Leopoldo Eduardo López Mendoza (born 29 April 1971) is a Venezuelan opposition leader. López was elected mayor of the Chacao Municipality of Caracas in the regional elections held in July 2000. He is the National Coordinator of the political party, Voluntad Popular, which he founded in 2009. He is a Venezuelan politician, economist, and sociologist.
Administrative sanctions were imposed on López by Venezuela's Comptroller's Office in 2004, disqualifying him from holding public office for six years (beginning in 2008, at the completion of his term as mayor, until 2014), following allegations of nepotism and misappropriation of funds. Opposition groups in Venezuela criticized these charges as fabricated. López supporters say he was never charged with a crime, tried, or allowed to rebut the allegations; he sued Venezuela and his case was reviewed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which issued a unanimous ruling in his favor. The ruling was ignored by Venezuelan officials.
During the crisis in Venezuela, he called for protests in February 2014. He was arrested on 18 February 2014 and charged with arson and conspiracy; murder and terrorism charges were dropped. Human rights groups expressed concern that the charges were politically motivated. His imprisonment in Ramo Verde was controversial; the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for the release of those arrested in connection with the protests. Opinion polls in late 2014 showed that López had become one of the most popular politicians in Venezuela following his arrest. In September 2015, he was found guilty of public incitement to violence through supposed subliminal messages, being involved with criminal association, and was sentenced to 13 years and 9 months in prison.
The European Union, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and several human rights organizations have condemned the arrest and defined it as politically motivated. Several figures involved with his trial later declared that they were pressured by the Venezuelan government to detain López. , the prosecutor that accused him, called the judicial process a "farce" and said that Nicolás Maduro pressured him and Public Ministry superiors to defend "false evidence" against López. Ralenis Tovar, the judge that signed the arrest warrant against Leopoldo, declared that she signed the warrant because she felt scared after being threatened with becoming a "second Lourdes Afiuni judge". Chief Prosecutor Luisa Ortega Díaz said that she was pressured by Diosdado Cabello to accuse López of the deaths of Bassil Da Costa and Juan Montoya.
He was later transferred to house arrest on 8 July 2017 after being imprisoned for over three years. On 1 August 2017 he was taken from his home by SEBIN agents and was briefly imprisoned once again in Ramo Verde. Since then, López returned home and remained under house arrest from 5 August 2017 until it was reported that López had been released on 30 April 2019, in the wake of the 2019 Venezuelan uprising. As the former attempt to overthrow Maduro's government fell apart, López took refuge as a guest in the Spanish Embassy in Caracas. He fled Venezuela in October 2020.
Early life and career López Mendoza was born on 29 April 1971 in Caracas; his mother Antonieta Mendoza de López was vice president of corporate affairs at the media conglomerate, Cisneros Group, while his father, Leopoldo López Gil, held an executive editorial position at El Nacional and became a Member of the European Parliament in 2019. He has two sisters, Diana and Adriana López.
López is descended from prominent Venezuelans, including a former president. His mother is the daughter of Eduardo Mendoza Goiticoa, who was Secretary of Agriculture for two years during the first presidency of Rómulo Betancourt (1945 to 1948). Through her, López is the great-great-great-grandson of the country's first president, Cristóbal Mendoza. He is also the great-great-grand nephew of Simón Bolívar. Bolivar's sister, Juana Bolivar, is López's great-great-great-great-grandmother, making him one of Bolívar's living relatives. His great-uncle Rafael Ernesto López Ortega was Minister of Education during the presidency of López Contreras. His grandfather Leopoldo López Ortega and great-uncle Rafael Ernesto López Ortega were both doctors, founders of the Centro Medico of San Bernardino in Caracas. López's cousin is Thor Halvorssen, president of the Human Rights Foundation.
López studied at Colegio Los Arcos and Colegio Santiago de León de Caracas and graduated from boarding school in the US at the Hun School of Princeton, where he was captain of the crew and swim teams, and vice president of the student council. In 1989, López told the student newspaper at the Hun School, The Mall, that "Being away from home created an awakening of the responsibility I have towards the people of my country. I belong to one percent of the privileged people, and achieving a good education will hopefully enable me to do something to help my country." A fellow student described him as being "very good at getting people psyched" on the swimming and crew teams.
In 1993, López graduated from Kenyon College where he received degrees in Economics and Sociology. A college friend said in 2014 that during their student days López had founded a student group called Active Students Helping the Earth Survive. He attended Harvard Kennedy School, where he obtained a Master of Public Policy in 1996.
López worked as an analyst and consultant for the chief economist to the Planning Vice-President of Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) between 1996 and 1999; he was a professor of Institutional Economy in the Economics Department at Universidad Católica Andrés Bello.
Political career
López cofounded the political party Primero Justicia (Justice First) with Julio Borges in 1992. He later moved away from Justice First, having a more leftist-leaning political philosophy and created the Voluntad Popular party, a member of Socialist International.
According to a 2006 article in the Los Angeles Times, the Venezuelan government seemed to have "a full-out campaign" against López starting from 1998. Described by Kenyon College as "hardworking and unpretentious", with "movie-star good looks and a gentle way with people that has made him extremely popular in Chacao, the most affluent of Caracas's five municipalities", he said, "I was born with a lot of privilege in a country with a lot of inequality."
Mayor of Chacao (2000–2008) López was elected mayor of Chacao Municipality in 2000 with 51% of the vote and re-elected in 2004 with 81%. He was praised by constituents "for revamping the public health system and building new public spaces". His term of office saw the opening of the Juan de Dios Guanche school and the Centro Deportivo Eugenio Mendoza, a sports center. Under López, work began on several major construction projects, including the Palos Grandes plaza, the new seat of the Mercado Libre, a new headquarters for the Andrés Bello Education Unit, and a massive underground parking facility. According to a 2010 article in Businessweek magazine, López tried to reorganize the Chacao police force around a new CompStat policing model, implemented with apparent success in a neighboring city of Catia, Caracas, but says that, although "we could do the police management [and] get accurate measurements" in his district, he lacked the support of the attorney general to implement these reforms. The Atlantic described him as having "earned a reputation among local voters and Venezuelans ... for transparent, effective governance".
As mayor, López won first-prize awards from Transparency International in 2007 and 2008 for running the country's most honest and efficient municipal administration. In 2008, he won third place in the World Mayors contest which nominates the "world's most outstanding mayors". The City Mayors Foundation, which sponsors the contest, wrote that "It would be easy to caricature him as the scion of the country's wealthy elite, standing in the way of Chávez' social justice crusade. But López' record on activism has shown a commitment to promoting legal equality and his constituents speak passionately about a mayor who has delivered on public services and funding new infrastructure."
During events surrounding the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt, NPR said López "orchestrated the public protests against President Hugo Chávez and played a central role in the citizen's arrest of Chavez's interior minister", Ramón Rodríguez Chacín. López later tried to distance himself from that event, maintaining his actions were meant to protect Chacín from an angry mob. López did not sign the Carmona Decree drawn up on the day after the 2002 Venezuelan coup attempt, which established a transitional government and dissolved government entities.
Target of violence López was affected by violent confrontations multiple times in his political career, including incidents involving gunfire targeting him. In one attack, López's car was fired upon and was left full of bullet holes. In February 2006, a group of armed individuals stormed a university auditorium where López was speaking and took him hostage for six hours. A month later in March 2006, López's bodyguard who was sitting in López's regular seat was shot several times and was killed. In June 2008, after López returned from a visit to Washington, D.C., he was allegedly detained and assaulted by the state intelligence service; the Venezuelan government disputed this account, stating that a member of the Venezuelan National Guard reported López as being responsible for the aggression and presented a video as evidence.
2008 election controversy In an April 2008 ruling announced by Venezuela's chief prosecutor and then upheld by court decision, López and several hundred other Venezuelans were barred from running in the November 2008 elections, for reasons of alleged corruption. Eighty percent of those barred belonged to the opposition. The Venezuelan government's ruling found that in 1998, López, while working for Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) and his mother, who was the company's manager of public affairs, awarded a state-funded grant to the Primero Justicia Civil Association, an organization of which López was a member. As the best-known banned politician, López contested the sanction, arguing that the right to hold elected office could only be rescinded in the wake of a civil or criminal trial. He said the government had banned opposition candidates ahead of the November 2008 regional elections because it knew they could win.
In June 2008, López brought his case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in Washington, D.C., challenging the claims by stating that none of those punished had been charged, prosecuted and found guilty through due process of law, in direct violation of treatises signed by the Venezuelan government and the Venezuelan constitution. In July, the Commission agreed to hear his case and commented that the two years that had elapsed since López had filed a motion asking the Court to annul the ban constituted an "undue delay".
The IACHR ruled unanimously that López "should be allowed to run for office". Venezuela's Supreme Court (TSJ) declared the ruling "unenforceable", stating that the disqualification from holding public office was a legal sanction, not a political one, and that López was still able to register as a candidate for office and participate in elections. This ruling barred López from running against Chavez for the following election, which polls indicated López would have won.