YouSaid · the spoken record

Leopoldo López

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53

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2022-07-27

most recent

2022-07-27

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1

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1. “In terms of people's perception of what was happening in Venezuela, I could give you an interesting framework of what happened over the past years up until 2014 when we called for massive street protests against Maduro because he had stolen the presidential election six months before that. Most Venezuelans thought of our country as a democracy. And it was much in the 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. When we call for street protests in 2014 and the regime violently repressed thousands of people, there were thousands of people thrown into detention, hundreds of people thrown into prison.”

   2022-07-27 · Conversations with Tyler · Leopoldo López on Activism Under Autocratic Regimes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “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 ran in 2000. I was re-elected with more than 80% of the votes in 2004. And I was to become the governor of Caracas, the 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.”

   2022-07-27 · Conversations with Tyler · Leopoldo López on Activism Under Autocratic Regimes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “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 Caracas 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 counter current of what was happening elsewhere in Caracas. 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 violent city in the world. Caracas was at the time. We also improved in a great way.”

   2022-07-27 · Conversations with Tyler · Leopoldo López on Activism Under Autocratic Regimes · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source