with the world\u2019s largest oil reserves.<\/p>\n

Echoing the Washington consensus, the New York Times editorial board\u00a0hailed<\/a> Guaid\u00f3 as a \u201ccredible rival\u201d to Maduro with a \u201crefreshing style and vision of taking the country forward.\u201d The Bloomberg News editorial board applauded<\/a> him for seeking \u201crestoration of democracy\u201d and the Wall Street Journal declared<\/a> him\u00a0\u201ca new democratic leader.\u201d Meanwhile, Canada, numerous European nations, Israel, and the bloc of right-wing Latin American governments known as the Lima Group recognized Guaid\u00f3 as the legitimate leader of Venezuela.<\/p>\n

While Guaid\u00f3 seemed to have materialized out of nowhere, he was, in fact, the product of more than a decade of assiduous grooming by the US government\u2019s elite regime change factories. Alongside a cadre of right-wing student activists, Guaid\u00f3 was cultivated to undermine Venezuela\u2019s socialist-oriented government, destabilize the country, and one day seize power. Though he has been a minor figure in Venezuelan politics, he had spent years quietly demonstrated his worthiness in Washington\u2019s halls of power.<\/p>\n

\u201cJuan Guaid\u00f3 is a character that has been created for this circumstance,\u201d Marco Teruggi, an Argentinian sociologist and leading chronicler of Venezuelan politics, told The Grayzone<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s the logic of a laboratory \u2013 Guaid\u00f3 is like a mixture of several elements that create a character who, in all honesty, oscillates between laughable and worrying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diego Sequera, a Venezuelan journalist and writer for the investigative outlet Misi\u00f3n Verdad, agreed: \u201cGuaid\u00f3 is more popular outside Venezuela than inside, especially in the elite Ivy League and Washington circles,\u201d Sequera remarked to The Grayzone, \u201cHe\u2019s a known character there, is predictably right-wing, and is considered loyal to the program.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Guaid\u00f3 is today sold as the face of democratic restoration, he spent his career in the most violent faction of Venezuela\u2019s most radical opposition party, positioning himself at the forefront of one destabilization campaign after another. His party has been widely discredited inside Venezuela, and is held partly responsible for fragmenting a badly weakened opposition.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018These radical leaders have no more than 20 percent in opinion polls,\u201d\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0Luis Vicente Le\u00f3n, Venezuela\u2019s leading pollster. According to Le\u00f3n, Guaid\u00f3\u2019s party remains isolated because the majority of the population \u201cdoes not want war. \u2018What they want is a solution.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But this is precisely why Guaid\u00f3 was selected by Washington: He is not expected to lead Venezuela toward democracy, but to collapse a country that for the past two decades has been a bulwark of resistance to US hegemony. His unlikely rise signals the culmination of a two decades-long project to destroy a robust socialist experiment.<\/p>\n

Targeting the \u201ctroika of tyranny\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since the 1998 election of Hugo Ch\u00e1vez, the United States has fought to restore control over Venezuela and is vast oil reserves. Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s socialist programs may have redistributed the country\u2019s wealth and helped lift millions out of poverty, but they also earned him a target on his back.<\/p>\n

In 2002, Venezuela\u2019s right-wing opposition briefly ousted Ch\u00e1vez with US support and recognition, before the military restored his presidency following a mass popular mobilization. Throughout the administrations of US Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Ch\u00e1vez survived numerous assassination plots, before succumbing to cancer in 2013. His successor, Nicolas Maduro, has survived<\/a> three attempts<\/a> on his life.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration immediately elevated Venezuela to the top of Washington\u2019s regime change target list, branding it the leader of a \u201ctroika of tyranny.\u201d<\/a> Last year, Trump\u2019s national security team attempted<\/a> to recruit members of the military brass to mount a military junta, but that effort failed.<\/p>\n

According to the Venezuelan government, the US was also involved in a plot, codenamed Operation Constitution, to capture Maduro at the Miraflores presidential palace; and another, called Operation Armageddon<\/a>, to assassinate him at a military parade in July 2017. Just over a year later, exiled opposition leaders tried and failed to kill Maduro<\/a> with drone bombs during a military parade in Caracas.<\/p>\n

More than a decade before these intrigues, a group of right-wing opposition students were hand-selected and groomed by an elite US-funded regime change training academy to topple Venezuela\u2019s government and restore the neoliberal order.<\/p>\n

Training from the \u201c\u2018export-a-revolution\u2019 group that sowed the seeds for a NUMBER of color revolutions\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

On October 5, 2005, with Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s popularity at its peak and his government planning sweeping socialist programs, five Venezuelan \u201cstudent leaders\u201d arrived<\/a> in Belgrade, Serbia to begin training for an insurrection.<\/p>\n

The students had arrived from Venezuela courtesy of the Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies, or CANVAS. This group is funded<\/a> largely through the National Endowment for Democracy<\/a>, a CIA cut-out that functions as the US government\u2019s main arm of promoting regime change; and offshoots like the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. According to leaked internal emails<\/a> from Stratfor, an intelligence firm known as the \u201cshadow CIA<\/a>,\u201d CANVAS \u201cmay have also received CIA funding and training during the 1999\/2000 anti-Milosevic struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n

CANVAS is a spinoff of Otpor, a Serbian protest group founded by Srdja Popovic<\/a> in 1998 at the University of Belgrade. Otpor, which means \u201cresistance\u201d in Serbian, was the student group that gained international fame \u2014 and Hollywood-level promotion<\/a> \u2014 by mobilizing the protests that eventually toppled Slobodan Milosevic.<\/p>\n

This small cell of regime change specialists was operating according to the theories of the late Gene Sharp, the so-called \u201cClausewitz of non-violent struggle.\u201d Sharp had worked with a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, Col. Robert Helvey<\/a>, to conceive a strategic blueprint that weaponized protest as a form of hybrid warfare, aiming it at states that resisted Washington\u2019s unipolar domination.<\/p>\n

Otpor was supported by the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and Sharp\u2019s Albert Einstein Institute. Sinisa Sikman, one of Otpor\u2019s main trainers, once said<\/a> the group even received direct CIA funding.<\/p>\n

According to a leaked email<\/a> from a Stratfor staffer, after running Milosevic out of power, \u201cthe kids who ran OTPOR grew up, got suits and designed CANVAS\u2026 or in other words a \u2018export-a-revolution\u2019 group that sowed the seeds for a NUMBER of color revolutions. They are still hooked into U.S. funding and basically go around the world trying to topple dictators and autocratic governments (ones that U.S. does not like ;).\u201d<\/p>\n

Stratfor revealed that CANVAS \u201cturned its attention to Venezuela\u201d in 2005, after training opposition movements that led pro-NATO regime change operations across Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n

While monitoring the CANVAS training program, Stratfor outlined its insurrectionist agenda in strikingly blunt language: \u201cSuccess is by no means guaranteed, and student movements are only at the beginning of what could be a years-long effort to trigger a revolution in Venezuela, but the trainers themselves are the people who cut their teeth on the \u2018Butcher of the Balkans.\u2019\u009d They\u2019ve got mad skills. When you see students at five Venezuelan universities hold simultaneous demonstrations, you will know that the training is over and the real work has begun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Birthing the \u201cGeneration 2007\u201d regime change cadre<\/strong><\/p>\n

The \u201creal work\u201d began two years later, in 2007, when Guaid\u00f3 graduated from Andr\u00e9s Bello Catholic University of Caracas. He moved to Washington, DC to enroll in the Governance and Political Management Program<\/a> at George Washington University, under the tutelage of Venezuelan economist Luis Enrique Berrizbeitia, one of the top Latin American neoliberal economists. Berrizbeitia is a former executive director<\/a> of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) who spent more than a decade working in the Venezuelan energy sector, under the old oligarchic regime that was ousted by Ch\u00e1vez.<\/p>\n

That year, Guaid\u00f3 helped lead anti-government rallies after the Venezuelan government declined to<\/a> to renew the license of Radio Caracas Televisi\u00f3n (RCTV). This privately owned station played a leading role in the 2002 coup against Hugo Ch\u00e1vez. RCTV helped mobilize anti-government demonstrators, falsified information blaming government supporters for acts of violence carried out by opposition members, and banned pro-government reporting amid the coup. The role of RCTV and other oligarch-owned stations in driving the failed coup attempt was chronicled in the acclaimed documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That same year, the students claimed credit for stymying Chavez\u2019s constitutional referendum for a \u201c21st century socialism\u201d that promised<\/a> \u201cto set the legal framework for the political and social reorganization of the country, giving direct power to organized communities as a prerequisite for the development of a new economic system.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the protests around RCTV and the referendum, a specialized cadre of US-backed class of regime change activists was born. They called themselves \u201cGeneration 2007.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Stratfor and CANVAS trainers of this cell identified Guaid\u00f3\u2019s ally \u2013 a libertarian political organizer named Yon Goicoechea \u2013 as a \u201ckey factor\u201d in defeating the constitutional referendum. The following year, Goicochea was rewarded<\/a> for his efforts with the Cato Institute\u2019s Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, along with a $500,000 prize, which he promptly invested into his political network.<\/p>\n

Friedman, of course, was the godfather of the notorious neoliberal Chicago Boys who were imported into Chile by dictatorial junta leader Augusto Pinochet to implement policies of radical \u201cshock doctrine\u201d-style fiscal austerity. And the Cato Institute is the libertarian Washington DC-based think tank founded by the Koch Brothers, two top Republican Party donors who have become aggressive supporters<\/a> of the right-wing across Latin America.<\/p>\n

Wikileaks published a 2007 email<\/a> from American ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield sent to the State Department, National Security Council and Department of Defense Southern Command praising \u201cGeneration of \u201907\u201d for having \u201cforced the Venezuelan president, accustomed to setting the political agenda, to (over)react.\u201d Among the \u201cemerging leaders\u201d Brownfield identified were Freddy Guevara and Yon Goicoechea. He applauded the latter figure as \u201cone of the students\u2019 most articulate defenders of civil liberties.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flush with cash from libertarian oligarchs and US government soft power outfits, the radical Venezuelan cadre took their Otpor tactics to the streets, along with a version<\/a> of the group\u2019s logo, as seen below:<\/p>\n

\u201cGalvanizing public unrest\u2026to take advantage of the situation and spin it against Chavez\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2009, the Generation 2007 youth activists staged their most provocative demonstration<\/a> yet, dropping their pants on public roads and aping the outrageous guerrilla theater tactics outlined by Gene Sharp in his regime change manuals. The protesters had mobilized against the arrest of an ally from another newfangled youth group called JAVU. This far-right group \u201cgathered funds from a variety of US government sources, which allowed it to gain notoriety quickly as the hardline wing of opposition street movements,\u201d according to academic George Ciccariello-Maher\u2019s book, \u201cBuilding the Commune.\u201d<\/p>\n

While video of the protest is not available, many Venezuelans have identified<\/a> Guaid\u00f3 as one of its key participants. While the allegation is unconfirmed, it is certainly plausible; the bare-buttocks protesters were members of the Generation 2007 inner core that Guaid\u00f3 belonged to, and were clad in their trademark Resistencia! Venezuela t-shirts, as seen below:<\/p>\n

That year, Guaid\u00f3 exposed himself to the public in another way, founding a political party to capture the anti-Chavez energy his Generation 2007 had cultivated. Called Popular Will, it was led by Leopoldo L\u00f3pez<\/a>, a Princeton-educated right-wing firebrand heavily involved in National Endowment for Democracy programs and elected as the mayor of a district in Caracas that was one of the wealthiest in the country. Lopez was a portrait of Venezuelan aristocracy, directly descended from his country\u2019s first president. He was also the first cousin of Thor Halvorssen<\/a>, founder of the US-based Human Rights Foundation that functions as a de facto publicity shop for US-backed anti-government activists in countries targeted by Washington for regime change.<\/p>\n

Though Lopez\u2019s interests aligned neatly with Washington\u2019s, US diplomatic cables<\/a> published by Wikileaks highlighted the fanatical tendencies that would ultimately lead to Popular Will\u2019s marginalization. One cable identified Lopez as \u201ca divisive figure within the opposition\u2026 often described as arrogant, vindictive, and power-hungry.\u201d Others highlighted his obsession with street confrontations and his \u201cuncompromising approach\u201d as a source of tension with other opposition leaders who prioritized unity and participation in the country\u2019s democratic institutions.<\/p>\n

By 2010, Popular Will and its foreign backers moved to exploit the worst drought to hit Venezuela in decades. Massive electricity shortages had struck the country due the dearth of water, which was needed to power hydroelectric plants. A global economic recession and declining oil prices compounded the crisis, driving public discontentment.<\/p>\n

Stratfor and CANVAS \u2013 key advisors of Guaid\u00f3 and his anti-government cadre \u2013 devised a shockingly cynical plan<\/a> to drive a dagger through the heart of the Bolivarian revolution. The scheme hinged on a 70% collapse of the country\u2019s electrical system by as early as April 2010.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis could be the watershed event, as there is little that Chavez can do to protect the poor from the failure of that system,\u201d the Stratfor internal memo declared. \u201cThis would likely have the impact of galvanizing public unrest in a way that no opposition group could ever hope to generate. At that point in time, an opposition group would be best served to take advantage of the situation and spin it against Chavez and towards their needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

By this point, the Venezuelan opposition was receiving a staggering $40-50 million a year from US government organizations like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy, according to a report<\/a> by the Spanish think tank, the FRIDE Institute. It also had massive wealth to draw on from its own accounts, which were mostly outside the country.<\/p>\n

While the scenario envisioned by Statfor did not come to fruition, the Popular Will party activists and their allies cast aside any pretense of non-violence and joined a radical plan to destabilize the country.<\/p>\n

Towards violent destabilization<\/strong><\/p>\n

In November, 2010, according to emails<\/a> obtained by Venezuelan security services and presented by former Justice Minister Miguel Rodr\u00edguez Torres, Guaid\u00f3, Goicoechea, and several other student activists attended a secret five-day training at a hotel dubbed \u201cFiesta Mexicana\u201d hotel in Mexico. The sessions were run by Otpor, the Belgrade-based regime change trainers backed by the US government. The meeting had reportedly received the blessing<\/a> of Otto Reich, a fanatically anti-Castro Cuban exile working in George W. Bush\u2019s Department of State, and the right-wing former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.<\/p>\n

Inside the meetings, the emails stated, Guaid\u00f3 and his fellow activists hatched a plan to overthrow President Hugo Chavez by generating chaos through protracted spasms of street violence.<\/p>\n

Three petroleum industry figureheads \u2013 Gustavo Torrar, Eligio Cede\u00f1o and Pedro Burelli \u2013 allegedly covered the $52,000 tab to hold the meeting. Torrar is a self-described \u201chuman rights activist\u201d and \u201cintellectual\u201d whose younger brother Reynaldo Tovar Arroyo is the representative in Venezuela of the private Mexican oil and gas company Petroquimica del Golfo, which holds a contract with the Venezuelan state.<\/p>\n

Cede\u00f1o, for his part, is a fugitive Venezuelan businessman who claimed asylum in the United States, and Pedro Burelli a former JP Morgan executive and the former director of Venezuela\u2019s national oil company, Petroleum of Venezuela (PDVSA). He left PDVSA in 1998 as Hugo Chavez took power and is on the advisory committee<\/a> of Georgetown University\u2019s Latin America Leadership Program.<\/p>\n

Burelli insisted that the emails detailing his participation had been fabricated<\/a> and even hired a private investigator to prove it. The investigator declared<\/a> that Google\u2019s records showed the emails alleged to be his were never transmitted.<\/p>\n

Yet today Burelli makes no secret of his desire to see Venezuela\u2019s current president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, deposed \u2013 and even dragged through the streets and sodomized with a bayonet, as Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi was by NATO-backed militiamen.<\/p>\n

.@NicolasMaduro<\/a>, jamas me has hecho caso. Me has fustigado\/perseguido como @chavezcandanga<\/a> jam\u00e1s os\u00f3. \u00d3yeme, tienes s\u00f3lo dos opciones en las pr\u00f3ximas 24 horas:<\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Como Noriega: pagar pena por narcotr\u00e1fico y luego a <\/em>@IntlCrimCourt<\/a><\/em> La Haya por DDHH.<\/em><\/li>\n
  2. O a la Gaddafi.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Escoge ya! <\/em>pic.twitter.com\/pMksCEXEmY<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

    \u2014 Pedro Mario Burelli (@pburelli) January 17, 2019<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Update:<\/strong> Burelli contacted the Grayzone after the publication of this article to clarify his participation in the \u201cFiesta Mexicana\u201d plot.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

    Burelli called the meeting \u201ca legitimate activity that took place in a hotel by a different name\u201d in Mexico.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Asked if OTPOR coordinated the meeting, he would only state that he \u201clikes\u201d the work of OTPOR\/CANVAS and while not a funder of it, has \u201crecommended activists from different countries to track them and participate in the activities they conduct in various countries.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

    Burelli added: \u201cThe Einstein Institute trained thousands openly in Venezuela. Gene Sharpe\u2019s philosophy was widely studied and embraced. And this has probably kept the struggle from turning into a civil war.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

    The alleged Fiesta Mexicana plot flowed into another destabilization plan revealed in a series of documents<\/a> produced by the Venezuelan government. In May 2014, Caracas released documents detailing an assassination plot against President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. The leaks identified the anti-Chavez hardliner Maria Corina Machado \u2013 today the main asset of Sen. Marco Rubio \u2013 as a leader of the scheme. The founder of the National Endowment for Democracy-funded group, Sumate, Machado has functioned as an international liaison for the opposition, visiting President George W. Bush<\/a> in 2005.<\/p>\n

    \u201cI think it is time to gather efforts; make the necessary calls, and obtain financing to annihilate Maduro and the rest will fall apart,\u201d Machado wrote in an email to former Venezuelan diplomat Diego Arria in 2014.<\/p>\n

    In another email<\/a>, Machado claimed that the violent plot had the blessing of US Ambassador to Colombia, Kevin Whitaker. \u201cI have already made up my mind and this fight will continue until this regime is overthrown and we deliver to our friends in the world. If I went to San Cristobal and exposed myself before the OAS, I fear nothing. Kevin Whitaker has already reconfirmed his support and he pointed out the new steps. We have a checkbook stronger than the regime\u2019s to break the international security ring.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Guaid\u00f3 heads to the barricades<\/strong><\/p>\n

    That February, student demonstrators acting as shock troops for the exiled oligarchy erected violent barricades across the country, turning opposition-controlled quarters into violent fortresses<\/a> known as guarimbas<\/em>. While international media portrayed the upheaval as a spontaneous protest against Maduro\u2019s iron-fisted rule, there was ample evidence that Popular Will was orchestrating the show.<\/p>\n

    \u201cNone of the protesters at the universities wore their university t-shirts, they all wore Popular Will or Justice First t-shirts,\u201d a guarimba<\/em> participant said<\/a> at the time. \u201cThey might have been student groups, but the student councils are affiliated to the political opposition parties and they are accountable to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Asked who the ringleaders were, the guarimba<\/em> participant said, \u201cWell if I am totally honest, those guys are legislators now.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Around 43 were killed during the 2014 guarimbas<\/em>. Three years later, they erupted again, causing mass destruction of public infrastructure, the murder of government supporters, and the deaths<\/a> of 126 people, many of whom were Chavistas. In several cases, supporters of the government were burned alive by armed gangs.<\/p>\n

    Guaid\u00f3 was directly involved in the 2014 guarimbas<\/em>. In fact, he tweeted video showing himself clad in a helmet and gas mask, surrounded by masked and armed elements that had shut down a highway that were engaging in a violent clash with the police. Alluding to his participation in Generation 2007, he proclaimed, \u201cI remember in 2007, we proclaimed, \u2018Students!\u2019 Now, we shout, \u2018Resistance! Resistance!’\u201d<\/p>\n

    Guaid\u00f3 has deleted the tweet, demonstrating apparent concern for his image as a champion of democracy.<\/p>\n

    httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bh4DjOUsShQ<\/p>\n

    On February 12, 2014, during the height of that year\u2019s guarimbas<\/em>, Guaid\u00f3 joined Lopez on stage at a rally of Popular Will and Justice First. During a lengthy diatribe<\/a> against the government, Lopez urged the crowd to march to the office of Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz. Soon after, Diaz\u2019s office came under attack by armed gangs who attempted to burn it to the ground. She denounced what she called \u201cplanned and premeditated violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

    In an televised appearance in 2016, Guaid\u00f3 dismissed<\/a> deaths resulting from guayas<\/em> \u2013 a guarimba<\/em> tactic involving stretching steel wire across a roadway in order to injure or kill motorcyclists \u2013 as a \u201cmyth.\u201d His comments whitewashed a deadly tactic that had killed<\/a> unarmed civilians like Santiago Pedroza and decapitated<\/a> a man named Elvis Dur\u00e1n, among many others.<\/p>\n

    This callous disregard for human life would define his Popular Will party in the eyes of much of the public, including many opponents of Maduro.<\/p>\n

    Cracking down on Popular Will\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

    As violence and political polarization escalated across the country, the government began to act against the Popular Will leaders who helped stoke it.<\/p>\n

    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<\/a> in the Chilean embassy, where he remains.<\/p>\n

    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<\/a> assassinations. The plans were said to be made with former Colombian President \u00c1lavaro 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.<\/p>\n

    Carlos Graffe, another Otpor-trained Generation 2007 member who led Popular Will, was arrested<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

    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<\/em> in 2014. Amnesty International lauded<\/a> Lopez as a \u201cprisoner of conscience\u201d and slammed his transfer from prison to house as \u201cnot good enough.\u201d Meanwhile, family members of guarimba<\/em> victims introduced<\/a> a petition for more charges against Lopez.<\/p>\n

    Yon Goicoechea, the Koch Brothers posterboy, was arrested in 2016 by security forces who claimed they found found a kilo<\/a> of explosives in his vehicle. In a New York Times op-ed<\/a>, Goicoechea protested the charges as \u201ctrumped-up\u201d and claimed he had been imprisoned simply for his \u201cdream of a democratic society, free of Communism.\u201d He was freed<\/a> in November 2017.<\/p>\n

    Hoy, en Caricuao. Llevo 15 a\u00f1os trabajando con @jguaido<\/a>. Conf\u00edo en \u00e9l. Conozco la constancia y la inteligencia con la que se ha construido a s\u00ed mismo. Est\u00e1 haciendo las cosas con bondad, pero sin ingenuidad. Hay una posibilidad abierta hacia la libertad. pic.twitter.com\/Lidm8y5RTX<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

    \u2014 Yon Goicoechea (@YonGoicoechea) January 20, 2019<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    David Smolansky, also a member of the original Otpor-trained Generation 2007, became Venezuela\u2019s 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<\/em>.<\/p>\n

    Facing arrest, Smolansky shaved his beard, donned sunglasses and slipped into Brazil<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

    This July 26, Smolansky held what he called a \u201ccordial reunion\u201d with Elliot Abrams, the convicted Iran-Contra felon installed by Trump<\/a> as special US envoy to Venezuela. Abrams is notorious for overseeing the US covert policy of arming right-wing death squads during the 1980\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

    Cordial reuni\u00f3n en la ONU con Elliott Abrams, enviado especial del gobierno de EEUU para Venezuela. Reiteramos que la prioridad para el gobierno interino que preside @jguaido<\/a> es la asistencia humanitaria para millones de venezolanos que sufren de la falta de comida y medicinas. pic.twitter.com\/vHfktVKgV4<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

    \u2014 David Smolansky (@dsmolansky) January 26, 2019<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Four days earlier, Machado rumbled another violent threat against Maduro, declaring<\/a> that if he \u201cwants to save his life, he should understand that his time is up.\u201d<\/p>\n

    A pawn in their game<\/strong><\/p>\n

    The collapse of Popular Will under the weight of the violent campaign of destabilization it ran alienated large sectors of the public and wound much of its leadership up in exile or in custody. Guaid\u00f3 had remained a relatively minor figure, having spent most of his nine-year career in the National Assembly as an alternate deputy. Hailing from one of Venezuela\u2019s least populous states, Guaid\u00f3 came in second place during the 2015 parliamentary elections, winning just 26% of votes cast in order to secure his place in the National Assembly. Indeed, his bottom may have been better known than his face.<\/p>\n

    Guaid\u00f3 is known as the president of the opposition-dominated National Assembly, but he was never elected to the position. The four opposition parties that comprised the Assembly\u2019s Democratic Unity Table had decided to establish a rotating presidency. Popular Will\u2019s turn was on the way, but its founder, Lopez, was under house arrest. Meanwhile, his second-in-charge, Guevara, had taken refuge in the Chilean embassy. A figure named Juan Andr\u00e9s Mej\u00eda would have been next in line but reasons that are only now clear, Juan Guaido was selected.<\/p>\n

    \u201cThere is a class reasoning that explains Guaid\u00f3\u2019s rise,\u201d Sequera, the Venezuelan analyst, observed. \u201cMej\u00eda is high class, studied at one of the most expensive private universities in Venezuela, and could not be easily marketed to the public the way Guaid\u00f3 could. For one, Guaid\u00f3 has common mestizo<\/em> features like most Venezuelans do, and seems like more like a man of the people. Also, he had not been overexposed in the media, so he could be built up into pretty much anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

    In December 2018, Guaid\u00f3 sneaked across the border and junketed to Washington, Colombia and Brazil to coordinate the plan to hold mass demonstrations during the inauguration of President Maduro. The night before Maduro\u2019s swearing-in ceremony, both Vice President Mike Pence and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland called Guaid\u00f3 to affirm their support.<\/p>\n

    A week later, Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Rick Scott and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart \u2013 all lawmakers from the Florida base of the right-wing Cuban exile lobby \u2013 joined President Trump and Vice President Pence at the White House. At their request, Trump agreed<\/a> that if Guaid\u00f3 declared himself president, he would back him.<\/p>\n

    Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met personally withGuaid\u00f3 on January 10, according to the Wall Street Journal. However, Pompeo could not pronounce Guaid\u00f3\u2019s name when he mentioned him in a press briefing on January 25, referring to him as \u201cJuan Guido.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just called the figure Washington is attempting to install as Venezuelan President “Juan *Guido*” \u2013 as in the racist term for Italians. America’s top diplomat didn’t even bother to learn how to pronounce his puppet’s name. pic.twitter.com\/HsanZXuSPR<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

    \u2014 Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) January 25, 2019<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    By January 11, Guaid\u00f3\u2019s Wikipedia page had been edited<\/a> 37 times, highlighting the struggle to shape the image of a previously anonymous figure who was now a tableau for Washington\u2019s regime change ambitions. In the end, editorial oversight of his page was handed over to Wikipedia\u2019s elite council of \u201clibrarians,\u201d who pronounced him the \u201ccontested\u201d president of Venezuela.<\/p>\n

    Guaid\u00f3 might have been an obscure figure, but his combination of radicalism and opportunism satisfied Washington\u2019s needs. \u201cThat internal piece was missing,\u201d a Trump administration said<\/a> of Guaid\u00f3. \u201cHe was the piece we needed for our strategy to be coherent and complete.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \u201cFor the first time,\u201d Brownfield, the former American ambassador to Venezuela,\u00a0gushed to<\/a> the New York Times, \u201cyou have an opposition leader who is clearly signaling to the armed forces and to law enforcement that he wants to keep them on the side of the angels and with the good guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

    But Guaid\u00f3\u2019s Popular Will party formed the shock troops of the guarimbas<\/em> that caused the deaths of police officers and common citizens alike. He had even boasted of his own participation in street riots. And now, to win the hearts and minds of the military and police, Guaido had to erase this blood-soaked history.<\/p>\n

    On January 21, a day before the coup began in earnest, Guaid\u00f3\u2019s wife delivered a video address<\/a> calling on the military to rise up against Maduro. Her performance was wooden and uninspiring, underscoring her husband\u2019s political limits.<\/p>\n

    While Guaid\u00f3 waits on direct assistance, he remains what he has always been \u2013 a pet project of cynical outside forces. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter if he crashes and burns after all these misadventures,\u201d Sequera said of the coup figurehead. \u201cTo the Americans, he is expendable.\u201d<\/p>\n

    ______________________________________<\/p>\n

    Max Blumenthal<\/em> is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling\u00a0<\/em>Republican Gomorrah<\/a>,\u00a0Goliath<\/a>,\u00a0The Fifty One Day War<\/a>, and\u00a0The Management of Savagery<\/a>. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including\u00a0<\/em>Killing Gaza<\/a>. Blumenthal founded <\/em>The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America\u2019s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Dan Cohen is a journalist and filmmaker. He has produced widely distributed video reports and print dispatches from across Israel-Palestine. Dan is a correspondent at <\/em>RT America. http:\/\/www.dancohenmedia.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

    Go to Original \u2013 grayzoneproject.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Before the fateful day of January 22, fewer than one in five Venezuelans had heard of Juan Guaid\u00f3. Only a few months ago, the 35-year-old was an obscure character in a politically marginal far-right group closely associated with gruesome acts of street violence. He is the product of a decade-long project overseen by Washington\u2019s elite regime change trainers. While posing as a champion of democracy, he has spent years at the forefront of a violent campaign of destabilization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":127361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}