(Disclaimer: A few weeks ago, AD leader Henry Ramos Allup wrote a stinging op-ed claiming that some overseas bloggers were supposedly part of a “disgusting dirty war laboratory” looking to defame certain sectors of the opposition. The whole thing is demeaning – full of baseless allegations, innuendo, and even homophobic slurs. Without naming them, we all knew…
Chavismo’s animus against Maria Corina Machado, the leading democracy activist who was indicted on trumped-up charges of “conspiracy” today, has reached farcical extremes. Today, attention was focused on whether she would be jailed – she won’t be quite yet. Nonetheless, the torrent of abuse she’s faced these last few years is extraordinary. Consider. Since 2010, María Corina Machado has been…
Opposition legislator Maria Corina Machado will go to the Prosecutor’s Office today to be charged with attempting to kill Nicolás Maduro. She may be imprisoned today. We’ll be live blogging the events as they unfold. Three quick things to start: Her team has put together a list of all the attacks on Maria Corina through the years. It’s…
Leopoldo Lopez, jailed by chavismo for helping light the spark that led to the street protests that erupted nationwide in February, was highlighted by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the 100 Global Thinkers of 2014, for “upending the tactics of Venezuela’s loyal opposition”. To our mind, this is the first time a foreign publication calls…
It’s been a while since we talked about Venezuela’s opposition on the blog. This is the result of a combination of things: uninteresting stories concerning opposition figureheads (the tussles between chavismo and Juan Carlos Caldera or Carlos Ocariz are not worth writing about); a stasis of the situation of our main leaders (Leopoldo, Maria Corina, and Capriles all seem…
What does the peanut gallery think? Put aside your feelings about a Constitutional Assembly, and admit … that’s one rockin’ video.
I continue to be entertained by Boris Muñoz’s candid interview with political prisoner Leopoldo López. Here are a few takeaways of what Leopoldo says in the second part: The only evidence the government has against me is my speeches. What more proof that this is a dictatorship? The military controls who goes in and who comes…
Last Saturday, Prodavinci published a meaty piece of journalism-slash-history: Part 1 of the first extended interview opposition leader Leopoldo López has given since he was jailed last February (here, in Spanish). The author of the piece is Boris Muñoz, one of Venezuela’s best journalists. The interview is quite long, but that’s understandable. Leopoldo, Venezuela’s most prominent political…
Happy Monday, everyone. A new poll in my Inbox today, this one from IVAD which, as you probably know, usually leans toward the government in its numbers. The highlights: 77% of those polled think the government is headed in the wrong direction; 82.5% say the country is mired in an economic crisis; 78.9% think the country is…
This is the first promotional video I see for the upcoming Congreso Ciudadano. Whatever your opinion on the initiative, this is no two-bit, one-person show. Lilian Tintori, Gaby Arellano, Antonio Ledezma, Maria Corina, Smolansky, Nitu, and music by Los Amigos Invisibles … this group can be many things, but they are not irrelevant. In fact, they…
Ramón José Medina, MUD head-honcho and, inexplicably, also Víctor Vargas’ attorney, said in an interview with José Rafael Briceño that Leopoldo López “brought about jail for himself.” See the video above (in Spanish) and judge for yourself. This comes on the heels of Leopoldo writing a strong, heartfelt, handwritten letter to a Chilean academic, in which he…
Imagine the scene at the Dallas Police Station, November 22nd, 1963. A man is captured in a movie theater and brought into custody, a man named Lee Harvey Oswald. The President of the United States has been murdered a few miles away. Imagine then, in this parallel universe, the Dallas police department deciding that Oswald can go home. In…
Yesterday Henrique Capriles also shut the door on the idea of a Constitutional Assembly, or even the resignation of Nicolás Maduro, a man he used to claim “stole an election.” Basically, he said that without a new CNE, the Constituyente was a no-go, and that Maduro wasn’t going to resign anyway, so there was no point…
Ever since he turned himself in, Venezuelans had not seen or heard from Leopoldo López. The nation’s most visible political prisoner was made … invisible, thanks to the government’s iron discipline. Today, that discipline cracked just a little bit. A clandestine interview, accompanied by pictures of a bearded López in the dungeon, made their way…
Estimado Pepe, Discúlpame el tuteo, pero todos dicen que no te gustan los formalismos. Te escribo hoy porque hay cosas que están pasando en mi país, Venezuela, que no termino de creer que te sean indiferentes. Anoche, a las 3 y media de la mañana, una jueza-esbirra del régimen Venezolano decretó que Leopoldo López continuaría privado de…
Caracas Chronicles 