The Daily - Monday, Mar. 12, 2018

Episode Date: March 12, 2018

With Venezuela in crisis, its most vocal opposition leader, Leopoldo López, is under house arrest, unable to act. What happens if he does? Guest: Wil S. Hylton, a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, as Venezuela descends further into crisis, its most vocal and beloved opposition leader sits under house arrest, unable to act, and prohibited from speaking out. What happens if he does? It's Monday, March 12th.

When Leo Lopez wakes up on a typical day, it's very early. It's 4.30, 5 o'clock in the morning. It's dark out. He lives on a leafy street in the suburbs of Caracas. And he gets out of bed and pads down to the front door like many people do, opens it, and without going too far outside, grabs the newspaper and generally spends the morning in a sort of solitude, but at about seven goes to wake his two kids, Manuela and Leopoldo Jr. He always dresses them, gets their shoes on, makes sure their backpacks are ready. And then when it's time for them to head off to school, he and his wife Lillian walk the kids to the door. Leo kisses them goodbye, and he can't go with them. So he closes the door behind them and goes back inside,

but sometimes he'll climb up onto the roof to look out as far as he can. To the north, he can see El Avila National Park, where he used to love to run and cycle and climb. And then to the south, the street where his family's just departed, which is lined with the secret police from the Venezuelan government to make sure he doesn't leave the house. Will Hilton has been reporting on Leo Lopez for the past six months. Leo Lopez is the most prominent political prisoner in Latin America

and possibly the world. We stand in solidarity with those who are detained at this very moment. In Venezuela, Leopoldo Lopez. He's sort of the president who never was of Venezuela. The United States is deeply concerned that Leopoldo Lopez has been convicted and sentenced on a range of politically motivated charges. The current crisis in Venezuela. A dictatorship trying to survive at the expense of an unprecedented humanitarian distress. You can pretty much go through the list of Western heads of state. Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Theresa May, Justin Trudeau, and everyone has supported him.

Angela Merkel, Theresa May, Justin Trudeau, and everyone has supported him. An evening tweet by President Donald Trump. The message to release jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez. The sort of perfect example is that both Barack Obama and Donald Trump are in perfect agreement about this particular case. It's sort of an outlier in all other world affairs. And it really seems that the only people who want him in prison are the current regime in Venezuela. Well, who is this man, Leo Lopez? Leo Lopez grew up in a wealthy enclave in northeastern Caracas. He was a competitive swimmer. He loved skateboarding.

He loved bicycling with his cousins in the neighborhood and running around, chasing after girls. And it was really on a school trip in the early part of high school out into a rural state, an oil-producing region of Venezuela, where he told me he was just shocked by the level of poverty that he saw in the barrios out there and the contrast between the wealth that he knew was underground and the poverty above ground. And that really sort of animated him to become interested in politics at that age. What do you mean by the wealth underground and the poverty above ground? Well, when you think about Venezuela,

the most important thing to keep in mind, both politically and economically, and to a certain degree socially, is the oil. Venezuela sits on the largest proven oil reserves in the world, larger than Saudi Arabia. And so it's the potential beneficiary of this extraordinary wealth. And yet, even under the nominal democracy at the time that Leo was growing up, there was enormous stratification of income. And so this underclass was becoming increasingly frustrated by the distribution of wealth to a very small group of the upper class and the abject poverty throughout so much of the country.

Remember, these were really the conditions that led to the popularity in the late 1990s of Hugo Chavez, who was promising in a very forceful way to redistribute this income from the oil and give more of it to the people. more of it to the people. So when Chavez becomes president in the late 1990s, at the same time, the price of oil is also skyrocketing. And he is showered with revenue from the state oil company,

which he does distribute. He does make good on a lot of these promises. Unemployment plunges. Income inequality in Venezuela becomes one of the lowest levels in the Western Hemisphere, and the poor love him for it. But as the price of oil goes down over the second half of his presidency, you start to see economic trouble creep in. The country was also entering real shortages of food and medicine. And yet at the same time, Chavez is obliterating democratic institutions, basically, one by one. He's consolidating power. He's stacking the courts.

He's empowering and emboldening these paramilitary colectivo groups who will take action against anyone who appears to threaten his grip on power. So, for example, when organized protests take to the streets, For example, when organized protests take to the streets, you can expect the paramilitary colectivos to arrive and beat up on the protesters. And as Leopoldo watches this, he decides that he's going to challenge Chavez for power. So throughout this time, Leo Lopez is extremely critical of Chavez. And he'd gone to the United States for college

and became very aware of the traditions of nonviolence. And Lopez becomes committed to bringing this kind of change and this kind of pressure to Venezuela. He's become mayor of a borough of Caracas. Like, it's the Manhattan of Caracas. It's the wealthiest and most prominent, and leading it is a very important position. It's a very useful stepping stone for a political career that would allow Leo Lopez ultimately to challenge Chavez for the presidency. And how is Leo as mayor?

Leo's tenure as mayor is almost uniformly beloved by his constituents. In terms of the policy, he's jacking up corporate taxes and using the money for public works, building schools and rec centers and public parks. And on the other hand, he's also adopting conservative models of policing and lowering the crime rate dramatically. No faction of the city loved him more than the police department.

What it leads to is this sort of cartoonishly popular mayor. I mean, he's known for showing up at crime scenes at 2 o'clock in the morning and standing there with his municipal police jacket on, consulting with detectives in the blinking red lights and for throwing the first shovel of dirt at groundbreaking ceremonies. And then on weekends, you'd find him standing on a bench in some plaza with a megaphone shouting at a crowd and encouraging them to nonviolent protests. So you've got to understand that Leo loves Venezuela in a way that most people in most countries probably can't relate to.

And in fact, as mayor, he meets and falls in love with a Venezuelan woman named Lilian Tintori. When he finally proposes to Lillian, he says to her, this is my life, I'm committed to Venezuela, and if you marry me, you're marrying Venezuela. And she agrees to this, and the wedding takes place before hundreds of people in a huge public park. And it appears to a lot of people that they are becoming the future of Venezuela. And so by the end of that term, he's got a 92% approval rating, and he's ranked by the city mayor's Foundation as the third best mayor in the world.

So it sounds like Leo is starting to gain some real stature and power and popularity. How does the Chavez regime, the government in power, respond to him becoming kind of an up-and-comer? It becomes clear right away that his rising popularity is seen as a threat by Chavez and the Chavez government. And so, Leo Lopez comes under an extraordinary number of both physical and administrative attacks. Chavez had a number of armed loyalist groups who made three major attempts on Lopez's life

between 2002 and 2006. In one case, shooting up his car and killing one of his bodyguards who died in Leo's arms that day. And then on the administrative side, there was an accusation that came from the Chavez government that something in his budget was funny and he was spending money on the wrong parts of the municipal budget,

which seems like a trivial detail, but the decision was made by the Chavez government that this was important enough to ban Leo Lopez from seeking public office in the future. So the Chavez regime is attempting to kill him, it sounds like, through allies, and having failed to do that, decides to end his political career. Yeah, it's the ban that has transformed his trajectory. But even after that, Leo's undeterred.

He continues taking to the streets constantly, rallying his supporters to protest the government through constant nonviolent demonstrations. At 4.25 today, on the 5th March, Hugo Chavez has died. After struggling with his illness for almost two years... 2013 is the year Hugo Chavez, who's been sick for quite a while at this point, finally succumbs and dies, and is replaced by his sort of hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro,

who takes power in lieu of Chavez but has to run in order to remain in power. And at this point, Leo Lopez is still banned from running, so he throws his support behind an opposition figure who challenges Maduro and comes one percentage point from winning. A showdown may be looming in Venezuela after a disputed presidential election. Prompting his challenger to demand a full recount. We don't know if he really won the election was stolen by Maduro. Right, just one point. Just one point. And so it was entirely possible that even a small amount of electoral fraud could have tipped the election.

So what does Leo Lopez decide to do? The big incident for Leo Lopez was on February 12th of 2014, when he led a rally of mostly students near the university in Caracas, advocating peaceful protests, saying over and over again we have to remain nonviolent, reminding the crowd legitimacy would come through the nonviolent element. Anti-riot police formed a line, trying to stop the protesters from advancing. And he was able to keep the crowds peaceful, certainly when he was there. And then he left and the students marched on the office of the attorney general at the time

and began throwing rocks at the building. Which triggered an overreaction from security officers there. Two of the protesters were killed. And soon thereafter, the government announced that Leo Lopez was the instigator of all this trouble and essentially responsible for the deaths and that he would be prosecuted for terrorism and murder and things like that. He went into hiding for several days.

And during that period of hiding, he released a video declaring his innocence and his refusal to repent for anything a downtown plaza in support of him. And he wants them to dress all in white and gather to gets on his motorcycle and starts into the city. And he doesn't really know what's going to happen. He knows that he has a lot of supporters. He doesn't know how many are going to turn out. He doesn't know if they're actually going to wear white or what this is going to be like. And he starts trying to find his way to the plaza. When he gets into the center of town,

he begins to encounter all of this. And he sees how extensive the response is and was surprised at that point by how far the crowd extended. We have power! We have power! We have power! And he tries to find a way into the crowd, but he begins to encounter police barricades. They're out looking for him. And he's trying to find his way around the barricades. And he gets

a little closer and then he gets a little closer. But finally, he concludes that he can't avoid all of the barricades and that he's just going to have to take his chances at one. So he pulls up to this one police barricade and pauses for a second and takes his helmet off. And these municipal cops from the borough where he had been mayor, all of whom are very fond of him, they looked at him and one of them stiffens his spine, salutes and waves him through to join his supporters. So he got off the bike and started wading toward this statue in the middle of the crowd. And he climbs up on the statue and he faces out over this huge crowd in all directions. There's video of this online, and it is just staggering to behold the number of people.

It's tens upon tens of thousands. And some people have put the number closer to 400,000 people, almost all dressed in white. Someone hands him this bullhorn. Someone else gives him a Venezuelan flag, which he eventually wraps around his shoulders. And he starts calling out this message, and he says, this is for the youth who have no jobs,

who have no future, who have no freedom. And he says, this democracy has failed, and if I'm going to have to go to jail for saying that, if my imprisonment helps to awaken the people, then it's worth the infamous punishment that's being handed down on me. And then it's time for him to turn himself in. So he climbs down from the pedestal, and there are members of the National Guard waiting there with a personnel transport vehicle. It sort of looks like a tank, but there's no gun on top, this big white truck.

And they escort him into the vehicle and are getting ready to drive off with him to take him to prison, and they can't go anywhere because the crowd has pressed in. That's also an extraordinary thing to watch. You see just this mass of people clustered around to hold on to him and sort of embrace him in this moment, climbing over the tank, breaking bottles on it, rocking it. And it ends up taking

three hours, during which time someone hands him another bullhorn inside this vehicle. vehicle. And he says, this is my decision. I want to go face this court of injustice. I want this to happen so we can call attention to what's happening in Venezuela. Please make room to let us through. Please part the way for me. And slowly, sort of angrily, this crowd starts to pull back again. And a narrow path forms in front of the tank. And once in a while, you have somebody pop out from the crowd and still throw a bottle at the tank. But for the most part, this big truck starts moving slowly through the crowd to get to prison. So he's taken to prison. So he's taken to prison. What was the stated reason for his arrest, Will? Well, he was initially charged with these crimes that were on the arrest warrant. Arson was in there. Terrorism was in there. Murder was in there. But the charges were scaled back pretty quickly. And what he ended

up being charged with was speech. No one accused him of doing anything violent. And in fact, no one accused him of saying that anyone else should do anything violent. What he was accused of doing was sending coded subliminal messages, and the word subliminal appears in the indictment. Within all of his calls for nonviolent protest, these subliminal messages were secretly telling his supporters and followers to be violent. And when they became violent, it was because they had received these subliminal messages from him. And they ended up with more than 150 witnesses coming to the stand, And they ended up with more than 150 witnesses coming to the stand, a great number of whom testified that, in fact,

they had received these subliminal messages from Leo Lopez instructing them to be violent. So Leo is taken to prison. He's taken to a military prison outside of Caracas. He's locked up in a discreet building with no one else in it. He's the only prisoner. And he's prohibited from granting interviews. At first, he's allowed to have books and things like that. But over time, those are removed. And he's forbidden to have them or to have pencils and pens and paper. But he insists on getting messages of dissent out from the prison. At one point, he smuggles a video camera into his cell

and records a message for the Venezuelan people and has it smuggled back out and posted online. He smuggles out little scraps of paper with messages that get posted online to the public. He'll sometimes climb up to this window that's way up high in his cell and hang from the bars of the window and scream about the need for democracy and liberty. And people would occasionally go to the outside of this military base and listen to Leopoldo Lopez screaming about democracy from the window of his cell in this concrete tower. The Venezuelan opposition leader, Leopoldo López,

has been moved to house arrest after more than three years in jail. At a certain point last year, in the summer, he's released to house arrest under the condition that he fall completely silent and give no more messages to his supporters. He gets to his house and immediately records a video message, which he releases to the public, encouraging resistance to the government. And then he goes into the backyard and climbs up on a fence and screams and waves his fist at a gathering crowd rallying them in the street. This is basically on day one of his house arrest.

It's within days, yeah. He's absolutely adamant that he won't be silenced. Leave that place! Leave that place! He's absolutely adamant that he won't be silenced. And so they take him back to prison. And they keep him there for a few days. And he's treated even worse this time. He's put into basically the hole. Solitary confinement in darkness with very little food and water. And the food that he's given is contaminated with feces from the scent of it. This is much worse treatment, even than the worst treatment he received in his three and a half years of imprisonment. And he goes into

a deep, dark place. So as he returns home a few days later, he's returned to house arrest, aware that the government is feeling emboldened. The punishment is getting more extreme. The police are now killing protesters in the streets in a way that they never have before. The government is also picking up elected officials, politicians, taking them hostage, and in many cases, disappearing them. So all this is escalating at the time Leo returns home, and he has a decision to make. He really wants to continue speaking. He does not want to be silenced. He thinks it would set a bad example. He thinks it would be an indignity to himself personally and violate his own principles. But he knows that if he says anything

at this point, he will be punished again. He's sure of it. And so the question he faces is whether or not to take that risk. And for the first time ever, this irrepressible vocal figure falls entirely silent and issues no messages and is not seen, leaving his supporters truly bewildered about what's happened to this guy. Did he abandon them? Did he betray them? Is he just so defeated? Has he given up on them, and should they give up on him? But even though he hasn't been speaking publicly... Hey, Will. How's it going?

He has actually been talking to me this whole time. More or less. Just all right, huh? Yeah. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, I can hear you okay. All right, I just can't. So Leah knows he has one more opportunity to speak

before he will be taken back in and face even greater punishment. And who knows what that will look like. So he chooses this. This is the opportunity he takes to speak out. Tomorrow, what Leo Lopez has been saying and why he's talking. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. I may leave fast or we may sit down and make the greatest deal for the world and for all of these countries, including, frankly, North Korea. And that's what I hope happens. Trump defended his surprise plan to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un,

whose name was booed by a skeptical crowd of Trump supporters. South Korea came to my office after having gone to North Korea and seeing Kim Jong-un. And, no, it's very positive, no. After the meeting, you may do that, but now we have to be very nice because let's see what happens. Let's see what happens. The Times is reporting that Trump accepted North Korea's invitation to meet on the spot last Thursday after a visiting diplomat from South Korea told the president that Kim himself had said Trump's presence at a meeting could produce

a historic breakthrough. The snap decision reportedly shocked the South Korean envoy, as well as President Trump's defense secretary and national security advisor, who were all in the room. This doesn't happen. You know, they're saying, oh, well, Obama could have done that. Trust me, he couldn't have done that. He wouldn't have done that. He would not have done it. And by the way, neither would Bush and neither would Clinton.

And they had their shot and all they did was nothing. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.