conversations with Tyler is produced by the mercus center at George Mason University Bridging the Gap between academic ideas and real world problems learn more at marcus.org for a full transcript of every conversation enhanced with helpful links visit conversations withth tyler.com hello everyone and welcome back to conversation with Tyler today I'm here
with leopo Lopez he is an opposition leader from Venezuela he thinks of himself most of all as a freedom activist which he very much is he started his career in Venezuelan Politics as a mayor he was sent to prison for seven years he managed to escape is now living in Spain and he is affiliated with the party volod popular Leopoldo welcome thank you very much Tyler thank you on your audience
to start with your political career you were mayor of Chao which is a part of karacus what was the hardest part of that job of being mayor well the hardest part was to be doing the municipal activities and improving people's lives in the middle of political turmoil my municipality at the heart of karakas became the heart of the protests against Chavez at the time very early in my term
in 2002 2003 it was the epicenter of massive protests against the regime so I had to balance that reality of protesting against the regime with doing things for the municipality and we did extraordinary improvements to the municipality in things that were countercurrent of what was happening elsewhere in karakas for example we brought down crime statistics to make
our municipality a very safe place within a city that was increasing skyrocketing the crime statistics the murder rates to become the most V city in the world kakas was at the time we also improved in a great way all sorts of infrastructure for education for health for mobility and we did a lot of that because we improved the taxation system we created incentives for
economic activity and we became more efficient in the taxation of the municipality so we became more autonomous from the national government I was there for eight years I first run in 2000 I was reelected with more than 80% of the votes in 2004 and I was to become the governor of karakas Metropolitan mayor which is the second most important Post in Venezuelan politics at the time and I was just
disqualified to run for office for political reasons I was taken away from office so the last time I had an opportunity to run for office was in 2004 so if I'm trying to mentally model the governments of Chavez and Maduro to what extent do the people in those governments actually believe their own rhetoric so when they throw you in jail do they actually think well this is for
the good of Venezuela or is it just purely cynical and a parag grab and about corruption and the money what's the balance there in terms of people's perception of what was happening in Venezuela I can give you an interesting framework of what happened over the past years up until 2014 when we called for massive Street protest against Maduro because he had stolen the presidential
election six months before that most Venezuelans thought of our country as a democracy and he was much same way that Venezuela was perceived outside it was a democracy with all sorts of adjectives I think personally when you start putting adjectives in a democracy the democracy is having problems so it was perceived as a democracy in Decline as a fractured
democracy others spoke about a competitive autocracy all sorts of ways not to call Things by their name that it was really a dictatorship so when we call for Street protest in 2014 and the regime violently repressed thousands of people there were thousands of people people thrown into detention hundreds of people thrown into prison thousands of people that were injured and some that
were murdered those of people were murdered by the regime the perceptions started to change so after 2014 it became very clear for the Venezuelan people that we were facing a dictatorship and Maduro at the time had eight out of every 10 Venezuelans against and that pattern has uh sustained ever since but do they think they're doing good when they govern
Maduro Chavez and their minions or is it just cynical no I don't think so I think that at first they might have been a lot of people with good intentions I mean this has been a long process we are now in year 22 of when this all started of Chavez winning an election and killing democracy from within because that's what happened in Venezuela at first he had popular supportting he was able to
win several elections but then democracy was undermined but then with Maduro after Chavez death it became very clear that there was a change a metamorphosis from a system to a clearly criminal structure so Venezuela today it's a criminal structure and I'm not exaggerating we can go into details to explain why I'm saying this but the fact is that they have articulated a way in
which they just oppressed the Venezuelan people taken out all of the freedoms so at this point as you say concretely yes they are cynical yes they know they are harming people yes they know they have created a humanitarian crisis of Dimensions never seen in the Western Hemisphere they know all this and they are absolutely cynical about everything that they do and the consequences to the
Venezuelan people why does there seem to be so much Cuban influence in Venezuela so Cuba is a much smaller country it's less powerful it's quite broke itself what explains the magic hold of Cuba on Venezuela or is that a cliche that's wrong it's very precise Venezuela since 20 years ago fell into the hands of Cuba and in a way it's an invasion one country colonized another country
without shooting a bullet and with the will and the permission of the the colonized country and that's what happened in Venezuela I mean the Cubans have had such a great influence over what happens in Venezuela for a long time and that influence goes from giving away of Venezuelan oil and fuel to Cuba at highly highly discounted prices and many times not even being paid to the
influence of the Cuban dictatorship in Venezuela in Social programs and all of the administration of the state in the intelligence of the state in the security of Maduro is detail is Cuban the military intelligence and some military strategic issues are also very influenced by Cubans and this has a lot to do with a long-standing Latin American tradition that has seen Cuba as
a reference but in the case of Venezuela it became an Open Arms policy to give Cuba the possibility to decide on strategic issues that have to deal with Venezuela so let's wind the clock back to 1959 president ponor is elected right let's say that's you in 1959 what is it you would do differently to stop stop the way history has unfolded in Venezuela oh I think uh banur when
democracy started did a very important job in establishing democracy I'll give you a bit of context Venezuela has mainly been a military dictatorship for most of our history or an autocracy and the first time we had a real democracy was in 1947 when there was the direct election of a constituent assembly and that was pan cour at the time then that government was thrown away by a military
coup in 194 48 and we had 10 years of dictatorship and then when democracy came there was the writing of a very Progressive in Democratic terms Constitution we had 40 Years of a unelected democracy in my view the first 20 years were very positive for Venezuela but then in the last 20 years that anuro was no longer the president there was a decline many of the reforms
that needed to take place didn't happen and also at the very end there was a lot of influence by the media and there was this public opinion that everything had to change in Venezuela and they created this sense of Revenge of Vengeance because of some of the economic situations that Venezuela had lived after the 1980s and that's what brought Chavez to power my friends from
Argentina as you know Argentina in the 1920s was one of the wealthier countries in the world and later it declined rather steeply there are various excuses well it was Peron it was peronism but I wonder if it wasn't actually inevitable and Argentina had a lucky streak of a few decades maybe due to selling meat refrigerated box cars and that was always going to happen to them even
though it had particular prompts when you think of the history of Venezuela do you think the decline was inevitable due to the structure of interest groups the long history of changing constitutions long history of oligarchy or was there actually a path where Venezuela becomes a free fairly prosperous economy I think we for sure many lost opportunities
along the way there was an incredible economic growth during the after War period which coincided with the Democratic period after 1958 Venezuela became a reference not just for its democratic system but also because of the economic Prosperity that we had at the time during the 1970s the oil sector was nationalized it was nationalized in a very efficient way but with some
faults it didn't open o opportunities for Venezuelans to invest in the oil sector which was the most important sector of our economy we did not diversify the economy in the way we should have and some of the windfalls that we had during the 197 s and during other oil shocks were not appropriately taking the best use and the most important oil windfall we had was
actually during the Chavez period between 2004 and 2014 when Chavez came to power the price of oil was at below $15 per barrel and during that period it reached $150 per barrel the increase of oil fiscal income to Venezuela in those 10 years was in real terms larger than the entire oil fiscal income between 1922 when which the the date when we started exporting oil to the year 2000
so that extraordinary windfall was stolen was given away to Corrupt Practices was given away in a Petro diplomacy to get the votes and the support of many countries in Latin America especially the Caribbean and unfortunately right after that huge windfall of 10 years 1920 to 2014 we open the gates to the most tragic humanitarian crisis that we have seen in
the western hemisphere that led to 7 million Venezuelans to flee our country to look for opportunities that were not found in Venezuela to find food shelter medicine opportunities and future that were not found but it was the year after that economic boom ended that this tragedy started in 1970 you were richer than Spain Greece or Israel which I find remarkable but do you today ever look
say at qter or United Arab Emirates Dubai and think the problem actually was democracy and that here are oil rich places that have stayed stable in fact but through autocratic Rule and that it's the intermediate situation that doesn't work I think that I personally will always be in favor of a democratic regime with democratic system that promotes the rule of law the respect for
human rights the respect of freedoms so I think that that's a priority for me it is and I believe it's it's a priority also for the large large majority of the Venezuelan people that want to live in a democracy however there has been mismanagement due to misconceptions of the economy to a state L economy that did not open possibilities for a private sector to flourish independently of the
state but also with the level of corruption that we have seen particularly over the past 22 years it's what has led Venezuela to the situation in which we are so in Venezuela You could argue that we did much much better economically and in terms of all of the social and economic standards uh than what happened during this last 20 years of autocracy so this autocracy
had the largest windfall and the largest humanitarian crisis during the Democratic period of 40 years Venezuela became one of the most litered countries in Latin America with the largest amount of professionals being graduated every year with the best in social health and education standards vaccination rates housing programs that were in Latin America so we did perform much better
under the Dem atic period than has been the performance by any means in the autocratic regimes of the last 22 years why wasn't there more support for guo's revolt against the current government just internally things became so terrible right here was a plausible alternative to the status quo and it failed why there was an immense level of support we saw in the streets hundreds
of thousands of people protesting again we've had many cycles of very intense and long-standing protests in the year 2014 it was 6 months 20177 also four months and in 2019 almost an entire year but then came coid that paralyzed the country and there was no gasoline that also gave the regime of Maduro and I think this is a global pattern where we seen that coid really gave a hand to
autocratic regimes to impose more social control and I think that that was one of the reasons why the mobilization that we saw in 2019 completely stopped in 2020 to what extent does the opposition in venez itself corrupt no I think that by no means there is a comparison in which with the level of Corruption of the regime but we do have great challenges
in terms of how to manage our country in very transparent and efficient ways and I think this is one of the challenges that we have going forward is to make the administration of public resources and of the country very transparent and efficient and this is again something that requires the compromise of of all all the Democratic sectors in the case of Venezuela do sanctions work should we
favor sanctions I believe that sanctions are a necessary tool to compensate the lack of other options to deal with autocracies and we have seen that very clearly after the invasion of Russia to Ukraine that the First Response of Europe and the United States and particularly very intensely and surprisingly to me the way in which Europe responded with economic sanctions
as a first alternative I think that in the case of Venezuela that is also true I also believe that sanctions being important and I support the imposition of individual sanctions for violations of human rights and Corruption but also General sanctions that will create the necessary pressure in order for the regime to open opportunities for the democratization of the country so I
think that sanctions are the only reason why the regime will sit down and negotiate a way forward towards democratization of Venezuela obviously Russia is still fighting in Ukraine other than the case of of South Africa and apartheid what are the examples where sanctions actually have worked don't they usually just make people in the sanctioned country poorer and often they cement in
the autocracy that has been an argument that has been widely spread but it's actually not true it's actually not factually true that the crisis in Venezuela was created by sanctions by no means in in economic or social terms the crisis of Venezuela coincides with the imposition of sanctions and now with a full regime of sanctions there is this narrative promoted by the autocracy of
Maduro that Venezuela is doing better that there is actually economic growth we have seen in some of the Wall Street analyses about Venezuela that this is a year where there will be an important growth in the economy so if that is happening and sanctions are imposed now actually there is really no clear relationship that sanctions create a strain in the Venezuelan economy that is
true but they are also the only tool the only leverage that there is in order for Maduro to open a possibility for a free and fair election if we look at Brazil Brazil has Petrus Mexico has PMX those have been major problems with corruption bad governance but they haven't brought those regimes to the state of chaos we see in Venezuela if you think about this
comparatively what do you think are the differential reasons why Mexico and Brazil have stayed quite a bit more stable it's incredible when I worked in PESA I graduated I had the opportunity to be in the office for strategic planning particularly with the Chief Economist and we we were always very interested in the analysis of what PESA and and other state-owned companies and
by far by far PESA was analyzed and was evaluated as one of the best state-owned oil companies in the world it was at a point the third largest oil company in the world we were producing at the time 3.7 million barrels of oil but that all changed today we're producing less than 600,000 barrels of oil and the company has completely collapsed so when you frame the question that today PMX is a
reference or is doing better than Venezuela it's just a huge shift because PMX was the wrong example of what should oil companies be like 20 25 or 30 40 years ago and and it's not that pemix is getting better is that PESA basically collapsed PESA was completely dismantled because of corruption tens of billions of dollars were stolen because of the corrupt activities around the oil
industry they are dozens of cases open in the United States courts because of money laundering corruption and Corrupt Practices associated with PESA and I'll give you some figures of this collapse I gave you the first one we were producing 3.7 millions of barrels of oil now less than 600,000 the debt of the company was around $3 billion 20 years ago now it's
over $50 billion and we're producing less the number of direct employees was around 50,000 and now it's h close to 200,000 and there is no output in products from the Venezuelan refineries because they basically collapsed one of them exploded in the year 2012 and since the there was a corrupt hiring of the insurance it was never brought back to function ever again it was the largest
refining complex in the Western Hemisphere and it just collapsed and because of Corrupt Practices it has remained collapsed over the past 20 20 years 10 years I'm sorry if we think of Venezuela as the Latin country with the close ties to Simon bolevard do in some ways the problems of Venezuela reflect original flaws in bardism no I think bolard had a proposal
he had a that if it had come true it would have been a very different geopolitical dynamic in the entire continent and the world because his his view was that Venezuela Ecuador Pama and Colombia were one nation and Bolivia were one nation called the Grand Colombia unfortunately for different reasons at the time political reasons at the time that didn't happen we split up
in different republics he was also very clear in the compromise to a republic to the rule of law to the respect of the freedoms and the Liberties of the people of the newly freed countries so I think that it's the contrary there has been a path against what the Bol and the independence proposal at the time thought for the future of Venezuela has it it hurt Venezuela to be so thinly
populated so it's one of the most thinly populated countries in the world right is that a problem for nation building and state capacity when you say thinly populated what do you refer to there a lot of fairly empty territory right so the return to building infrastructure to more distant parts of the country is relatively low to get say to Angel Falls by Road can be a daunting proposition
the difference between the coast the highlands maybe in some ways that has limited its ability to evolve into a mature nation state well I mean that could be a an analysis however the population in Venezuela has been concentrated along the coast primarily and in large cities there was during the after War period a huge migration because of the oil activity to the
cities and that has remained a pattern that of course looking forward there needs to be some propositions for taking better advantage of the rest of the territory however we do have very densely populated cities that in in themselves have large problems to be solved are Venezuelans too charismatic culturally well I think V an are very happy people Venezuelans are people that
have a particular Charisma and I have seen that and and realized that over the past year that I have seen Venezuelans all over Latin America and other parts of the world and I see how they do how they are perceived how many of them succeed in different Works opportunities and they are a very well-considered character and and that's that's what I've seen all over my travels in Latin
America and of course I think that we have an entrepreneurship spirit that because of so many hardships that we have been facing particularly over the past 20 years and intensively over the past 10 years that Venezuelans have become very resilience but it's a particular way of being resilient with Good Vibes and and good attitude culturally how are the highlands different say
Merida well Merida is culturally linked to closer to Colombia to the culture of Colombia that it's also primarily a mountain populated country of course there is a large population in the coast so up until the mid of the 20th century Western Venezuela where we have the mountains and it's close to Colombia was basically detached from karakas and from the coast and to travel they needed to
be traveled by sea so it took two three days to go from from Med to karakas and that created an isolation of that part of the country however that quickly changed during the last part of the of the 20th century and Venezuela became a very well communicated territory Am I Wrong to think there's an especially strong rivalry or sometimes even dislike between Colombia and
Venezuela and where does that come from well I mean there are some people that Tred to promote that conflict and tried to use Chavez especially was very keen on doing this to use historical references of the differences between Bolivar and Santander Santander was one of the leaders of the independence of the grand Colombia he was Colombian and he became president of Colombia and
Tavis had a narrative trying basically to say that the history of Venezuela can be reduced in three episodes when the Spanish came and they conquered and they killed the Indians when we got independence and then Boliver was suffered treason by Santander and then his own period and they tried to simplify that narrative and this is something very characteristic of
populism St Pon that you mentioned before was also very very keen in doing this so there is the sentiment that it has been politically manipulated however we have seen the way in which the people from Colombia migrated to Venezuela by the millions during the 20th century the last part of the 20th century and now the tide has changed and millions of Venezuelans are migrating to Colombia
and there is a very natural integration so Venezuela and Colombia in a way are very close culturally historically and family way there are millions millions of Venezuelans that have married Colombians and and now their their childrens are Colombian Venezuelans and I think that creates a a very tight bond between the two countries will Chile go the route of Venezuela or will it keep
its political stability there seems to be much more turmoil there now than there had been well I think they have the same Temptation at the moment that we had in Venezuela 22 years ago when there was this proposal to change the Constitution to create new institutions and to back the institutions with the people loyal to the regime so Chile undergoing a challenge of rewriting a
con institution that could divide the Chilean people as it happened in Venezuela or it could unite Chilean people as it didn't happen in Venezuela so I think in a great way depends from the output and the type of political consensus that they can agree upon in this constituent process that they are undergoing and I hope they learn from what happened in Venezuela because at
the time the promise of a new constitution of a constituent assembly was a mirage it was a promise to solve all of the problems and it it made democracy crumbled and it basically dismantled the rule of law and it paved the way for the autocratic regime that we have now it's a puzzle to me why there's an apparent negative correlation in Latin political developments so
governance in Peru more or less seems to have collapsed Chile has more turmoil Colombia arguably has more political problems than it seemed maybe seven or eight years ago Mexico much worse with drug gangs Brazil seems weirder is that all just coincidence or is there some underlying structural Force why all these developments are coming at the same time more or less well I think that
there is an underlying problem which is the lack of delivering of democratic regimes I think there is a tendency a global tendency to undermine democracy and part of the problem has been the lack of democratic governments to deliver on big issues poverty inequality opening opportunities health and education so I think that there is a real challenge that democracy need to
deliver for the people because if not they'll become questioned and they become prey of autocratic proposals that won't improve the living standards of a people but will crumble and attack the democratic system you're seven years in prison I've read you had 300 books with you which ones were they well I had many books I had many books on the history of
Venezuela I also had different oil books economic books for example I had the different books of of Daniel Jurgen that I reread while I was in prison I read a lot of Latin American literature from Vargas yosa to Leonardo padura a Cuban that has written masterpieces in the way in which the Cuban Society has evolved and that for me sounds very close to or case in Venezuela I also read a lot of
Colombian literature William mpina who wrote very interesting books on history and an adventure the way the rivers in South America when conquer the orino and and the Amazon River I read a lot of Step a lot of his autobiographies mainly the books that that I had I wrote the book that you read after a year and a half in prison but things really changed at first I did have access to books but
books became such a sherish thing for me and and something that it was very clear for my captors that it was something that kept me very focused that they took the books away and they did it in a in a very cruel way because I was in a prison cell 2 by two with the bars and a meter and a half there was another cell so they put all of the books right in front
of me that I I could not reach them I could not read them but they were there so I wrote an essay that called the imprisoned books and it was in a way a metaphor of how autocratic regimes keep knowledge or keep books or keep discussions away from the people in order to control the minds and and the attitudes of the individuals so my relationship with the books while I was
in prison was a very close relationship at one point I was taking away all of the books and the director of the person he called himself a Christian so I said you should not take away from me the word of the Lord so you should give me the Bible and after a couple days he gave me the Bible so I read the Bible from Genesis to apocalypsis and it was a really interesting experience to read
the Bible in that way reading it chronologically the the story of the people from Israel and then the story of Jesus Christ for me was a a really interesting and fulfilling experience I also had the opportunity to write but then they took my pens and paper away away from me by the end of my imprisonment I had nothing I only had my mattress and and the few clothing that I
had there you didn't have a chair I didn't have a table I didn't have anything just so our listeners know your book is called Freedom confined prison notes by the Insurgent Democratic leader of Venezuela with respect to the Bible how exactly is it different to read the Bible in prison to read the Old Testament for me was reading the history of the people from Israel so that was
something very fulfilling for me and very great admiration for that story that is for us Christians Catholics gave way to Jesus and then the story of Jesus when you're in prison is a is a very powerful story because it's a story of an individual that was first praised and supported and then was challenged by his own people and then he was beaten and he
was crucified and he was misunderstood and he suffered a great deal and then we see the ways in which the apostles took the word and and spread the word and for me that I've been always involved with creating networks of people and doing Grassroots organizations and Grassroots activism I mean you read the story of the Apostles and it's the story of Grassroots activism so that felt also
very close to to me so it was a lecture at different levels of course there is a spiritual reading of the Bible but then there's also the historical context that I really came familiar with and very identified with many of the stories that were there because many of the stories in in the Bible are stories of hardships of crossing the desert in many different
ways that's what has been my life experience for personally and also familywise and also Nationwide is that we have been crossing the deserts at different periods individually and as a nation so for me that that also was a very heart feeling experience what was it like living without a mirror it was interesting to look at my face after more than three months without knowing
what I looked like I had grown my beard then my beard became a symbol so other prisoners I was isolated in one of the buildings the prison where I was I'm aware they had two buildings in one of them there were between 400 and 500 prisoners military prisoners and I was in the other building most of the time by myself so I was taken to the place where I could see the sun once every 3
four days very early in the morning so had a beard so other prisoners started to grow a beard as a sign of protesting against the regime so there was a point where we had many of us had grown the beer so the beers became illegal in order for me to see my lawyer I had to shave and the other prisoners were not able to have their beard so prison is a very intense experience in many many
ways but it can break you or it can make you stronger and I was very conscious of that because I prepared myself for this experience because six months before I was taken to prison there was a warrant for my arrest and that gave me an opportunity to read about the experiences of other political prisoners so I read the story of Mandela of Gandhi of the brief periods in prison of Martin
Luther King and of many Venezuelan political prisoners and there was one thing that was very clear in all of those testimonies which is they need to have a routine so since the very first day I was very self-conscious of having a routine and knowing that my Battlefield against a regime was taking place in my head in my heart and in in the capacity to maintain myself with a
strong soul and I was very very conscious and disciplined about going about my routine that was basically praying reading or writing and exercising and doing physical exercise so I did that with Sport and discipline every single day and that's what kept me very focused during my time in prison how much trust was there amongst the prisoners amongst the prisoners there
there was a lot of trust actually I was able to lead a protest in prison we were able to take control of the entire prison this happened in February of 2015 we had been PR preparing ourselves because I had Brief Encounters with other prisoners particularly when I was taken to mass after 3 months of being there I was asking to be able to go to mass or to see other prisoners which is
because that's a right that the prisoners have and there's one point in the mass liturgy that when you stand up and you give the people a hug in expression of Peace So that gave me three to four seconds with each prisoner because when I went to that ceremony I was with two officers of the intelligence police but that brief moment gave me the opportunity to tell
some of the prisoners and to give them the following message I would tell them tell your wife to look to my wife and to get in contact so I did that with many prisoners and we had a a slow iteration of getting in contact with different prisoners and he got to a point where we had people in each one of the floors in each one of the sectors of the prison so one day we were prepared to do a a
protest a very strong protest so one day it all sparked because they mistreated a baby that was coming in for visit so this plan that we have been crafting for months was activated and we took control of the prison for maybe 14 hours it was a very intense moment and prisoners were very conscious of the dictatorship at the source of many of the problems since
it was a military prison more than half of the people there were there because of political reasons there is a very high intolerance and very tremendous consequences for the military that stand up against the regime so people that make a comment or go to a meeting or even talk about a news in a certain way they run the risk of being thrown into prison so as I said many of the people
there were also military political prisoners with a very strong commitment or struggle for Freedom so that created a very fertile ground for organizing many of the prisoners what was used as money in the prison what was the medium of exchange um well for itself since I was isolated I had no possibility of of doing any exchange for anything but I do know that the way things get exchang is
not just with money but also through the visits so you know you get paid through the wives or the spouses or the people that come to visit that's how some of the transactions happen so they happen outside of prison but there is not much exchange since there are not many goods or services that can be provided one of the services that prisoners provide is
uh shaving other prisoners so that's an open service that can be charged for but there are very little things that can be exchanged do you ever regret simply leaving the country instead of having gone to prison was that the right decision you made how do you think about it and how transparent do you feel your own views and motives are to yourself I actually have never regretted doing what
I did I was very very conscious because I presented myself voluntarily I was not caught I mean there was a warrant for my arrest I went into hiding for several days and then I called for a protest to turn myself in and tens of thousands of people came out to the street and I presented myself being very clear in what I was doing and in a way I felt the commitment to show to the Venezuelan
people on the world the the putrified system that we were in and the lack of rule of law so it became a symbol of Injustice and that became also a symbol of the struggle for many people to to fight I never regretted doing that it was very hard for me and my family I also know that my family although went through very difficult moments they understand and they support what we went
through because we had a purpose I had a purpose as a as an individual my family shared that purpose and I believe that happiness is about having a purpose happiness it's not the material gain or or the status that you can have it could be that for some people but I think the the best way to define happiness is when you have a purpose that you can stand up
for that you wake up every day with commitment regardless of the obstacles that you are facing I continue to have that purpose now I never regretted going to prison and I can tell you when I escaped more than a year ago it was very difficult for me because I had made a personal and a public commitment to remain in Venezuela however after seven years it got to a point where there was
diminishing returns and the things that I could impact in Venezuela being isolated and also the personal difficulty of seeing my kids growing up my oldest daughter Manuela was four when I first went to prison my youngest Leopoldo was one and then I have a baby girl four so that was of course another another reason that that led me to be with my family but primarily I was
motivated to figure out different ways of making or struggle for Freedom known to get different types of support to articulate with other leaders and movements that are going through the same struggle elsewhere because what I have realized is that what we have been going through in Venezuela is not an isolated issue not an isolated case not even in Latin America it's it's a global
struggle for Freedom over this past year and a half I have seen the similarities in what we are going through with many other places in Asia in Africa in the Middle East in Eastern Europe and of course in Latin America you did your undergraduate work at Kenyon in the United States when you first showed up what surprised you the most the Midwest
it was uh something very different I really had an extraordinary opportunity to be at Kenyan college and have a liberal arts education it was a place where I struggled very intensely with ideas and I also had the opportunity to do my early activist and Grassroots organization I remember we organized a protest during my junior year it was after the invasion of Kuwait so we were
protesting against the war and it was 12 of us and and we sounded the fire alarms exactly at the same time that the first bombs went down this was you know more than 30 years ago and one of the people that were with me was caught so we all showed and we were suspended for some time but we ignited a very intense debate in campus I also had the opportunity to organize one of the first
environmentally conscious organizations in campus we called it ashes active students helping the Earth survive and he was much in the thinking of of Green Peace at the time being very very proactive that was a time that we had the first celebration of Earth Day in campus and so I had the opportunity to be in contact with many issues to be I had the opportunity to very intense
philosophical ideological debates and also I was very involved in in sports so it was a very very good experience why is boxing fun I've always done martial arts ever since I was a young kid I've always been involved I competed in martial arts but several years ago a couple years before I went to prison I started boxing I really liked it while I was in prison I I was really doing a lot
of boxing most of the time by myself is something that gave me a lot of self-control and also a lot of assurance even though that I knew that I I was always going to lose against the weapons and the numbers of my custody gave me a lot of self assurance and it's a great sport it's tactical it's physical it's very fast and it gets you in contact and
I've always liked extreme sports and for me boxing is it's an extreme sport in the sense that when you're sporing and you you're getting hit you know that you're in a dangerous situation and you need to you know not only have good off but also good defense and and in a way you know boxing is also about knowing how to get hit knowing how to defend it's it's very strategic so I mean I I
love boxing I box five times a week if I can why are motorcycles fun I've always liked the motorcycles as well I actually competed in Enduro when I was mayor I always used a motorcycle to move around the city I've always been a motorcycle fan as well I actually had a the opportunity to go I crossed from Ohio to the the West Coast in a relatively small motorcycle in a Suzuki Katana 250 that
whoever knows about motorcycles knows it's a it's not a highway motorcycle but it was a great experience it was a solitary experience for me it spent three weeks crossing the United States and that actually prepared me in a in a way for prison I had another experience I hitchhiked from Peru to Venezuela I was very into ice climbing at the time so I spent some weeks climbing in Peru
right after the mountains open because the cendo luminoso a Gia group was no longer taking control of that part of the country and then a hitchhike back to Venezuela all of those experience of being alone I think prepared me for what I had to face later on in prison Shay Gara overrated or underrated I think overrated for sure I mean he was somebody that assassinated people
himself he committed great crimes against the Cuban people he also was a systematic violator of Human Rights and and promoted violent conflict elsewhere but he became a cultural icon that has been presented as something of an ideal of a revolution without really looking at what his actions were if you think of everything you've learned and experienced over the decades have your
political views shifted more to the left or more to the right and why well I've become more of a Libertarian to tell you the truth I think that even that right left Spectrum doesn't do precisely to the way in which I shifted I continue to have a great priority in my belief to social issues to addressing the huge problem that we have of poverty how to
lift millions of people out of poverty and inequality but I believe that the core of the solution for the well-being of millions of people is with the respect of and the promotion of people's rights so I've become more libertarian in terms of the geopolitics we have seen how many countries that were social democracies or or even countries that had more of a left leaning political
ideology have been less solid I have given less solidarity to struggle for freedom in Venezuela so I think we need to think of ways of associating with other peoples it's not only between left and right but basically those who promote freedom and liberty as the core of the beliefs to articulate a society that provides wellbeing for all here's a question from a reader set in the
context of what has been happening with the Madura regime and I quote has there been a right-wing radicalization of Venezuelans a lot of my Venezuelan friends are now proudly homophobic and anti-feminist also very disrespectful of anything related to equality and help for the poor has that happened because of the failures of an ostensibly left-wing regime I certainly don't think
that that is true I don't know where your reader knows this this group of Venezuelans but it it surprised me that that characterization I can tell you our own beliefs we are very open in that respect and we believe that all right should be for all the people and in that sense we have become a movement of vard in different positions we have the only
transgender congresswoman in the entire continent from our political party and we believe that our view for democracy what we talked about the best Venezuela which is in a way the promised land or objective we promote that all rights should be for all the people what has become radical and I could share that view is in the rejection of socialism as a concept the way in which venezuel
today perceive the word and the concept of socialism is very very negative because socialism has been the banner under which the destruction of Venezuela happened so socialism is a it's a very highly rejected concept and with a lot of passion you will hear people of very humble backgrounds and very humble and and poor reality being very charged against what socialism means for
Venezuelan people socialism for Venezuelan people means the lack of Freedom means a human Arian tragedy means hyperinflation the collapse of the economy means the incapacity to provide Health Services means the complete collapse of the educational system the destruction of the universities the criminalization of the security forces the incapacity to vaccinate newborns the
incapacity to give running water to the large majority of the people that reality is what socialism means to the large large majority of the Venezuelan people what type of people would you recommend should return to Venezuela now well I think all of the people that could return should return however when we look at the migration patterns more or less a rule of th is that when you have
such a massive migration like the one that has happened in Venezuela where 7 million people out of a population of 30 people have already left the country this global patterns talk about onethird of that population returning if there is an improvement in the conditions and the Improvement in the conditions is not us economics it's also the democratic system so given that I think that a lot
of the people that have already left Venezuela are going to stay away from Venezuela so that provides us with a huge challenge in how to incorporate Venezuelans that not necessarily are going to return to our country physically but there are ways to support the Reconstruction of Venezuela as a nation and we see I mean great examples Colombia is it's an interesting example
Israel of course is a it's a very important example of how you can support not necessarily living in the territory and taking the best advantage of such a large diaspora the diaspora in Venezuela has taken a lot of the best professionals unfortunately medical doctors Engineers economists have left our country teachers all sorts of professionals have left our country and
of course we would need for many of them to return but the fact is that many of them will remain so we need to figure out ways in which all those that remain and those who go back to Venezuela can support the Reconstruction of our country when you give advice to the United States what do you tell us to do well to use the extraordinary leverage that the US has over Venezuela in order
to pressure for a path towards democratization of Venezuela and that means free and fair elections to use the leverage of sanctions in order to promote a free and fair election in Venezuela the last two questions first what is it you're doing now well I continue to be very involved in Venezuelan politics in the sense that I have the responsibility of our political
party however we are giving more and more responsibilities to those who remain in Venezuela I'm also doing a fellowship at the Wilson Center in Washington DC where I am working and researching on the rise of autocracy as a global phenomenon the decrease in democracies and particularly the way in which Freedom movements have evolved over the past years and thinking about
ways in which we can improve the efficiency the capacity the buildup Grassroots organization of Freedom movements in Venezuela and elsewhere and that has taken me to be involved with different universities I spent some time at Stanford University in March I was at Harvard last week in GW a couple of months ago and I'm also trying to articulate a space a movement of leaders
and movements from countries that are living today on autocratic regimes to articulate in a better way or common struggle for Freedom so those are the three things I'm doing and what is it you hope to be doing next with that group The International Group well with the international group we were thinking of Hosting or promoting what we call the world Liberty Congress by the end of
this year we hope to have this event in villus Lithuania to gather leaders and movements from all over the world and come with ways in which we can collaborate with each other we can communicate we can Advocate and we can also join efforts in such important issues like how to address the cratic Network that has been functioning among the autocratic regimes that lead to huge
levels of corruption and that are the source of maintaining this autocratic regimes so there are many ways in which we are looking to collaborate among leaders and movements there is no such a movement of the sort today and we hope to promote the first steps for a global movement for Liberty and freedom leapold Lopez thank you very much thank you very much Tyler thank you and and your
audience thanks for listening to conversations with Tyler you can subscribe to the show on Apple podcasts Spotify or your favorite podcast app if you like this podcast please consider giving us a rating and leaving a review this helps other listeners find the show on Twitter I'm at Tyler Cowan and the show is at Cowen convos until next time please keep listening and [Music] learning