Washingtonâs Favorite Venezuelan Opposition Leader Exposes Links to Colombian Death Squads and Narco Networks
By Ben Norton – Dec 26, 2020
While the US government and media glorify Leopoldo LĂłpez as a new MLK, the Venezuelan opposition leader collaborates with Colombiaâs narco-affiliated, death squad-sponsoring former President Ălvaro Uribe and his protegĂŠ IvĂĄn Duque.
According to Western corporate media outlets and human rights groups, Venezuelaâs far-right opposition leader Leopoldo LĂłpez is a hallowed saint.
The New York Times glorified LĂłpez as the would-be âsaviorâ of Venezuela, akin to none other than Martin Luther King Jr., while Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have dubbed him a noble âprisoner of conscienceâ and âVenezuelaâs most prominent political prisoner.â
The real Leopoldo LĂłpez, however, has repeatedly shown himself to be a violent extremist committed to overthrowing Venezuelaâs government no matter the cost. And the right-wing political opposition factions under his control have revealed links to drug trafficking, death squads, and organized crime in neighboring Colombia.
This December, LĂłpez traveled to Colombia for a series of meetings and photo ops. He flew to the countryâs border with Venezuela on a plane registered with a Florida-based company that had sold an aircraft to a Colombian who was busted for trafficking hundreds of kilograms of cocaine in Honduras.
LĂłpez proceeded to meet with far-right Colombian politicians who are closely connected to drug cartels and paramilitaries that have massacred civilians. His hosts included the notoriously corrupt former President Ălvaro Uribe, and his handpicked successor, IvĂĄn Duque.
Colombia has helped support some of LĂłpezâs radical right-wing regime-change plots, including an attempted invasion of Venezuela in May 2020.
While top Colombian officials demonize their neighborâs elected Chavista government as a âdictatorship,â LĂłpezâs meetings in Colombia took place the same week as the 86th massacre of human rights defenders in the country that year, with a death toll of more than 290 social movement activists.
Leopoldo LĂłpezâs protegĂŠ Juan GuaidĂł collaborated with Colombian drug traffickers
The role of the US government in sponsoring Venezuelaâs extreme right-wing opposition is well known. The support that Venezuelaâs anti-Chavista opposition has received from government institutions, paramilitaries, drug cartels, and organized crime networks in neighboring Colombia is however less well understood.
At the height of the US-backed regime-change attempt in 2019, Venezuelan coup leader Juan GuaidĂł â a protegĂŠ of Leopoldo LĂłpez â was photographed meeting with members of the Rastrojos, a Colombian paramilitary involved in drug trafficking.
The Rastrojos have been responsible for massacres of civilians, political assassinations, drug trafficking, weapons dealing, and kidnappings. The paramilitary group is linked to former Colombian President Ălvaro Uribe, who met with Leopoldo LĂłpez in December 2020.
Photos from February 2019 showed GuaidĂł posing with two leaders of the paramilitary group â Alberto Lobo Quintero, known as âel Broder,â and Jhon Jairo DurĂĄn, known as âel Menor.â
These drug traffickers reportedly helped Guaidó illegally cross the border into Colombia to carry out a US-backed coup attempt on February 23, in which opposition hooligans supported by Washington tried to ram a truck full of US supplies across a bridge into Venezuela, but ended up setting the convoy on fire instead.
Lo dijimos desde el primer dĂa: la entrada a Colombia el 23 de febrero del sr @jguaido fue coordinada con los Rastrojos. AquĂ estĂĄn alias el brother armado, y el segundo al mando de este grupo paramilitar, alias el menor. pic.twitter.com/qflAYBgWQf
— WILFREDO CAĂIZARES (@wilcan91) September 12, 2019
Leopoldo LĂłpez plots Venezuela coups with support from US and Colombia
While Juan GuaidĂł was selected as interim president because of his former position in the opposition-controlled National Assembly, he was little more than a stand-in for the Venezuelan right-wingâs kingmaker: Leopoldo LĂłpez Mendoza, scion of one of Venezuelaâs most influential oligarchic clans.
Since leftist leader Hugo ChĂĄvez won his first presidential election in 1998, LĂłpez has reigned over an extremist right-wing hellbent on removing him from power. LĂłpez has helped oversee numerous violent coup attempts in Venezuela, and was a leading force behind the bloody âguarimbaâ barricades that paralyzed the country.
In April 2002, when the military briefly overthrew President ChĂĄvez, LĂłpez was mayor of the affluent Chacao municipality in Caracas. LĂłpez directly assisted the coup by leading a mob that surrounded the house of a government minister, brutalized the top-level official in the street, then kidnapped him. Latin America expert Greg Grandin described LĂłpez years later as âa thug. Ted Cruz with a mob.â
Flush with US financial support, LĂłpez helped found the Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) party that became a vehicle for GuaidĂłâs bid for regime change.
Venezuelan political analyst Diego Sequera explained to The Grayzone, âLeopoldo LĂłpez is the only Venezuelan that actually the US government really cares about; everyone else is just prop; itâs just like secondary characters.â
In May 2020, a group of mercenaries backed by a US firm linked to the Donald Trump administration tried to invade Venezuela, with the goal of overthrowing the government of President Nicolås Maduro.
The Wall Street Journal later revealed that LĂłpez was the mastermind of the comically botched military invasion. In a June 26 article titled âVenezuelan Opposition Guru Led Planning to Topple Maduro,â the newspaper disclosed that LĂłpez âwas behind a months-long effort to contract mercenaries to overthrow President NicolĂĄs Maduro,â and had âconsidered at least six proposals from private security contractors to carry out military incursions to spur a rebellion in Venezuelaâs armed forces and toppleâ the Chavista government.
LĂłpez collaborated with allies of GuaidĂł and fellow members of their Popular Will party. They ended up deciding to contract the Florida-based mercenary firm Silvercorp USA, planning the invasion with Jordan Goudreau, a US Army veteran, and ClĂver AlcalĂĄ, a former Venezuelan general who defected to Colombia.
LĂłpezâs allies then introduced Goudreau and AlcalĂĄ to right-wing Venezuelan opposition leaders in numerous meetings in the Colombian capital BogotĂĄ, seeking millions of dollars of financing for the operation, the Wall Street Journal reported.
These mercenaries trained dozens of fighters, mostly Venezuelan defectors, in camps in northeastern Colombia. Then on May 3 they launched the attack from Colombian territory.
Leopoldo LĂłpez and allies in the Popular Will party considered least six proposals from private security contractors to carry out military incursions to spur a rebellion in the armed forces and topple Maduro. https://t.co/xW67WYGDoT via @WSJ
— Juan Forero (@WSJForero) June 26, 2020
The US government denied involvement in the attempted May 2020 invasion. But the former US Special Operations officer who helped plan the coup attempt, Jordan Goudreau, has said in a breach-of-contract lawsuit that he met with two administration officials at the Trump National Doral Miami golf resort to discuss the plot, and was assured that he had the White Houseâs support.
Two former US soldiers participated in the failed invasion, and are currently being imprisoned in Caracas.
The Wall Street Journal made it clear that LĂłpez has pushed for the most extreme, violent strategies to overthrow the government. âLĂłpez expressed the view that negotiations and the electoral route would take too much time,â it reported.
Juan Forero, the Journalâs South America bureau chief and a staunch supporter of Venezuelaâs right-wing opposition, noted on Twitter that âLeopoldo Lopezâs party was key in selling Trump on plan to back GuaidĂł.â
Leopoldo Lopezâs party was key in selling Trump on plan to back GuaidĂł. The outreach began in Feb 2017 with Lopezâs wife, Lilian Tintori. âThey came to us with the most organized, effective approach,â Fernando Cutz, then NSC man on Venezuela in WH https://t.co/xW67WYGDoT @WSJ
— Juan Forero (@WSJForero) June 26, 2020
Leopoldo LĂłpez flies with drug trafficking-linked plane company
The various coup attempts planned by Leopold LĂłpez, Juan GuaidĂł, and their sponsors in Washington and BogotĂĄ had repeatedly failed. So this December, LĂłpez adopted a new PR strategy.
On December 11, he flew from his new home in Spain (where he also has the support of the government) to CĂşcuta, a Colombian city on the border with Venezuela. There LĂłpez posed for photos with Venezuelan immigrants, in a marketing exercise designed to portray himself as a noble, bleeding-heart defender of his people.
But Venezuelan journalists soon uncovered a scandal: The plane that ferried LĂłpez to CĂşcuta was owned by a Florida-based company that had previously sold a plane to a Colombian who was busted in Honduras for transporting 500 kilograms of cocaine.
The Venezuelan investigative journalism publication La Tabla analyzed photos of LĂłpez with the aircraft to uncover its links to Colombian drug trafficking.
#NarcoLeopoldo El aviĂłn AC90 #N690SE (de EEUU) que llevĂł ayer a Leopoldo LĂłpez de BogotĂĄ a CĂşcuta (y de vuelta) es "propiedad" de una compaĂąĂa de aviaciĂłn de #Florida que gestionĂł venta y registro de otra aeronave capturada en #Honduras con un cargamento de 500 kilos de cocaĂna. pic.twitter.com/mstNGPMXXF
— La Tabla (@latablablog) December 12, 2020
LĂłpez flew on a small AC90 plane with the tail number N690SE. The aircraftâs flight log can be publicly accessed using a tracking website. With these resources, as well as photos of the plane on Instagram, La Tabla found that it was owned by Skyline Enterprises Corp.
This company is registered with the United States government and based in Florida in the city of Miramar, a suburb of Miami.
Skyline Enterprises has been in the spotlight before for indirect links to drug trafficking.
In 2018, the Miami New Times published an article titled âDrug Traffickers Are Buying Up Planes in South Florida.â The investigation revealed that the company had sold a plane in 2009 to a Colombian customer. Then in 2010, that plane was found in Honduras with 500 kilograms of cocaine.
The director of Skyline, Gilbert Gonzalez, denied knowledge of the drug links, telling the newspaper, âWe check as much as we can the background of the people or the companies,â but once it is sold, âyou could turn around and give it to your cousin⌠Itâs kind of hard to track.â
Se trata de una compaĂąĂa cuya creaciĂłn se remonta a 1997. Su representante es Gilbert GonzĂĄlez quiĂŠn en 2013 creĂł otra compaĂąĂa llamada Skyline Aviation Services LLC, con domicilio en la misma direcciĂłn de la primera en Miramar, Fl. Pero tambiĂŠn es su vocero pĂşblico. Veamos. pic.twitter.com/Y3ODz6cneS
— La Tabla (@latablablog) December 12, 2020
When the cocaine-filled plane was intercepted by Honduran authorities in a remote region of the country in 2010, the pilots landed and opened fire at security forces, according to a local media report.
One of the co-pilots, a Honduran national, was killed. The other co-pilot, a Colombian national, was arrested. The plane had a valid Colombian license when it was seized with the 500 kilos of cocaine.
RELATED CONTENT: Leopoldo LĂłpez Travels in Colombia Using Narco-Jets
La Tabla discovered that the same aircraft caught trafficking cocaine in Honduras was later found in 2020 in Colombia. The plane crashed north of the capital BogotĂĄ.
It is unclear how the aircraft ended up back in the hands of its Colombian owner. Honduran authorities denied that it was the same plane, but La Tabla conclusively confirmed that it was indeed the aircraft.
The right-wing government in Honduras, which was installed in a US-backed coup dâetat, is notoriously corrupt and closely linked to drug trafficking.
According to public records, the plane was registered with a man named Henry Moreno CortĂĄzar.
La historia vuelve a tener vigencia luego de que en SEP2020 un aviĂłn "igualito" y con la misma matrĂcula, sufriĂł un accidente en el norte de BogotĂĄ. EstallĂł el escĂĄndalo y el ejĂŠrcito hondureĂąo negĂł que fuera la misma aeronave: segĂşn un comunicado fue un Seneca Piper PA-34-220T. pic.twitter.com/oyWN77gToI
— La Tabla (@latablablog) December 12, 2020
Leopoldo LĂłpez meets with Colombiaâs Ălvaro Uribe, friend of drug cartels and death squads
But the photo op in CĂşcuta was just the beginning of Leopoldo LĂłpezâs PR campaign in Colombia. On December 15, LĂłpez tweeted a photo of himself with far-right former President Ălvaro Uribe VĂŠlez.
Uribe is the most powerful politician in Colombia, the beneficiary of extensive and well-documented links to the drug cartels and death squads that hold sway in the country.
In 2018, the National Security Archive released declassified US State Department cables that showed Washington was aware its favorite ally in Bogotå had collaborated for decades with drug traffickers and paramilitaries, using cocaine money to fund his political campaigns.
A 2018 New York Times investigation acknowledged that a feared death squad used an Uribe family ranch as its headquarters, planning assassinations, kidnappings, and other crimes on their land. Ălvaroâs brother Santiago Uribe was imprisoned on charges of directing a paramilitary group, called the Doce ApĂłstoles (12 Apostles).
The Venezuelan right-wingâs kingpin apparently had no problem with Uribeâs lengthy list of crimes, because he praised the Colombian leader in his tweet.
Uribe is âa good friend in the struggle for the freedom of Venezuela,â LĂłpez insisted. He also made it clear that this drug-linked, death squad-sponsored Colombian mafioso is helping sponsor regime-change plots in Venezuela.
âWe spoke about the urgent need to get out of the dictatorship to put an end to the suffering of our people,â LĂłpez wrote.
Reunidos con @AlvaroUribeVel, un buen amigo de la lucha por la libertad de Venezuela.
Hablamos sobre la necesidad urgente de salir de la dictadura para poner fin al sufrimiento de nuestro pueblo que hoy llora por la muerte de hombres, mujeres y niĂąos inocentes en GĂźiria pic.twitter.com/GoYf5wRFct
— Leopoldo LĂłpez (@leopoldolopez) December 15, 2020
Leopoldo LĂłpez meets with narco-linked President IvĂĄn Duque
Colombiaâs current president, IvĂĄn Duque MĂĄrquez, is Ălvaro Uribeâs handpicked successor, and follows in his far-right footsteps.
Like Uribe, Duque is linked to drug traffickers and organized crime networks in the country. Since he came to office in a deeply contested election in 2018, in which he was credibly accused of fraud, Colombian journalists have exposed Duqueâs ties to a notorious drug lord named JosĂŠ Guillermo âĂeĂąeâ HernĂĄndez.
ĂeĂąe HernĂĄndez was an extremely wealthy rancher involved in the drug trade, who used his illicit money to fund right-wing politicians. A leaked recording exposed that Duque used under-the-table funding from ĂeĂąe in order to bribe Colombians and buy votes in the 2018 election. The Colombian public prosecutor and police are investigating ĂeĂąe, who died in Brazil under strange circumstances in 2019, for his role in drug trafficking and killings.
When Leopoldo LĂłpez visited Colombia in December, he also met with IvĂĄn Duque.
The Colombian president invited the Venezuelan opposition extremist onto his program âPrevenciĂłn y AcciĂłnâ (Prevention and Action), a daily show in which the government discusses the measures it is taking to contain the Covid-19 pandemic.
Duque took advantage of the massive audience of average Colombians who watch the coronavirus program, which is supposed to be apolitical, to bombard his citizens with anti-Venezuela propaganda.
At the end of the broadcast, Duque and LĂłpez spoke for nearly 10 minutes about the situation in Venezuela.
Duque referred to Venezuelaâs democratically elected government as a âdictatorship of extreme brutality,â while heaping praise on LĂłpez, who he declared âhas had a voice full of courage and convictionâ and a âvoice of freedom.â
For his part, LĂłpez exacerbated xenophobia inside Colombia by insisting that, if Maduroâs government was not soon overthrown, hordes of Venezuelan immigrants would continue crossing the border, and bring the coronavirus along with them, infecting their neighbors.
LĂłpez also heaped enthusiastic praise on the far-right Colombian government in the TV broadcast, calling it âan example for the world.â
That week, the corpses of human rights defenders continued to pile up, bringing the total of mass killings of social movement activists in Colombia in 2020 to 86, with nearly 300 victims.
LĂłpezâs gushing praise for the Colombian government arrived as a new report revealed how the right-wing regime had arrested 10,471 students on trumped-up terrorism or rebellion charges between 2000 and 2018.
Saving face in photo op with liberal BogotĂĄ mayor
Leopoldo LĂłpezâs meeting with Ălvaro Uribe triggered condemnations from even staunch supporters of the Venezuelan opposition.
The avowedly anti-Chavista Americas director of the billionaire-funded US-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), JosĂŠ Miguel Vivanco, lambasted LĂłpez for the meeting, calling it a âgrave mistakeâ that âdoes a lot of damage to his credibility.â
HRW has spent years heroizing the coup-plotting Venezuelan opposition leader, portraying LĂłpez as a âprisoner of conscienceâ and âVenezuelaâs most prominent political prisonerâ before he was released in a failed coup attempt on April 30, 2019.
Vivanco is closely allied with far-right forces across Latin America, and has aggressively lobbied for US sanctions on Venezuela and Nicaragua. But LĂłpezâs friendly chat with Uribe was even too much for him.
Grave error de @leopoldolopez.
En relaciĂłn con el estado de derecho y la vigencia de los DDHH, Uribe es el equivalente en Colombia a ChĂĄvez.
Leopoldo LĂłpez es una vĂctima de gravĂsimos abusos de ChĂĄvez y Maduro.
Pero esta reuniĂłn le hace mucho daĂąo a su credibilidad. https://t.co/IaIml3u70h
— JosĂŠ Miguel Vivanco (@VivancoJM) December 16, 2020
Facing mounting criticism over his radical antics, and desperate to save face, Leopoldo LĂłpez sought out a photo-op with the liberal mayor of BogotĂĄ, Claudia LĂłpez, in what Latin American media outlets referred to as a âsurprise.â
Claudia LĂłpez hails from Colombiaâs centrist Green Alliance party. She is an open lesbian and supports progressive cultural policies, but is careful to never diverge from certain dogmas when regional politics are concerned, harshly criticizing Venezuela and other leftist governments in Latin America.
On December 17, the mayor held an event in BogotĂĄ featuring Leopoldo LĂłpez alongside Venezuelan migrants. She praised the Venezuelan opposition leader, saying, âIt makes me happy to see him free.â
In her tweet, Claudia LĂłpez also went out of her way to demonize Venezuelaâs democratically elected government as a âdictatorshipâ
BogotĂĄ es hoy la ciudad con mayor migraciĂłn venezolana en el mundo y somos ejemplo de solidaridad y apoyo.
Venezuela vive difĂciles tiempos de dictadura y todos vivimos difĂciles tiempos de pandemia. Que nadie pierda la fe. Juntos, con empatĂa y solidaridad, saldremos adelante. pic.twitter.com/g1Sz67URA8
— Claudia LĂłpez HernĂĄndez (@ClaudiaLopez) December 18, 2020
The photo-op was clearly aimed at papering over Leopoldoâs extreme-right image, portraying him as a supporter of political pluralism who can make common cause with liberals. For Claudia LĂłpez, it was a way of reassuring conservative critics that she would faithfully line up against revolutionary left-wing forces in the region.
But it was not enough to deflect from the ultimate agenda of Leopoldo LĂłpez. His trip represented the open consolidation of an alliance between the putschist forces under his control and a Colombian government intimately intertwined with drug trafficking and criminal networks, both hellbent on crushing the leftists in their midst.
Featured image:Â Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo LĂłpez meets with Colombian ex-President Ălvaro Uribe (left), and Juan GuaidĂł poses with a Colombian death squad leader (right)
Ben Norton
Benjamin Norton is the founder and editor of the independent news website Multipolarista, where he does original reporting in both English and Spanish. Benjamin has reported from numerous countries, including Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Colombia, and more. His journalistic work has been published in dozens of media outlets, and he has done interviews on Sky News, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, El Financiero Bloomberg, Al Mayadeen teleSUR, RT, TRT World, CGTN, Press TV, HispanTV, Sin Censura, and various TV channels in Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Benjamin writes a regular column for Al Mayadeen (in English and Spanish). He was formerly a reporter with the investigative journalism website The Grayzone, and previously produced the political podcast and video show Moderate Rebels. His personal website is BenNorton.com, and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
