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
5 - “Galvanizing public unrest…to take advantage of the situation
and spin it against Chavez”
In 2009,
the Generation 2007 youth activists staged their most provocative
demonstration 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 “gathered funds from a variety of US
government sources, which allowed it to gain notoriety quickly as the
hardline wing of opposition street movements,” according to
academic George Ciccariello-Maher’s book, “Building the Commune.”
While
video of the protest is not available, many Venezuelans have
identified Guaidó 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 Guaidó belonged to, and were clad in their trademark
Resistencia!
That
year, Guaidó 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
López, 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’s first president. He was also the first cousin of
Thor Halvorssen, 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.
Though
Lopez’s interests aligned neatly with Washington’s, US diplomatic
cables published by Wikileaks highlighted the fanatical tendencies
that would ultimately lead to Popular Will’s marginalization. One
cable identified Lopez as “a divisive figure within the
opposition… often described as arrogant, vindictive, and
power-hungry.” Others highlighted his obsession with street
confrontations and his “uncompromising approach” as a
source of tension with other opposition leaders who prioritized unity
and participation in the country’s democratic institutions.
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.
Stratfor
and CANVAS – key advisors of Guaidó and his anti-government cadre
– devised a shockingly cynical plan to drive a dagger through the
heart of the Bolivarian revolution. The scheme hinged on a 70%
collapse of the country’s electrical system by as early as April
2010.
“This
could be the watershed event, as there is little that Chavez can do
to protect the poor from the failure of that system,” the
Stratfor internal memo declared. “This 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.”
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 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.
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.
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