The opposition leader behind Juan Guaidó’s rise has been under house arrest since 2017, but is an experienced schemer

Leopoldo López has been under house arrest since 2017, but he played a key role in Juan Guaidó’s sudden ascent from the political margin to Venezuela’s would-be president.

López claims to be distant relative of Simón Bolívar, the general who liberated Venezuela from Spanish rule in the 19th century. Like many members of the Venezuelan elite, he was educated in the United States, at a boarding school in New Jersey, and later at Harvard, where he attended the Kennedy school of government.

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Returning to Venezuela, he cofounded the political party Justice First with other prominent politicians Julio Borges and Henrique Capriles in 1992, the same year Hugo Chávez launched an attempted coup d’état.

López later broke with Borges and Capriles, and went on to found People’s Will. “He sets up political parties then leaves them when they grow beyond his control,” said a Venezuelan analyst with connections to López.

People’s Will is a member of the Socialist International, though like many Venezuelan opposition groups it has put more focus on hardline anti-Chavista rhetoric than on concrete policy platforms.

López was elected mayor of the well-off Chacao district of Caracas in 2000 and later re-elected, serving until 2008, when he was barred from re-election by Chávez.

López has been accused of involvement in the short-lived coup that briefly removed Chávez from power in 2002.

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He was arrested in February 2014 after leading protests against Chávez’s handpicked successor Nicolás Maduro, and sent to the maximum security Ramo Verde prison outside Caracas, where he reportedly spent eight months in solitary confinement.

The move backfired on Maduro, as López became a cause célèbre, his face emblazoned on posters and T-shirts at future anti-government protests.

As he languished in jail, his wife, Lilian Tintori, acted as the go-between for him and other opposition figures.

“When he was in prison he sent me in his place to speak with other party leaders, and I would relay their messages to him. It was constant and it was effective and it’s how People’s Will has become so united,” Tintori said.

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In 2017, López was transferred to house arrest, which allowed him to communicate directly with other party members, including Guaidó, while his wife and other surrogates were dispatched to meetings with leaders and diplomats around the world.

It was López who ensured Guaidó would lead the national assembly when Maduro began his second term in early January, placing his man at the centre of a geopolitical storm when the US and a host of other democracies recognised him as the country’s legitimate president.