Equipo Nizkor - Guaidó Steers Venezuela to a Perilous Crossroads.

Calls from world leaders were piling up. The prime minister of Denmark was trying to reach him. So, too, was Justin Trudeau.

But Juan Guaidó, the young Venezuelan lawmaker leading an effort to topple the country’s authoritarian government, did not appear to be in a hurry to speak with them, as he held the hand of a woman whose son had been gunned down by security forces during a recent nighttime demonstration.

“This can’t be in vain,” Mr. Guaidó told the mother, Ana Cecilia Buitrago, on Sunday morning as tears welled up in his eyes.

“My son had a big heart,” Ms. Buitrago, 58, said in a shaky voice. Her son, Jhonny Godoy, 29, was killed Jan. 25 outside his modest home in Caracas. “This government has to fall so we can put an end to all this misery.”

Mr. Godoy’s death came a few days after Mr. Guaidó, the head of Venezuela’s National Assembly, formally launched an audacious bid to force Nicolás Maduro out of the presidency, arguing that Mr. Maduro had “usurped” power by taking office on Jan. 10, following an election that was broadly seen as rigged.

Since then, Mr. Guaidó, a lanky 35-year-old, has spent long days working to shore up his support abroad while leveraging his escalating public support at home to get government insiders, in particular military leaders, to turn on Mr. Maduro.

While it’s still far from certain that Mr. Guaidó will ever set foot in the presidential palace, the number of ordinary Venezuelans and foreign powers taking his side is growing.

So far, more than 20 have recognized him as the country’s interim president, including the United States, Canada, and most of the rest of South America. On Monday, several European Union countries joined the list, including France, Germany, Britain, Spain, Austria, Sweden and Denmark. The European nations had given Mr. Maduro a deadline of midnight Sunday night to call a free and fair presidential election.

If Mr. Guaidó’s gambit succeeds, he and allied opposition leaders will have pulled off an astonishing feat: presiding over a peaceful transition to democracy that they hope will put Venezuela on a path toward recovery following years of economic collapse, widespread graft and iron-fisted rule.

His success would be all the more remarkable considering the scrappy operation Mr. Guaidó and his allies have mounted, seemingly overnight, to take down a heavily armed authoritarian government whose leaders stand accused of turning the state into a vast criminal enterprise.

As he tries to rally domestic and international backing, Mr. Guaidó has been crisscrossing Caracas with minimal security, at times weaving through traffic on the back of a motorcycle. He fields the calls from world leaders, as well as diplomats and Venezuelan politicians, on a cellphone that gets a torrent of text messages, and his phone’s battery seems always on the verge of dying.

If his sudden rise has been overwhelming, Mr. Guaidó shows no sign of feeling frazzled. His demeanor is calm as a volunteer team of aides dart around him frantically. The only outward sign that this tumultuous new life is getting to Mr. Guaidó is the hoarseness in his voice. At night, when he stops taking calls and visits, Mr. Guaidó said, he has no trouble falling asleep.

“I sleep placidly,” Mr. Guaidó said in an interview as his car stealthily moved through Caracas traffic, adding that he had learned to sleep soundly under trying conditions when he and other opposition leaders staged a 15-day hunger strike in 2015, sleeping on cots on the street, to pressure the government to set a date for legislative elections. “It’s an advantage.”

But Mr. Guaidó realizes the path he’s on is full of hazards.

Opposition leaders had hoped that when Mr. Guaidó proclaimed himself the country’s legitimate leader at a huge street rally, the chiefs of the armed forces would turn on Mr. Maduro in short order. While there have been a handful of high-profile defections, the top military brass has publicly rallied behind Mr. Maduro, which may portend a protracted standoff.

“We’re seeing progress, but it’s not happening as quickly as we’d like,” Mr. Guaidó said, adding that fear remains a strong impediment, particularly among low-level troops who support what the opposition is doing.

Indeed, Mr. Guaidó’s success is far from guaranteed. Mr. Maduro still holds many of the levers of power, including the state broadcaster, a compliant judiciary, the country’s military leaders and ruthless paramilitary forces known as colectivos.

Those challenges notwithstanding, Mr. Guaidó says he sees a clear path to victory, even as his plan enters a perilous phase.

Oil sanctions imposed by the United States last week will soon strangle the country’s already-devastated economy, which will most likely cause shortages of fuel and make food and medicine even more scarce.

Bracing for the destabilizing effects of the sanctions, Mr. Guaidó and his allies in the international community said they intended to start pumping humanitarian aid into the country this week. Doing so would undermine Mr. Maduro, who recently scoffed at the prospect by saying “we’re not a country of beggars.”

Mr. Guaidó and his allies see the coming week, and the arrival of aid, as a potential make-or-break moment for a movement that has stirred hope for millions of Venezuelans, but has yet to take steps that meaningfully improve their lives.

“There are between 250,000 and 300,000 Venezuelans on the brink of death,” Mr. Guaidó said as he dashed across town from his apartment in eastern Caracas to the home of Ms. Buitrago. “Literally, they have a death sentence if they don’t get urgent attention.”

If he does manage to take the presidency, Mr. Guaidó will have to try to tackle the country’s enormous problems with no prior experience running a government.

Fernando Cutz, a former White House official who worked on Venezuela policy, called Mr. Guaidó “the right man for the right moment.” But the next steps will be treacherous, even if Mr. Guaidó manages to topple Mr. Maduro.

“Things probably will get worse for the people of Venezuela before they get better when you actually start doing things for the greater good,” Mr. Cutz said. Managing an eventual transition, he added, “will be a monumental task that will require vision, skill, patience and a lot of time.”

Since becoming the undisputed opposition leader in mid-January — emerging seemingly overnight — Mr. Guaidó has filled his days with a slog of clandestine meetings with government insiders, rallies where fans show cultlike devotion and an endless stream of phone calls.

Since he proclaimed himself the country’s rightful leader, Mr. Guaidó has lived under constant threat of arrest and violence and often wakes up wondering whether he will spend the coming night behind bars.

Intelligence agents did briefly detain him on Jan. 13, and Mr. Maduro has disparaged him as the treasonous figurehead of a plot orchestrated by the United States to lay claim to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

Mr. Guaidó argues that because Mr. Maduro was elected in a rigged vote, the presidency is technically vacant, and that as the head of the National Assembly, he is constitutionally entitled to preside over an interim government until new elections are held.

Even if the armed forces were to throw their weight behind Mr. Guaidó, which would almost certainly spell the end of Mr. Maduro’s reign, Mr. Guaidó said he worried about the actions of the paramilitary forces that would be likely to stay loyal to Mr. Maduro.

“We cannot allow that to proliferate,” he said, drawing a parallel with the struggle that neighboring Colombia has faced from guerrilla and paramilitary groups over the years. “It could portend very serious consequences, even in the short term.”

On Sunday morning, as he paid his visit to Ms. Buitrago, Mr. Guaidó’s attention kept getting jerked between short- and long-term concerns. To console her, Mr. Guaidó reached under his dress shirt to remove a rosary he had been wearing in recent days.

“This was given to me for my protection,” he told her, placing it gently on her palm. “It’s a gift.”

Mr. Guaidó seemed pained to cut the meeting short as aides whispered that Mr. Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, had been trying to get through. So he excused himself and plopped down on Ms. Buitrago’s faux cow-print sofa to take the calls.

When Mr. Trudeau got on the line, Mr. Guaidó thanked him for his recognition that he was Venezuela’s rightful leader.

Mr. Guaidó urged the Canadian leader not to be swayed by the group of governments that are calling for new internationally backed negotiations between the government and the opposition to break the standoff.

“This is not the time for dialogue,” Mr. Guaidó said firmly.

Mr. Guaidó said a lot was riding on establishing pipelines of aid that would include food, medicine and hospital supplies. His team’s hope is to rely on the Catholic relief agency Caritas and other volunteers to get the first deliveries started this week.

The convergence of the effects of American oil sanctions, which are expected to cut off significant sources of revenue for Mr. Maduro, and the attempted delivery of humanitarian aid will escalate the standoff. Economists believe fuel and food shortages are likely to worsen in the short run.

“There’s going to be a moment of tension” with Mr. Maduro, Mr. Guaidó said. “But they destroyed our future, and now we need to ensure that they aren’t able to destroy the present.”

As Mr. Guaidó was getting ready to leave the modest home, Ms. Buitrago said that the visit had eased her pain.

“This gesture came from the heart,” she said, holding up the rosary. “I am going to keep it with me until I die.”

03Feb19

Guaidó Steers Venezuela to a Perilous Crossroads

[Source: By Ernesto Londoño, The New York Times, Caracas, 03Feb19]

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