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The judge concluded that I had the capacity to send subliminal messages,

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and he told my wife,

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tell your husband to quit the hunger strike because we're going to let him die.

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Venezuela today is a criminal economy,

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contraband, the extraction of gold,

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the corrupt and dark sale of oil, and cocaine.

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Thousands of new political prisoners,

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people being tortured, entire families being disappeared,

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I've been a victim of financial apartheid since 2008.

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I've not been able to have an account in Venezuela.

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It's impossible to use the banking system.

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So one, Bitcoin for resistance.

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If we make that about a common hope that the world should be free, it could be very, very strong.

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We wake up every single day thinking of what are we going to do today to change the world.

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Cheers, sir. How are you doing?

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Good, man. How are you?

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I am great. This has been a crazy few days.

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It's been great.

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I've just been seeing you in only the cool places recently.

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Surfing in Bali.

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Now we're here talking about freedom in Nashville.

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I don't know if your audience knows how good of a surfer you are.

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I don't believe the hype people.

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We had fun, though. It was good.

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We had fun, yeah.

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Surfing in.

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You should show them pictures, your barrels.

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Big drops, brief breaks, strong waves.

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I cut myself up pretty bad.

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Yeah, me too, man. My legs are.

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It was fun, though.

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But you've got a crazy fucking story, man.

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There'll be obviously a group of the audience that may not know who you are

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and what you do and did.

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Do you want to start there?

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Sure.

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Well, I'll give you a brief context.

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I'm from Venezuela.

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I was born in Caracas, Venezuela in the 1970s.

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At that time, Venezuela was a beacon of democracy and prosperity, high oil prices.

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It was an island of democracy in a very autocratic continent, infrastructure being built, and

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social mobility was happening.

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And that started to change.

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It actually started to change in 1983, when the currency got devaluated for the first

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time.

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And ever since, it's been a downward slope.

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Then I had the opportunity to study in the United States.

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And I graduated from grad school and came back to Venezuela.

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I could have stayed in the U.S.

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I had good job offers, but I decided to go back as I always wanted to.

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And I worked at the oil industry as an economist at the Office for Strategic Planning of PDVSA, the national oil company.

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It's a great job because at the time, the oil industry was opening to the private sector.

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And the vision that we had at the time for Venezuela that was producing 3.2 barrels of oil per day was that by 2010, we would be producing 5 to 6 million barrels of oil with private investment.

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Today, we're producing 800,000 barrels of oil.

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I can get to that later of what happened.

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And then Chavez came to power in 1999. He had a promise to change everything by changing the Constitution. So I decided to quit my job and ran for the Constitutional Assembly, and I lost, and I was unemployed.

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So I decided, alongside with another group of young people that were not part of the traditional political parties or the party of Chavez, to run for office.

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So I ran to become the mayor of the center part of Caracas, my home city, my hometown.

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And I won. I was the underdog in that election.

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I had a door-to-door campaign.

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How old were you when you first ran?

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27.

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Okay, so you're super young.

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Yeah, and I did a really fun campaign.

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I would hunt for traffic.

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My metric was how many hands that I would shake per day,

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how many people I would give my cell phone to,

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how many leaflets I would leave to people.

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And we had a super out-of-the-box campaign, and I won.

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And that gave me the opportunity to build a very good, committed group of young people that wanted to change the world. Idealistic people with foot on the ground. People that had been trained in different areas of expertise, from healthcare to architecture, to security, to budgeting, to legal. And we transformed that part of the city. Completely transformed it.

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And what were you promising?

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What was it that sort of captured everyone's imagination?

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Well, we actually...

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By the way, sorry.

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I didn't show you a picture. I had my cell phone.

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Like my...

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I got a non-alcohol beer. I'm so sorry.

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No, it's all right.

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I've rugged us.

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Tastes good.

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So we invited people to dream of a better city.

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From simple things to be a safe city,

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to having the possibility of having schools

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that were as good or better than the private schools,

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to having a healthcare system that would function

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to fix the streets, to put public lighting,

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to build parks, to build pedestrian sidewalks.

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So we had a very ambitious plan.

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And I went back to that plan that I gave to the citizens

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in the year 2000, and we did everything, everything.

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And one of the reasons why we were able to do it

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was that we changed the tax structure. We made paying taxes very simple, very transparent,

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so it became an attractive part of the city, and we were able to be autonomous from the central

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government in order to plan and execute all of those programs. What did you change about the

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tax structure? Well, we made paying taxes simple. We lowered taxes. Primarily, those were the two

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things that we changed. And we invited the citizens to participate with the local government

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in the budgeting process. So that was something completely new at the time. We would spend a lot

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of hours with the people of the municipality, getting their ideas with the business community,

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getting the ideas. So I think the secret of our management style was our budgeting process,

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which we took it very seriously.

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I actually took three weeks at the end of the year, every year,

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and I went outside the municipality,

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and we would have every single director of every area of the municipality

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to come with their programs, defend their programs,

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and then we would have to make choices

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because having a priority is not what you choose,

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but it's what you choose not to do.

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I mean, that's a tough thing of budgeting,

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especially for a city or for a government.

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So we made the people that were leading each one of those areas,

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the owners, the captains, we made them accountable to me as a mayor,

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to the budget itself, but also to the citizens.

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And it was incredible.

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I mean, we really changed the face and the living standards

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of hundreds of thousands of people.

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and that part of the city was at the heart of Caracas.

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So that at the time was, there was a lot of protests

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because in parallel to all of this, Chavez was in power

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and protests were already starting.

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And there was a square like the Maidan Square

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or the Tahir Square that was the Plaza Altamira.

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And all of the protests were happening there.

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And I was wearing always two hats,

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my hat as mayor and my hat as activist.

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And I was always supporting all of the protests

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that were taking place.

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So what was Chávez doing at that time that was...

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Like, where in his kind of story arc of being a dictator was he?

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Well, he... The very beginning,

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the beginning of the end was changing the Constitution.

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So that was the groundwork of everything that came after.

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It was very clear that it was a hyper-presidential model, that there were no checks and balances, that there was a gate to politicize the military, to control the judicial system, and to censor the media.

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And that all started to play out gradually but consistently.

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And it became very clear that that was the path, at least to me and to many other people.

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So at the same time that you're doing this very transparent leadership within Caracas,

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there's almost like a black box of corruption and control and censorship at the national level.

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Yep. And there was also a lot of polarization and a lot of protest taking place. So 2004,

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I ran for re-election and I won with more than 80% of the vote. And we continue to transform the city.

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but I started to look beyond the municipality as it's normal in a political career.

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You know, what's the next step?

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So my next logical step was to become the governor of the city.

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And I started to do different things to work in the areas of the city that were controlled by the Chavez regime.

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And very quickly, we started to grow from the bottom up with a model of organizing people around social leadership.

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We had this idea, and I would always say it to our team, if you want to be a political leader, you need to be first a social leader.

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So social work was very key to the way we were doing politics.

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and we were also having the showcase of what was happening in that part of the city.

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Like more than a million and a half people went through that part of the city every day.

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So they would see the safety.

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They would see the lighting.

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They would see the public works.

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They would see the theater, the market, the healthcare system.

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I mean, and it became a showcase of the possible, of doing things differently,

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of a different promised land.

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So I started to build this movement.

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And in the year 2008, there was an election

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and I was disqualified.

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I was simply taken out of the ballot.

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They opened a bogus case against me

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and I was taken out of the ballots.

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As for a podcaster, they take the mic from you.

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Or for a boxer, you can never go to the ring.

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like it happened to Muhammad Ali when he was not listed to go to Vietnam, or to a medical doctor.

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You can no longer treat people with disease.

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And the reason they did that is obvious, like you were too dangerous to their system.

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But did they give you any reason? Did they-

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Well, yeah, they opened a case. And they opened a bogus case that was linked to the fact that I

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I was paying the fire department and the teachers by modifying the budget, which is something that

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you have to do several times throughout the year. And the city council does it. So the city council

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did that in order for us to pay the teachers and the firemen. And they just opened a case.

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And I remember having a conversation with the controller general, and I said, you are

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disqualifying me to run for office for 15 years. And there is absolutely no evidence that there was

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a single cent missing in misallocation. And he said, you're right. There is no proof, but this

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is just a decision. He said that straight to my face. So I was not able to run. Well, I actually,

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I started to run. I had more than 70% of the support, but then they ratified the disqualification

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and I was out.

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I supported another candidate

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that at the time had only 3%

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and I became the head of his campaign

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and he won.

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So I was unemployed again.

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This is 2009.

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And I decided to start a new movement.

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And I started from a very small office,

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my garage,

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and I had this idea of building

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a grassroots movement

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that was focused in nonviolent action

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and social work.

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So I went around the country primarily looking for young people, community leaders, union leaders, social leaders.

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And we started a movement that in the year at the end of 2009, it became legal.

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And the first decision we made was to call for an open election for the party.

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Anybody could vote and anybody could run. And this had never been done.

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I mean, this is democracy on steroids. And everybody said that I was crazy. You cannot do that. No political party had ever opened its doors that way. And more than 200,000 people voted in an internal election of a party that was just starting.

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But the key to that was that that was the seed to many leaderships, to many leaderships, because the people that won those elections were leaders.

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So the movement started to grow in the year 2013. Chavez died. There was another election.

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Before that, there was a primary for the presidential candidacy. I ran in that primary.

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I was doing very well, leading the polls, but they again ratified that I could not run for office.

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So again, I became the head of the campaign of the candidate that was able to run.

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The election was in April of 2013, and he actually won the election by a very slim margin.

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And I remember telling him at 7 p.m. that night, I said, the election is no longer going to be decided by whatever the electoral board says.

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It's going to be decided in the streets.

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So you better call the people to protest in the streets.

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At first, he said, I agree with you.

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But then his advisors came and said, you know, this is a time for you to behave as a statesman.

241
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You know, we got to go through irregular channels.

242
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Let's manage this in a way that we can engage in dialogue.

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I said, you're making a very big mistake because they're going to steal the election from you.

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And that's what happened.

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So that's when Maduro came in.

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That was when Maduro came in, in his first election in 2013.

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At the end of that year, we had municipal elections.

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Again, I went around the country and we actually won the largest number of municipalities of any opposition party.

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We came from zero to becoming the largest party in the opposition.

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And we won in places where Chavez had traditionally been winning in their strongholds, in the frontier with Colombia, in the Andes, in the municipalities close to the military bases.

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And we won with a narrative that was very clear to people.

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We want mayors that are committed to taking Maduro out of government.

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Again, everybody said, you are crazy. People want to vote for mayors because they want clean water and functioning schools. But our narrative was, in order to have clean water, running schools, a healthcare system, safety, lighting, and all of the rest of the things that you need, we first need to get rid of the dictatorship.

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And we were the first movement that started to call Maduro a dictator. We were the first movement that started to signal Maduro as a narco leader. We were the first movement that started to talk about the repression that Maduro was doing in different sectors of society.

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So come January of 2014, and we decided to call for protest. So I went around, talked to different political leaders, invited them to lead a movement, a street movement of protest.

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and most of them said no. The only one, a couple of them said yet, but one that was very relevant

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as well, Maria Corina Machado, who is today leading the opposition and she's in hiding in

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Venezuela. She said yes. And with a couple of other leaders, we gave a small press conference

259
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that was censored, but we could only promote through social media and people came out.

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and then we called for another protest in February the 12th

261
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and more people came out and the regime started to repress.

262
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So that day they killed three people.

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They killed Basil Da Costa, a young man of 21 years old,

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carpenter that was also starting at night.

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They killed him in, they shot him in the back of his head

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and this was all in film.

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We later knew or learned that the detail of the Minister of Interior were the ones who killed Basil Da Costa.

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They killed Juancho Montoya, and they killed Robert Redman.

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By the end of that day, there was a warrant for my arrest because they were accusing me.

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So I had to go into hiding.

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I went into hiding, and the regime raided my house.

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They raided my parents' house.

273
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They raided our movement. They imprisoned 17 people of my closest collaborators, and they were threatening that there was a plot to kill me if I didn't turn myself in.

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So my wife, you know, called me up. She was very nervous. And I told her, listen, I have three choices.

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I can go into exile, I can stay in hiding, or I can turn myself in.

276
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And I am going to turn myself in.

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Why? She said.

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Because if I don't do this, we will not be able to show the true face of what Maduro is as a dictator, autocrat, and the way he's repressing the Venezuelan people.

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00:21:36,200 --> 00:21:40,340
But when you're deciding to turn yourself in there, I'm guessing you don't know what's going to happen to you.

280
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You could have been killed.

281
00:21:41,720 --> 00:21:47,160
Mm-hmm. Like other people, yes. When you're in the front lines, that's always a risk.

282
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And if you went into exile, you could have taken your wife with you, but you decided that wasn't

283
00:21:52,600 --> 00:21:59,000
worth it? It wasn't worth it because it would have been abandoning the people that for the past three

284
00:21:59,000 --> 00:22:05,640
years I had been leading and telling them that we needed to take this to the limit. And my commitment

285
00:22:05,640 --> 00:22:11,240
to them was that if they were going to come after us, I was always going to be in the front line.

286
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And that if they were going to imprison me, that I was going to take that risk.

287
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But I expected them to take the same risk.

288
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And that's what happened.

289
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That's insanely brave, though.

290
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I obviously just think of what I would do in that situation.

291
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And I think most people would probably just leave.

292
00:22:31,040 --> 00:22:32,420
Well, it depends, you know.

293
00:22:33,480 --> 00:22:37,540
I think if you think about it from your current position now,

294
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maybe that's the decision that you would make.

295
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But if you are dedicating your life to a cause

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with a group of people that are committed to that same cause,

297
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that are willing to take risks, you take the risks.

298
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Because not taking the risks is not taking things

299
00:22:58,340 --> 00:23:11,410
to the limit where you know things can change If you don take the situation to the limit there is no change possible So what happened Where did you take yourself into Just like a local police station

300
00:23:11,410 --> 00:23:22,370
No. I went into hiding and I posted a Twitter video because I was censored from regular media.

301
00:23:22,930 --> 00:23:29,090
And I called for people to protest. And I said, I'm going to turn myself in. I ask all of you

302
00:23:29,090 --> 00:23:37,610
to wear white, to be very peaceful, and to be in this particular part of Caracas where we always

303
00:23:37,610 --> 00:23:44,750
protest. It's a huge avenue called Avenida Miranda. And that morning, very early in the morning,

304
00:23:44,750 --> 00:23:52,470
around 4.30, I went into the trunk of a car and went from the outskirts of Caracas to the center

305
00:23:52,470 --> 00:23:58,570
of Caracas. They were looking for me. They had been raiding different houses of people close to me.

306
00:23:59,090 --> 00:24:04,230
And I went to a friend's house, stayed there for, you know, we had breakfast, we had a conversation.

307
00:24:04,670 --> 00:24:05,990
And then noon came.

308
00:24:06,330 --> 00:24:10,830
And that's the time when we had called the people to be in the streets.

309
00:24:11,390 --> 00:24:13,690
And there were a lot of police looking for me.

310
00:24:14,190 --> 00:24:16,750
So I asked my friend if he had a motorcycle.

311
00:24:16,890 --> 00:24:20,950
He had a motorcycle and he had a full helmet.

312
00:24:21,170 --> 00:24:25,110
So I took the motorcycle, put the helmet on, went through a couple of checkpoints.

313
00:24:25,210 --> 00:24:25,870
They didn't stop me.

314
00:24:25,870 --> 00:24:36,530
And then there was a final checkpoint before the protest, but this checkpoint was being managed by the police of which I was the mayor.

315
00:24:36,790 --> 00:24:38,570
So I said, I'm going to take the risk.

316
00:24:38,810 --> 00:24:43,330
I had not been mayor for six years, but I always kept in contact with them.

317
00:24:43,450 --> 00:24:46,190
So I said, you know, I'm just going to take my helmet off.

318
00:24:46,250 --> 00:24:52,370
So I take my helmet off and all of them just, you know, they stood up and they're like, mayor, go right ahead with us.

319
00:24:52,530 --> 00:24:52,910
Wow.

320
00:24:54,030 --> 00:24:54,830
That's incredible.

321
00:24:54,830 --> 00:25:12,390
And I went to a protest, and that was my last day in freedom. Hundreds of thousands of people. And you can look at all of these images in YouTube. They're really impressive. Everybody wearing white, an incredible energy. There was no sound system, nothing.

322
00:25:12,390 --> 00:25:20,650
and it got to a point where there was a barrier of maybe 2,000 military men with armored vehicles,

323
00:25:20,870 --> 00:25:28,490
motorcycles, and the disorder police or the order police, however you want to call it, gear.

324
00:25:28,530 --> 00:25:29,190
The riot police.

325
00:25:29,430 --> 00:25:29,990
The riot police.

326
00:25:31,090 --> 00:25:37,870
And so I had the opportunity of just standing in a statue that was there.

327
00:25:37,990 --> 00:25:40,330
I took a megaphone, gave a short speech.

328
00:25:40,330 --> 00:25:42,630
my wife was there

329
00:25:42,630 --> 00:25:44,950
she came up and she gave me this cross

330
00:25:44,950 --> 00:25:47,090
that I've been wearing ever since

331
00:25:47,090 --> 00:25:48,090
and

332
00:25:48,090 --> 00:25:49,770
I turned myself in

333
00:25:49,770 --> 00:25:52,430
they took me to an armored vehicle

334
00:25:52,430 --> 00:25:54,670
and the people

335
00:25:54,670 --> 00:25:56,650
in the armored vehicle was the head of the

336
00:25:56,650 --> 00:25:58,610
National Guard, his second aboard

337
00:25:58,610 --> 00:26:00,330
and a couple of other people

338
00:26:00,330 --> 00:26:02,850
people started to shake the armored vehicle

339
00:26:02,850 --> 00:26:04,730
and the head

340
00:26:04,730 --> 00:26:06,670
of the National Guard got very nervous and he was

341
00:26:06,670 --> 00:26:08,470
talking to Maduro and

342
00:26:08,470 --> 00:26:09,990
he was

343
00:26:09,990 --> 00:26:13,830
calling for the Rio police to start repressing the people.

344
00:26:13,930 --> 00:26:14,830
I said, don't do that.

345
00:26:15,330 --> 00:26:18,230
If you do that, you are going to incite violence.

346
00:26:18,510 --> 00:26:19,090
Don't do that.

347
00:26:19,330 --> 00:26:20,530
I said, so what do you suggest?

348
00:26:20,810 --> 00:26:22,630
I said, give me a megaphone.

349
00:26:23,190 --> 00:26:28,610
And I can commit to asking people to be nonviolent.

350
00:26:29,210 --> 00:26:30,590
He says, I can't make that decision.

351
00:26:30,590 --> 00:26:35,570
So he calls Maduro and he says, you know, I have Lopez here and this is the situation.

352
00:26:35,770 --> 00:26:39,450
And he is saying that he can get, you know, he can calm the people.

353
00:26:39,450 --> 00:26:43,750
so he approves and there again there are pictures of all of this it's it's like you know it's

354
00:26:43,750 --> 00:26:50,930
completely absurd i am the person being put into prison and i was leading my guards and the entire

355
00:26:50,930 --> 00:26:55,310
military with a megaphone telling them let's do this let's do that you're not telling the people

356
00:26:55,310 --> 00:27:01,550
so that went along for like three hours then they took me to an airport at the center of the city

357
00:27:01,550 --> 00:27:08,550
and there were three helicopters there and the three helicopters um went to different parts they

358
00:27:08,550 --> 00:27:15,330
He put me into one of the helicopters and took me to a military base and then from the military base to the courthouse.

359
00:27:15,570 --> 00:27:23,770
We got to the courthouse and the number two of the Maduro regime named Diosdado Cabello, he was driving the car.

360
00:27:24,370 --> 00:27:25,170
We get there.

361
00:27:25,630 --> 00:27:26,450
Time goes by.

362
00:27:27,290 --> 00:27:29,470
Half an hour, 45 minutes, one hour.

363
00:27:29,630 --> 00:27:31,170
And I asked, you know, what's happening?

364
00:27:31,170 --> 00:27:33,730
And he said, we don't have a case against you.

365
00:27:34,010 --> 00:27:35,630
What do you mean you don't have a case against me?

366
00:27:35,890 --> 00:27:37,610
So you arrested me without a case?

367
00:27:37,610 --> 00:27:40,510
Yeah, nobody thought that you were going to turn yourself in.

368
00:27:40,670 --> 00:27:43,010
So nobody did the homework of putting the case.

369
00:27:43,490 --> 00:27:48,230
And in front of me, he started to call the president of the Supreme Court, started to

370
00:27:48,230 --> 00:27:51,890
call the attorney general and just saying, give him like political instructions.

371
00:27:52,250 --> 00:27:55,150
You know, we need a case to prosecute this guy.

372
00:27:55,610 --> 00:27:57,870
So time goes by, I go in front of the judge.

373
00:27:58,030 --> 00:28:01,490
And of course they say, I have to be in prison.

374
00:28:01,730 --> 00:28:07,250
And they take me to a military prison that is an hour and a half away from Caracas.

375
00:28:07,250 --> 00:28:09,370
called Ramo Verde.

376
00:28:10,710 --> 00:28:13,230
At the time, that prison had like 500 prisoners.

377
00:28:13,490 --> 00:28:14,530
It had two buildings.

378
00:28:14,930 --> 00:28:17,370
One building had 499.

379
00:28:18,210 --> 00:28:19,970
And in the other building, it was just me.

380
00:28:20,430 --> 00:28:22,190
They take me to the fourth floor

381
00:28:22,190 --> 00:28:24,770
and they put me in a cell.

382
00:28:25,270 --> 00:28:27,530
And that was a cell where I spent

383
00:28:27,530 --> 00:28:29,090
the next four years of my life

384
00:28:29,090 --> 00:28:30,550
in solitary confinement.

385
00:28:31,050 --> 00:28:31,390
Holy shit.

386
00:28:31,530 --> 00:28:33,510
Four years completely on your own.

387
00:28:33,710 --> 00:28:35,590
No interaction apart from with guards.

388
00:28:36,030 --> 00:28:36,950
Well, yeah, yeah.

389
00:28:36,950 --> 00:28:43,390
No, interaction with the guards. I had sporadic interactions with some of the inmates when I went to Mass.

390
00:28:44,390 --> 00:28:54,030
After a big push by my wife for them to allow me that privilege, then I was allowed to go out and see the sun.

391
00:28:54,670 --> 00:29:03,850
But I had to be alone. Then at some point, there were a couple of other prisoners for a couple of months that were there with me.

392
00:29:03,850 --> 00:29:09,010
But the rest of the time, I was me, myself, and I in solitary confinement.

393
00:29:09,010 --> 00:29:12,310
Do you think, did they keep you on your own to try and break you?

394
00:29:12,530 --> 00:29:14,690
Oh, absolutely. That's what solitary confinement is about.

395
00:29:14,890 --> 00:29:18,810
But it was also for me not to talk to other prisoners.

396
00:29:18,970 --> 00:29:19,930
Well, that's what I was going to say.

397
00:29:19,990 --> 00:29:22,170
I wonder if they were worried that you were going to, you know,

398
00:29:22,190 --> 00:29:23,650
the rest of the prisoners would be behind you.

399
00:29:23,930 --> 00:29:27,870
Well, and they were correct because we actually did that.

400
00:29:28,550 --> 00:29:32,030
I was able to organize a riot in the prison.

401
00:29:32,250 --> 00:29:33,470
We took control of the prison.

402
00:29:33,850 --> 00:29:45,050
So the way I was able to do that was by when I went to mass, there is a part of the mass when you stand up and you give people peace.

403
00:29:45,690 --> 00:29:49,630
And you give people, you give them a hug and you say, peace be with you.

404
00:29:50,070 --> 00:29:53,070
So what I did is I went into the room.

405
00:29:53,330 --> 00:29:54,970
Maybe there were like 30, 40 people there.

406
00:29:55,530 --> 00:29:59,150
And you just, I scanned the way people looked at me.

407
00:29:59,150 --> 00:30:04,230
And when you're in this type of situation, you are in complete alert mode.

408
00:30:04,350 --> 00:30:12,810
I mean, you really develop a way of understanding your surroundings that allows you to make very quick decisions.

409
00:30:13,270 --> 00:30:26,710
So I chose the people that I knew were with me, and I would tell them, tell your wife to tell my wife who are you, and we'll get back to you.

410
00:30:26,710 --> 00:30:43,590
So, in a span of like three or four months, when my lawyer came and my wife had the opportunity to visit me, I told both of them that these people were going to approach them and that I needed to know in what part of the prison they were.

411
00:30:43,870 --> 00:30:47,510
So, I wanted one person at least in each one of the floors.

412
00:30:48,030 --> 00:30:50,870
And then it took a couple of iterations.

413
00:30:51,170 --> 00:30:55,030
Then I told them, let's organize a plan to take control of the prison.

414
00:30:55,030 --> 00:31:03,990
And one day, and this is the way protests most of the time happen, is that they are sparked by something that happens.

415
00:31:04,230 --> 00:31:12,710
One day, they tampered with a baby that was going to visit their father that was in prison.

416
00:31:13,270 --> 00:31:14,830
And that's like a big no-no.

417
00:31:14,830 --> 00:31:18,050
I mean, like they opened the diapers of the kid.

418
00:31:18,210 --> 00:31:19,990
They touched the genitals of the baby.

419
00:31:20,210 --> 00:31:22,890
And that created complete rage.

420
00:31:22,890 --> 00:31:26,250
and we activated the plan to take control of the prison.

421
00:31:26,910 --> 00:31:32,370
And for like 12 hours, we had control of the prison.

422
00:31:33,030 --> 00:31:38,390
After that, I went into a more severe solitary confinement

423
00:31:38,390 --> 00:31:41,230
and I went into a hunger strike.

424
00:31:41,630 --> 00:31:44,530
So I did a 28-day hunger strike

425
00:31:44,530 --> 00:31:47,990
and actually focused the hunger strike

426
00:31:47,990 --> 00:31:57,610
on an issue that I knew we had high probabilities of winning, which was to call for the parliamentary

427
00:31:57,610 --> 00:32:05,270
election in 2015. Many people do hunger strikes. The key to have a successful hunger strike

428
00:32:05,270 --> 00:32:17,010
is that you have a petition that is probable that can happen in a time span of maximum 30 days.

429
00:32:17,990 --> 00:32:21,590
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456
00:34:23,730 --> 00:34:26,130
So I've got so many questions on this.

457
00:34:26,290 --> 00:34:29,530
Let's start with four years in solitary confinement.

458
00:34:30,390 --> 00:34:32,270
How do you even manage that?

459
00:34:32,370 --> 00:34:33,010
What did you do?

460
00:34:33,010 --> 00:34:40,810
Well, I grew up with a lot of stories about prison because my great-grandfather was a political prisoner.

461
00:34:41,130 --> 00:34:42,450
Then he went into exile.

462
00:34:42,670 --> 00:34:43,570
He died in exile.

463
00:34:44,090 --> 00:34:47,030
And his story always shocked me.

464
00:34:47,630 --> 00:34:55,470
I couldn't believe, like growing up listening to the story, that you could go to prison for your thoughts, for your beliefs, for your ideas.

465
00:34:55,970 --> 00:34:59,730
I mean, it was completely foreign to me.

466
00:34:59,730 --> 00:35:08,730
and but I was always interested and as I was getting closer to calling for the protest

467
00:35:08,730 --> 00:35:15,890
there was a lot of threats against me and I would be giving press conferences and giving speeches

468
00:35:15,890 --> 00:35:21,150
always calling Maduro a dictator calling Maduro for the links that he had with the narcos

469
00:35:21,150 --> 00:35:26,630
and I remember journalists and people saying you know don't you think that you're putting yourself

470
00:35:26,630 --> 00:35:33,850
in danger, they're going to imprison you. So it was very clear to me that there was a very high

471
00:35:33,850 --> 00:35:42,050
probability that I was going to be imprisoned. So I started to prepare myself, started to read

472
00:35:42,050 --> 00:35:49,530
about what people did in prison. I read the usual suspects, Mandela, Gandhi, and many others,

473
00:35:49,530 --> 00:35:57,490
but especially venezuelan political prisoners and um all experiences are different but they all have

474
00:35:57,490 --> 00:36:08,210
in common one word routine you need to develop your routine so february the 18th 2014 the day

475
00:36:08,210 --> 00:36:15,930
my first day in prison of the seven years i spent in prison i dedicated my focus to

476
00:36:15,930 --> 00:36:22,210
deciding what my routine was going to be. And my routine ended up being something very simple.

477
00:36:22,570 --> 00:36:29,790
I would do three things every day. I would pray every day. I would do something with my mind. I

478
00:36:29,790 --> 00:36:36,910
would read, write, draw, try to play imaginary chess or chess or just do something with my head.

479
00:36:36,910 --> 00:36:45,790
And I did physical exercise. And if I did those three things every day, I won the day. So my

480
00:36:45,790 --> 00:36:55,810
my view, my universe was a sell. And my way of knowing that I was winning was doing those three

481
00:36:55,810 --> 00:37:01,690
things. If I did those three things and not thinking about what's going to happen next week

482
00:37:01,690 --> 00:37:06,090
or the week after, or what's going to be the date in which I'm going to be in freedom,

483
00:37:06,630 --> 00:37:13,250
I was going to be able to keep strong. And that's what I did. And I was very disciplined in doing

484
00:37:13,250 --> 00:37:15,190
that every single day.

485
00:37:15,530 --> 00:37:18,950
But that's crazy mental toughness, because you hear stories of people getting broken

486
00:37:18,950 --> 00:37:22,450
by 24 hours in solitary, and you did four years.

487
00:37:23,250 --> 00:37:28,410
When you decided to go on hunger strike, why did you think that the Maduro government would

488
00:37:28,410 --> 00:37:29,990
care about you being on hunger strike?

489
00:37:30,110 --> 00:37:30,790
Well, that's a key.

490
00:37:30,790 --> 00:37:36,310
So, I mean, we can do an entire podcast about hunger strikes, because I remember reading

491
00:37:36,310 --> 00:37:42,890
the hunger strikes of the IRA people that were protesting,

492
00:37:42,890 --> 00:37:45,530
I think it was in the 80s, that they died.

493
00:37:45,770 --> 00:37:47,090
And that really shocked me.

494
00:37:47,710 --> 00:37:49,910
And I started to...

495
00:37:49,910 --> 00:37:52,950
I had read a lot about hunger strikes and the way they fail.

496
00:37:53,250 --> 00:37:54,550
Most hunger strikes fail.

497
00:37:55,130 --> 00:37:58,350
So at the beginning, I wanted to do a hunger strike

498
00:37:58,350 --> 00:38:01,890
to ask for the release of all political prisoners.

499
00:38:02,130 --> 00:38:04,090
But that was... It was not possible.

500
00:38:04,230 --> 00:38:04,970
Too big of an ask.

501
00:38:05,150 --> 00:38:05,950
Too big of an ask.

502
00:38:06,310 --> 00:38:14,690
But at the time, this is May of 2015, there was an election that had to happen by the end of that year.

503
00:38:15,110 --> 00:38:21,990
And according to the Venezuelan constitution, for an election to take place, it had to be called six months in advance.

504
00:38:22,530 --> 00:38:33,290
And there was a lot of pressure from internally, all of the political movements, the press, internationally, for that election to take place.

505
00:38:33,690 --> 00:38:35,650
But Maduro was not doing it.

506
00:38:35,650 --> 00:38:50,470
So I decided to focus on that. So the hunger strike was not about me. It was not about the political prisoners. It was not about our conditions. It was about the hope for freedom for all of the Venezuelan people.

507
00:38:50,470 --> 00:38:57,370
So we became the reference and it became the reference to the point that every day we were on CNN.

508
00:38:58,210 --> 00:39:04,370
After I started the hunger strike, more than 100 other political prisoners started their own hunger strike.

509
00:39:04,550 --> 00:39:10,710
And more than 150 people that were not in prison also went into a hunger strike.

510
00:39:10,870 --> 00:39:12,790
So it was an entire focus.

511
00:39:12,790 --> 00:39:18,430
my wife went to speak with the vice president and he told my wife, Jorge Arreaza, he said,

512
00:39:18,990 --> 00:39:22,390
tell your husband to quit the hunger strike because we're going to let him die.

513
00:39:23,590 --> 00:39:25,130
Would you have gone that far?

514
00:39:25,610 --> 00:39:33,870
Well, I was very focused and I was very focused and very strong. That has been the most spiritually

515
00:39:33,870 --> 00:39:42,630
intense experience I've had in my entire life. It was like, I don't have a bad memory

516
00:39:42,630 --> 00:39:43,470
about that moment.

517
00:39:43,670 --> 00:39:48,690
For me, it's one of the experiences of my life

518
00:39:48,690 --> 00:39:53,250
that I remember as the more intense.

519
00:39:53,610 --> 00:39:56,790
And it's just, you need to be very disciplined.

520
00:39:56,930 --> 00:39:58,390
The first week is very hard.

521
00:39:58,890 --> 00:40:03,930
The first three days, then day seven, day eight is very hard.

522
00:40:04,250 --> 00:40:05,390
But then you go into a plateau.

523
00:40:06,030 --> 00:40:09,470
And you need to also do certain things

524
00:40:09,470 --> 00:40:10,630
that are counterintuitive.

525
00:40:10,910 --> 00:40:12,190
You need to move around.

526
00:40:12,630 --> 00:40:15,130
You need to exercise your body.

527
00:40:15,130 --> 00:40:17,210
You need to be active.

528
00:40:17,590 --> 00:40:22,330
And I had read a bit about it, so I was very focused.

529
00:40:22,430 --> 00:40:27,630
And I remember the day that they actually called for the election,

530
00:40:28,450 --> 00:40:33,590
the director of the prison and a representative of the attorney general's office,

531
00:40:33,770 --> 00:40:35,950
they come to my cell and they say,

532
00:40:36,270 --> 00:40:38,490
now you can lift your hunger strike.

533
00:40:39,070 --> 00:40:40,050
You won.

534
00:40:40,050 --> 00:40:43,550
and I said, I don't believe you.

535
00:40:43,950 --> 00:40:45,770
And they showed me, they got their phone,

536
00:40:45,890 --> 00:40:47,390
they showed me the news.

537
00:40:48,050 --> 00:40:50,370
And I just, I mean, it was such a sweet victory.

538
00:40:50,850 --> 00:40:53,530
And they had to come and they would put every day,

539
00:40:54,210 --> 00:40:57,570
they would put a very tasty plate of food

540
00:40:57,570 --> 00:41:00,730
with a camera right in front of myself.

541
00:41:01,410 --> 00:41:01,750
Every single day.

542
00:41:01,750 --> 00:41:02,850
They would desperate for you to have some.

543
00:41:02,850 --> 00:41:03,590
Oh yeah, yeah.

544
00:41:03,690 --> 00:41:05,530
Because with a camera and what they were,

545
00:41:05,770 --> 00:41:08,230
you know, they were looking is that I would sneak

546
00:41:08,230 --> 00:41:11,030
and try to take, you know, a part of that food.

547
00:41:11,570 --> 00:41:15,210
So just do, yeah, disqualifying.

548
00:41:15,510 --> 00:41:18,850
So why was it so spiritually enlightening?

549
00:41:18,950 --> 00:41:20,370
Is it because in that scenario,

550
00:41:20,370 --> 00:41:21,910
you have no control over anything,

551
00:41:22,050 --> 00:41:23,510
but that's the one thing you can control?

552
00:41:23,610 --> 00:41:25,410
Well, that's exactly it, you know?

553
00:41:25,710 --> 00:41:27,350
When you're in solitary confinement,

554
00:41:27,810 --> 00:41:30,330
you realize that you don't control anything.

555
00:41:30,710 --> 00:41:32,190
You don't control what you wear.

556
00:41:32,750 --> 00:41:34,150
You don't control what you eat.

557
00:41:34,490 --> 00:41:37,430
You don't control when you see the sun.

558
00:41:37,430 --> 00:41:40,170
You don't control when you speak to anyone.

559
00:41:40,330 --> 00:41:41,170
You don't control anything.

560
00:41:41,950 --> 00:41:45,390
But you do control something that is very sacred.

561
00:41:45,710 --> 00:41:48,930
You control your mind and you control your heart.

562
00:41:49,250 --> 00:41:55,510
So I became very focused in that, in controlling my mind, in controlling my heart.

563
00:41:56,010 --> 00:42:06,410
And I actually went to the extreme to start it to, I realized that my heart, not just in the soul sense, but also in the physical sense.

564
00:42:06,410 --> 00:42:09,750
They would raid my cell every other week.

565
00:42:10,130 --> 00:42:15,970
Like six, seven hooded armed men would come into my cell, just pressure me.

566
00:42:16,390 --> 00:42:17,930
And it was very tough.

567
00:42:18,070 --> 00:42:19,130
It was very intense.

568
00:42:19,950 --> 00:42:24,490
They would frisk me every single day.

569
00:42:24,930 --> 00:42:27,290
So I was always under a lot of pressure.

570
00:42:27,890 --> 00:42:30,050
And the first times that this happened to me,

571
00:42:30,050 --> 00:42:39,170
I just remember my heart just beating as if it was going to explode. So I realized that I needed

572
00:42:39,170 --> 00:42:46,230
to physically control my heart. And I came up with this way of training that I would do like 50 burpees

573
00:42:46,230 --> 00:42:53,750
and then I would sit and only think about my heart, close my eyes and only think about my heart

574
00:42:53,750 --> 00:43:01,130
and my breathing and trying to bring my heart rate as low as possible, as fast as possible.

575
00:43:01,430 --> 00:43:06,890
And I had a lot of time. And since I had a lot of time, I did this, you know, every day,

576
00:43:06,890 --> 00:43:13,790
several times. And it got to a point where I was really good in self-controlling, like my breathing,

577
00:43:14,210 --> 00:43:22,370
my heart rate, and just self-control. It was part of the buildup towards the hunger strike.

578
00:43:22,370 --> 00:43:28,950
And then I did the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius.

579
00:43:29,170 --> 00:43:36,450
I am Catholic, and this is a meditation by St. Ignatius,

580
00:43:36,550 --> 00:43:41,610
who was a warrior that became a man of the church.

581
00:43:42,310 --> 00:43:47,110
And he developed this, the father of the Jesuits,

582
00:43:47,450 --> 00:43:50,350
developed this way of praying, this way of meditating,

583
00:43:50,350 --> 00:43:54,690
that starts by saying the same way you train for your body,

584
00:43:54,830 --> 00:43:56,490
you need to train for your soul.

585
00:43:56,870 --> 00:43:58,590
So it's incredible.

586
00:43:58,590 --> 00:44:00,470
And I did that.

587
00:44:00,730 --> 00:44:05,710
And I got to a very, very strong spiritual and mental stage.

588
00:44:05,990 --> 00:44:07,290
And I was only focused on that.

589
00:44:08,230 --> 00:44:11,130
I mean, this story is already crazy, but it gets even crazier.

590
00:44:11,750 --> 00:44:13,970
So you're four years in solitary confinement.

591
00:44:14,070 --> 00:44:15,990
How many times do you see your wife, by the way, in that time period?

592
00:44:16,210 --> 00:44:18,890
I would see her sometimes every two months,

593
00:44:18,890 --> 00:44:20,470
sometimes every month.

594
00:44:20,530 --> 00:44:21,370
How did she handle it?

595
00:44:21,630 --> 00:44:22,610
She's a warrior, man.

596
00:44:22,630 --> 00:44:23,650
My wife is incredible.

597
00:44:23,650 --> 00:44:27,530
My wife, she's a schoolteacher by training.

598
00:44:28,050 --> 00:44:30,790
Then she became the national champion

599
00:44:30,790 --> 00:44:32,490
of kitesurfing in Venezuela.

600
00:44:33,150 --> 00:44:38,550
Then she had a very famous program for extreme sports

601
00:44:38,550 --> 00:44:40,610
that was top rating.

602
00:44:41,330 --> 00:44:42,990
And she had nothing to do with politics,

603
00:44:43,170 --> 00:44:44,630
but she's a very strong woman.

604
00:44:45,230 --> 00:44:48,530
And I remember telling her the day I went into prison,

605
00:44:48,530 --> 00:44:50,330
And I said, now it's on you.

606
00:44:50,450 --> 00:44:51,070
You're my voice.

607
00:44:51,690 --> 00:44:55,550
And she took that very seriously.

608
00:44:55,790 --> 00:44:58,410
She was very committed with my mother as well

609
00:44:58,410 --> 00:45:00,030
and the people from my movement.

610
00:45:00,490 --> 00:45:03,390
And she became the voice of the Venezuelan people.

611
00:45:03,750 --> 00:45:07,470
She advocated in ways that nobody had ever advocated.

612
00:45:07,990 --> 00:45:11,530
She is, I think, maybe the only Venezuelan

613
00:45:11,530 --> 00:45:14,110
that met with Biden as vice president

614
00:45:14,110 --> 00:45:16,590
and then with Trump at the White House.

615
00:45:16,590 --> 00:45:23,490
She met with the Pope. She met with medical Macron. She met with Latin American presidents.

616
00:45:23,830 --> 00:45:33,950
She just went around talking about what was happening in Venezuela. And because of her advocacy, it became very clear that Venezuela was no longer a democracy.

617
00:45:34,530 --> 00:45:44,330
And at the same time, she was a mother. At the time, I had two kids. Manuela was four and my son Leo was one.

618
00:45:44,330 --> 00:45:47,110
And it was very tough for them.

619
00:45:47,270 --> 00:45:50,270
But she was such an incredible mother

620
00:45:50,270 --> 00:45:53,190
that she was able to handle all of the advocacy

621
00:45:53,190 --> 00:45:59,090
and to nurture and to explain our kids what was happening.

622
00:45:59,710 --> 00:46:02,710
And they were able to keep strong.

623
00:46:02,890 --> 00:46:05,330
So I'm very proud of everything that she did.

624
00:46:05,650 --> 00:46:06,290
Yeah, that's incredible.

625
00:46:06,770 --> 00:46:19,480
So four years in solitary what happened And why did you have then three years I assume in like general population prison No then 2017 we called I always call for general population prison by the way

626
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:31,340
Every time I was sentenced to 14 years, my trial was, just as a footnote, my trial was because I was being accused of inciting violence through my speech.

627
00:46:31,340 --> 00:46:35,200
and the entire trial was analyzing my speech.

628
00:46:36,000 --> 00:46:38,520
And since I've never called for violence,

629
00:46:39,560 --> 00:46:40,540
he was not able,

630
00:46:40,900 --> 00:46:43,520
there was no proof that I was calling for violence.

631
00:46:43,700 --> 00:46:47,080
So the judge concluded that I had the capacity

632
00:46:47,080 --> 00:46:50,320
to send subliminal messages to the Venezuelan people.

633
00:46:50,420 --> 00:46:52,660
And this is on writing in the sentence.

634
00:46:52,660 --> 00:46:54,360
So they sentenced me to 14 years

635
00:46:54,360 --> 00:46:57,660
and that was serving time.

636
00:46:57,780 --> 00:46:59,340
But in the year 2017,

637
00:46:59,340 --> 00:47:07,880
our movement started another cycle of protest that went along for three months. Three months

638
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:14,260
of massive protest every day in every single city. It was, the country was burning. So they

639
00:47:14,260 --> 00:47:24,540
sent me to house arrest to calm the protest down. But while I was in house arrest, I made a video

640
00:47:24,540 --> 00:47:25,760
and called for the protest.

641
00:47:26,200 --> 00:47:28,420
So they took me back to military prison.

642
00:47:28,760 --> 00:47:31,860
It was like going to purgatory and then back to hell.

643
00:47:32,500 --> 00:47:36,980
And I spent another period in the military prison

644
00:47:36,980 --> 00:47:39,800
and then they sent me back to house arrest.

645
00:47:40,500 --> 00:47:43,500
So I spent in house arrest a year and a half.

646
00:47:43,900 --> 00:47:46,340
They made my house a prison, not just for me,

647
00:47:46,340 --> 00:47:51,880
but also for my kids and my family, my kids and my wife.

648
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:55,720
Every time they went in and out of the house, they had to be frisked.

649
00:47:55,820 --> 00:47:59,860
There were like 30 people guarding my house with hoods, machine guns.

650
00:48:00,400 --> 00:48:02,080
And it was very intense.

651
00:48:02,220 --> 00:48:08,960
And it was even harder for me, house arrest than solitary confinement,

652
00:48:09,520 --> 00:48:13,880
because I had the weight of having my family also in prison.

653
00:48:14,560 --> 00:48:15,940
So a lot of things happened.

654
00:48:17,080 --> 00:48:19,020
2019 was a very bad year.

655
00:48:19,020 --> 00:48:29,940
Maduro stole yet another election. And there was a lot of frustration, but we had won the National

656
00:48:29,940 --> 00:48:36,080
Assembly. We had won two thirds of the National Assembly. And we had a political agreement that

657
00:48:36,080 --> 00:48:43,600
every party was going to have the presidency of the National Assembly every year. And our turn

658
00:48:43,600 --> 00:48:52,020
was 2019. So we came up with this idea that was based on the constitution that stated that if the

659
00:48:52,020 --> 00:48:59,020
elected president doesn't show up for the swearing in at the National Assembly, then the president of

660
00:48:59,020 --> 00:49:05,540
the National Assembly becomes the interim president until there is a new election. And this was a slim

661
00:49:05,540 --> 00:49:12,800
window of the constitution. So we started to work on this and trying to get countries to support us.

662
00:49:12,800 --> 00:49:19,760
uh, Ivan Duque was the president of Colombia and he supported this idea. And then Trump was

663
00:49:19,760 --> 00:49:25,780
president at the time and his administration supported this idea. I remember writing a one

664
00:49:25,780 --> 00:49:35,700
page memo about our, our approach. And we got, we got support from primarily the U.S. and Colombia

665
00:49:35,700 --> 00:49:41,600
and Juan Guaidó, a member of our party, became interim president.

666
00:49:41,600 --> 00:49:49,880
And then he was sworn in as the became the president of the National Assembly and then became interim president.

667
00:49:50,140 --> 00:49:57,100
And that was 2019. And it was a moment where there was maximum pressure from the Trump administration.

668
00:49:57,840 --> 00:50:05,240
Sanctions started to pile on Maduro. There were a lot of protests in the streets and things started to get.

669
00:50:05,240 --> 00:50:15,640
very tense. And one day I received a signal message, self-destructive single message that had

670
00:50:15,640 --> 00:50:22,560
a general in the background, a general from the military, one of the top ranking generals of

671
00:50:22,560 --> 00:50:29,240
Maduro and a civilian. And then the message disappeared. A week after that, the civilian

672
00:50:29,240 --> 00:50:39,080
in that video shows up to my house at midnight and he says, we want to help. What can we do?

673
00:50:39,520 --> 00:50:46,280
And I said, if you really are who you say you are, allow me to talk to some of the military

674
00:50:46,280 --> 00:50:50,960
and the police that I've been contacting over these years. And they said, all right.

675
00:50:50,960 --> 00:50:59,240
So for three weeks as a prisoner, my house being guarded by 30 guards and armored vehicles,

676
00:50:59,980 --> 00:51:08,400
people from the military and the police started to come to my house to legitimately plot against

677
00:51:08,400 --> 00:51:13,760
Maduro. So this was the start of a military coup? No, I wouldn't call it a military coup. I would

678
00:51:13,760 --> 00:51:17,020
call it a legitimate military uprising.

679
00:51:17,020 --> 00:51:18,060
Okay, fair.

680
00:51:19,020 --> 00:51:25,400
Because a military coup is the debunking of a legitimate government. Maduro was not legitimate.

681
00:51:25,940 --> 00:51:31,160
So this is a legitimate military uprising that we were planning. So for three weeks,

682
00:51:31,180 --> 00:51:37,380
I met with the head of the national police, the head of the political police, the military that

683
00:51:37,380 --> 00:51:42,380
were in charge of the security of the national assembly of the Supreme court, the head of the

684
00:51:42,380 --> 00:51:49,240
heat squad of Maduro, very intense conversations. And I remember asking all of them, you know,

685
00:51:49,280 --> 00:51:55,440
why are you doing this? And they, some of them were, I think, more patriotic than others,

686
00:51:55,440 --> 00:52:01,780
but they were all fearing the impact that sanctions were going to have on them and their

687
00:52:01,780 --> 00:52:10,960
families. So we came up with a plan and the plan was to have a popular military uprising

688
00:52:10,960 --> 00:52:17,540
that was going to come along with a decision of the Supreme Court that we were also coordinating

689
00:52:17,540 --> 00:52:29,120
with. And on April 30th of 2019, I walked out of my house as a prisoner with a convoy of the

690
00:52:29,120 --> 00:52:36,720
military and the police waiting for me. My guards were waiting for me outside. I was wearing a

691
00:52:36,720 --> 00:52:45,640
jacket with the flag of Venezuela. And we all had a blue band around our shoulders. And I remember

692
00:52:45,640 --> 00:52:52,340
coming out and all of the military just squaring and saying, all right, let's go. So that morning,

693
00:52:52,340 --> 00:52:58,640
we had this uprising. Things didn't go the way we wanted because the decision of the Supreme Court

694
00:52:58,640 --> 00:53:06,320
never took place. And it was very intense. Again, tens of thousands of people in the streets,

695
00:53:06,320 --> 00:53:13,380
the military, and the only way out that we had was to seek refuge at embassies.

696
00:53:14,080 --> 00:53:16,200
So long story short, I-

697
00:53:16,200 --> 00:53:18,540
Because at this point, you're definitely going to get killed if they get their hands on you.

698
00:53:18,560 --> 00:53:21,320
Absolutely. Absolutely. They were already shooting people.

699
00:53:22,060 --> 00:53:25,920
And it was very clear, but it was a very confusing moment because

700
00:53:25,920 --> 00:53:28,740
everybody thought that this was the end of Maduro.

701
00:53:28,740 --> 00:53:32,060
So everybody was very, very energized.

702
00:53:32,520 --> 00:53:36,140
But I knew that the plan was already failing.

703
00:53:36,320 --> 00:53:43,700
since the very beginning. So I was in the middle of that, you know, five years before, no, six years

704
00:53:43,700 --> 00:53:50,340
before that, I was taken to prison. My last day in the streets was in the middle of a huge protest.

705
00:53:50,620 --> 00:53:56,860
Now I came out again in the middle of a huge protest and I had to seek refuge for me and for

706
00:53:56,860 --> 00:54:03,060
the military. So I first went to the Chilean embassy and I started to call presidents in Caracas,

707
00:54:03,060 --> 00:54:10,260
started to call presidents from the region, and some of the embassies were already closed.

708
00:54:10,680 --> 00:54:17,060
So I remember talking to the president of Panama, and he said,

709
00:54:17,160 --> 00:54:21,920
I know exactly what you're going through because I was looking for an embassy that could take the military.

710
00:54:22,200 --> 00:54:30,580
And they opened the embassy of Panama to more than 30 military men that were with us in the uprising.

711
00:54:30,580 --> 00:54:35,140
and the Chilean embassy had very weak security

712
00:54:35,140 --> 00:54:36,780
because the ambassador was not there.

713
00:54:37,140 --> 00:54:40,140
And there were already five people from my movement

714
00:54:40,140 --> 00:54:41,400
that were staying there.

715
00:54:41,840 --> 00:54:44,220
So my wife went there and she said,

716
00:54:44,300 --> 00:54:45,200
we can't stay there.

717
00:54:45,440 --> 00:54:48,000
And I said, you know, this is where I am.

718
00:54:48,080 --> 00:54:49,420
I need to deal with this situation.

719
00:54:49,800 --> 00:54:51,360
I need to take care of the military

720
00:54:51,360 --> 00:54:53,180
and I need to take care of their security.

721
00:54:53,180 --> 00:54:55,640
So she called the Spanish ambassador

722
00:54:55,640 --> 00:54:59,500
and asked if we could go there.

723
00:54:59,500 --> 00:55:16,320
And he said yes. So we went to the Spanish embassy, and that's where I stayed for the next year and a half. And the Spanish embassy was also under siege. They cut the electricity, they cut the running water, they cut the trash services.

724
00:55:16,320 --> 00:55:20,640
and at the embassy, it was only the ambassador, his wife,

725
00:55:20,880 --> 00:55:24,400
and the equivalent of the Navy SEALs of the Spanish government.

726
00:55:24,940 --> 00:55:30,680
And it was actually an opportunity for me to meet these incredible people.

727
00:55:31,540 --> 00:55:35,020
These are, I think, in terms of teamwork, you don't get better than that.

728
00:55:35,220 --> 00:55:37,260
You don't get better than a special forces team.

729
00:55:37,560 --> 00:55:42,240
And I've always been inclined to training and to combat sports

730
00:55:42,240 --> 00:55:44,960
and we would train every day.

731
00:55:44,960 --> 00:55:48,600
We would do combat sports in the morning and CrossFit in the afternoon.

732
00:55:49,120 --> 00:55:59,940
So, and in the meantime, between the two training sessions, I was working 16 hours a day, like helping Guaidó to run the interim government.

733
00:56:00,160 --> 00:56:08,200
And it was very intense until the end of 2020, when things started to get way more difficult.

734
00:56:08,660 --> 00:56:09,820
It was already COVID.

735
00:56:10,440 --> 00:56:13,680
And my mother got very sick.

736
00:56:13,680 --> 00:56:18,960
She was going through dialysis. She was waiting for a liver transplant.

737
00:56:18,960 --> 00:56:24,720
I had not seen my kids for two years. I had not seen my wife for almost two years.

738
00:56:24,720 --> 00:56:31,360
So I decided to escape. And I never wanted to escape, but that's what I had to do.

739
00:56:31,360 --> 00:56:35,440
Because essentially when you're in the Spanish Embassy, you're just in another prison.

740
00:56:35,440 --> 00:56:37,920
Like I'm sure it's much nicer, but you're still trapped.

741
00:56:37,920 --> 00:56:38,640
Oh, absolutely.

742
00:56:38,640 --> 00:56:42,560
So how did you even plan to get out? Because again, I imagine there were people,

743
00:56:42,560 --> 00:56:46,320
if they heard you'd escaped from the embassy, they're going to be hunting you down on the street?

744
00:56:46,320 --> 00:56:53,360
Oh, absolutely. So I called a friend of mine with whom we've done different special operations

745
00:56:53,360 --> 00:57:00,320
before, like many extractions. And this is a guy that was not even a member of the movement. He was

746
00:57:00,320 --> 00:57:06,320
not even, he was a business person, but a good friend of mine. And he, for years, had been doing

747
00:57:06,320 --> 00:57:12,800
all of these things with me. And he knew that one day I was going to call him. So I call him up and

748
00:57:12,800 --> 00:57:19,380
I say, hey man, what's up? What's up? Okay. You know, you know, and he knew. And he started to plan.

749
00:57:20,140 --> 00:57:28,600
And a month after I called him, we decided on the date and he was ready. So I left the embassy

750
00:57:28,600 --> 00:57:34,080
in the trunk of the car of the ambassador and went through the checkpoints because of the Vienna

751
00:57:34,080 --> 00:57:41,700
convention. They couldn't frisk and open the car of the ambassador. And several blocks away,

752
00:57:42,120 --> 00:57:47,320
I transferred to another car. From there, we went to the basement of an office building.

753
00:57:47,980 --> 00:57:55,660
And in that basement, I saw a group of six of my friends and two cars that were of the electricity

754
00:57:55,660 --> 00:58:02,520
company of Venezuela. And my friend started, you know, after we spoke and we hugged each other,

755
00:58:02,520 --> 00:58:04,800
And he said, all right, this is the plan.

756
00:58:05,080 --> 00:58:06,800
We are an electricity commission.

757
00:58:07,540 --> 00:58:08,480
These are your IDs.

758
00:58:08,800 --> 00:58:09,840
These are your uniforms.

759
00:58:10,320 --> 00:58:11,540
This is what we're going to do.

760
00:58:11,720 --> 00:58:12,800
This is where we're going to go.

761
00:58:13,260 --> 00:58:19,100
And he had planned every detail, like even who was going to sit where, how we were going

762
00:58:19,100 --> 00:58:22,240
to react if we were detained.

763
00:58:22,820 --> 00:58:26,080
And we went through for like 16 hours.

764
00:58:26,220 --> 00:58:29,460
We went through like 20 checkpoints, not a problem.

765
00:58:29,460 --> 00:58:33,140
and we got to the border between Venezuela and Colombia

766
00:58:33,140 --> 00:58:34,240
at the Meta River.

767
00:58:34,800 --> 00:58:38,660
On the other side, it was terrorist territory

768
00:58:38,660 --> 00:58:40,280
of the FARC and the ELN.

769
00:58:40,700 --> 00:58:42,800
These are terrorist organizations.

770
00:58:43,180 --> 00:58:47,820
So we had called the president of Colombia to support.

771
00:58:47,960 --> 00:58:50,040
So there was secret service from Colombia

772
00:58:50,040 --> 00:58:52,020
waiting for me on the other side.

773
00:58:52,020 --> 00:58:54,900
So Colombia and Maduro aren't like...

774
00:58:54,900 --> 00:58:56,540
At the time, they were at odds, yeah.

775
00:58:56,540 --> 00:58:56,720
Okay.

776
00:58:56,960 --> 00:58:57,560
At the time.

777
00:58:57,560 --> 00:59:01,740
Now, the new president of Colombia is an ally of Maduro.

778
00:59:03,340 --> 00:59:06,520
So we went through the last checkpoint.

779
00:59:07,020 --> 00:59:08,080
There was nobody there.

780
00:59:08,540 --> 00:59:09,720
It's like, all right, what do we do?

781
00:59:09,900 --> 00:59:18,620
So we cross, we go in the boat, and we're about to start crossing the river.

782
00:59:18,840 --> 00:59:23,700
And then like eight military, they storm at us with the machine guns.

783
00:59:23,860 --> 00:59:25,780
And they say, hey, you know, who are you?

784
00:59:25,780 --> 00:59:32,220
and they called us out and they started to frisk all of us. This is the end of 2020, COVID,

785
00:59:32,800 --> 00:59:43,040
no vaccines yet. So we all had face masks. They started to ask us, who are you? There are two

786
00:59:43,040 --> 00:59:49,260
things you always need to do if you're doing a cover-up operation, status of being and status

787
00:59:49,260 --> 00:59:56,420
of action, which means why are you here and who are you? And you can go down a rabbit hole with

788
00:59:56,420 --> 01:00:01,180
each of those questions. Like, who are you? It's not just your name and your ID. Who are you is,

789
01:00:01,400 --> 01:00:05,180
you know, where you live? Who are your parents? Where did you go to school? You know, on, on,

790
01:00:05,180 --> 01:00:10,120
on, on, on. And why are you here is, you know, you're an electricity commission. So that, that,

791
01:00:10,120 --> 01:00:17,960
you know, you can go down that rabbit hole. My role was to be very sick. So immediately I started

792
01:00:17,960 --> 01:00:23,100
to cough. I started to, you know, I would shrug my shoulders and I would sit down. I would say,

793
01:00:23,180 --> 01:00:30,000
you know, I feel very sick. And remember, this is before vaccine. Everybody was scared. So

794
01:00:30,000 --> 01:00:41,240
I was the only one that they didn't ask to take the face mask out. So they asked my friend,

795
01:00:41,240 --> 01:00:50,420
um you know who are you they frisked him and they they found some cash and they you know the lieutenant

796
01:00:50,420 --> 01:00:54,940
tells him so you you're not an electricity commission who are you and my friend said all

797
01:00:54,940 --> 01:01:00,560
right man i'm gonna tell you the real story i have a case against me in caracas and i have to leave

798
01:01:00,560 --> 01:01:06,860
to colombia uh and he says but it's no political no no no no no no it's financial it's it's a

799
01:01:06,860 --> 01:01:11,640
Private case. All right, I'm going to call the general that is supervising this region.

800
01:01:11,720 --> 01:01:16,360
And he said, oh, wait, wait, don't call him yet. Think about this. If you call the general,

801
01:01:16,820 --> 01:01:24,400
he's going to take all of that cash and you're not going to get a single dollar of that juicy

802
01:01:24,400 --> 01:01:30,080
amount of dollars that you have in your hands. He thought about it for like 30 seconds. And then

803
01:01:30,080 --> 01:01:35,460
he said, all right, get the fuck out of here. Oh my God. And I imagine you're panicking while

804
01:01:35,460 --> 01:01:42,480
your friends. I was sitting with another friend and I told him, I said, listen, I'm not going back

805
01:01:42,480 --> 01:01:48,580
to prison now. I'm not going to give this Christmas present to Maduro. I'm not going back.

806
01:01:49,120 --> 01:01:55,560
If this is going to get tougher, I'm telling you, I'm going to run to the river and I'm just going

807
01:01:55,560 --> 01:02:02,580
to start swimming. I took my boots out. I had cowboy boots on and I was just ready to do that.

808
01:02:02,580 --> 01:02:24,300
So, you know, when my friend comes out, we started running and, you know, we got in the boat. We crossed the river and then I boarded a military plane from the Colombian government, went to Bogotá. There I met the U.S. ambassador and some Colombian officials. I called the president and they said, you need to leave immediately.

809
01:02:24,300 --> 01:02:30,780
they put me in another plane, and they sent me to the US with nothing. I had no idea. I had nothing.

810
01:02:31,340 --> 01:02:39,840
So I landed, and the next day, I boarded a plane, again, with no passport, with no papers, nothing,

811
01:02:40,240 --> 01:02:43,020
to Madrid, where my family was.

812
01:02:43,580 --> 01:02:47,820
And so what was it like when you landed in Madrid and you were free, really, for the first time in,

813
01:02:48,180 --> 01:02:49,420
I don't know, close to a decade?

814
01:02:49,540 --> 01:02:54,120
Well, it was bittersweet. It was bittersweet. It was sweet because I was with my family.

815
01:02:54,300 --> 01:03:00,460
It was a very happy moment because I could see my kids, my wife.

816
01:03:01,100 --> 01:03:05,980
But it was bitter because I felt frustrated that I had to leave the country.

817
01:03:06,260 --> 01:03:07,780
I never wanted to do that.

818
01:03:08,440 --> 01:03:23,680
And to be very honest, exile at the beginning, it was tougher than like psychologically and emotionally was tougher than prison and house arrest because I felt defeated.

819
01:03:23,680 --> 01:03:31,340
I felt frustrated and I still had no clarity of what I was going to do in order to continue

820
01:03:31,340 --> 01:03:32,720
my fight for freedom.

821
01:03:33,600 --> 01:03:35,580
And so that was in 2020.

822
01:03:36,420 --> 01:03:38,340
At the end of 2020, November 2020.

823
01:03:38,520 --> 01:03:42,320
So between then and the election that was a little over a year ago, is that right?

824
01:03:42,420 --> 01:03:42,580
Yeah.

825
01:03:42,740 --> 01:03:43,760
What did you do?

826
01:03:44,240 --> 01:03:48,740
Well, I continued to be very involved with Venezuela, with our movement.

827
01:03:48,740 --> 01:04:16,520
But then I had the opportunity to go to a Oslo Freedom Forum that took place in Miami that year, 2021. And I met Masia Linejat, who you met yesterday. And I met Garry Kasparov. And I met many other activists. And it became very clear to me that, and to us, that what I was going through in Venezuela was the same thing that they were going through in their countries.

828
01:04:16,520 --> 01:04:21,940
So my speech was that we need to create an alliance of freedom fighters.

829
01:04:22,260 --> 01:04:27,800
So we decided to create this movement alongside with Masiy Ali Najar and Garika Spadov.

830
01:04:28,020 --> 01:04:30,960
And that's how the idea of the World Liberty Congress started.

831
01:04:31,600 --> 01:04:37,900
The World Liberty Congress has become the largest global alliance of democracy defenders and freedom fighters.

832
01:04:38,680 --> 01:04:44,100
And today we have representatives from more than 60 countries.

833
01:04:44,100 --> 01:04:50,740
and these are people that we are very different in any way you look at us skin color religion

834
01:04:50,740 --> 01:04:58,660
language history but when it comes to talk about uh our fight for freedom it's the same story

835
01:04:58,660 --> 01:05:03,140
you met tanatron who is the leader of uh the opposition movement in thailand

836
01:05:03,140 --> 01:05:10,500
when i talked to him he's it's as if we had always been in the same movement his movement

837
01:05:10,500 --> 01:05:16,920
is the same. His life story is very similar to mine. He always says, but I still haven't been

838
01:05:16,920 --> 01:05:22,200
to prison, but everything else is the same. The color of his movement is orange. The color of my

839
01:05:22,200 --> 01:05:28,020
movement is orange. The way we, the challenges we have to organize movements is the same.

840
01:05:28,020 --> 01:05:35,720
So it became a natural alliance for us. And for me, it's been an incredible growing experience

841
01:05:35,720 --> 01:05:42,840
just to meet people all over the world to understand. And I truly believe in this idea now.

842
01:05:43,520 --> 01:05:50,380
Before I theoretically believed in this idea, but now I fundamentally believe that freedom and human

843
01:05:50,380 --> 01:05:56,420
rights has no borders. And if you truly believe in freedom, you cannot be selective about the

844
01:05:56,420 --> 01:06:02,320
countries that are entitled to democracy and freedom. And if you believe in freedom, you need

845
01:06:02,320 --> 01:06:08,300
to believe in democracy because there is no way a citizen can be free in a system that is not a

846
01:06:08,300 --> 01:06:16,300
democracy. There is just no way. So I've dedicated my life and most of my efforts over the past years

847
01:06:16,300 --> 01:06:21,800
splitting between focusing in Venezuela and building the World Liberty Congress.

848
01:06:22,580 --> 01:06:27,760
And your political party was orange and now with World Liberty Congress, you're using Bitcoin.

849
01:06:28,320 --> 01:06:28,600
Yep.

850
01:06:28,600 --> 01:06:34,220
So maybe it's worth getting into that. This is a Bitcoin show. We're here at a Bitcoin event. How are you using it?

851
01:06:34,220 --> 01:06:42,920
Well, I started in 2020 when we were going through COVID.

852
01:06:43,380 --> 01:06:53,800
We had the interim government and the U.S. government had seized, frozen accounts of the Maduro regime.

853
01:06:54,540 --> 01:06:59,000
And there was one account that we were able to use those funds.

854
01:06:59,000 --> 01:07:04,280
but it required an approval of the Treasury and the OFAC.

855
01:07:04,860 --> 01:07:08,980
And it was COVID, and we wanted to do something for the medical doctors

856
01:07:08,980 --> 01:07:11,540
and nurses that were at the front lines.

857
01:07:11,740 --> 01:07:15,380
At the time, a nurse was earning $3 per month.

858
01:07:15,940 --> 01:07:18,820
A medical doctor was earning $5 per month.

859
01:07:19,280 --> 01:07:23,080
And it was very clear that this was a recipe for disaster

860
01:07:23,080 --> 01:07:26,880
in terms of just dealing with the COVID crisis.

861
01:07:27,500 --> 01:07:29,380
So we came up with this idea.

862
01:07:29,820 --> 01:07:31,360
Why don't we give cash transfers?

863
01:07:31,860 --> 01:07:33,100
All right, that's a great idea.

864
01:07:33,380 --> 01:07:34,340
So how do we do it?

865
01:07:34,540 --> 01:07:35,940
We can't use the banking system.

866
01:07:36,320 --> 01:07:40,900
I've been a victim of financial apartheid since 2008.

867
01:07:41,100 --> 01:07:43,180
I've not been able to have an account in Venezuela.

868
01:07:43,640 --> 01:07:46,380
My movement never had an account in Venezuela.

869
01:07:47,020 --> 01:07:49,360
It's impossible to use the banking system.

870
01:07:50,100 --> 01:07:56,160
And to get resources, the only way we could do it was by using, at the time,

871
01:07:56,160 --> 01:08:07,600
what we used was stablecoin. So we put together this program using USDC and we were able to do it

872
01:08:07,600 --> 01:08:16,340
in a way that was so beautifully put together that we got the OFAC license and it was the

873
01:08:16,340 --> 01:08:24,480
first ever OFAC license that mentioned crypto and stablecoins. And this is back in 2020.

874
01:08:24,480 --> 01:08:32,020
The program was rolled out and we were able to support 80,000, almost 80,000 medical doctors and nurses.

875
01:08:32,320 --> 01:08:32,840
That's incredible.

876
01:08:33,040 --> 01:08:38,640
And it was very public because we were making, you know, we were talking about it.

877
01:08:38,640 --> 01:08:43,520
And the regime tried to shut it down in all sorts of ways.

878
01:08:44,240 --> 01:08:44,880
They couldn't.

879
01:08:45,460 --> 01:08:50,000
So it was very clear to me that this was a very powerful tool.

880
01:08:50,000 --> 01:09:01,220
Then I came out and I met Alex Glastin and I met this community and we started to do the same, but with Bitcoin.

881
01:09:01,220 --> 01:09:27,050
And we of course understood the benefits of Bitcoin And to date we still support 20 activists monthly of different political parties and different sectors of civil society with this tool that it been in place since 2020 Last year there was an election in Venezuela and we were able to use Bitcoin to support the people

882
01:09:27,050 --> 01:09:34,630
that were in the front lines, guarding the vote in each one of the 14,000, 16,000 voting centers.

883
01:09:34,630 --> 01:09:39,750
And that election was clearly not won by Maduro, but he kept power.

884
01:09:40,390 --> 01:09:42,170
So do you want to explain what happened there?

885
01:09:42,310 --> 01:10:04,830
Well, what happened there is that we won the election. Maduro, I think he miscalculated. He disqualified the candidate that had won the primary the same way I was disqualified years before. And we were able to register a candidate that was completely unknown.

886
01:10:04,830 --> 01:10:14,150
Edmundo Gonzalez. He was 75 years old at the time, a completely unknown diplomat, very soft-spoken

887
01:10:14,150 --> 01:10:21,190
person, by no means the charismatic leader that will go and rally the people. And we were able to

888
01:10:21,190 --> 01:10:30,130
register him. And everybody rallied behind him. And he was able to win the election. And we were

889
01:10:30,130 --> 01:10:38,310
able to prove that the election was won because we had people in each one of the voting centers

890
01:10:38,310 --> 01:10:46,890
that were collecting the voting tallies, and it became clear with proof the Carter Center,

891
01:10:46,890 --> 01:10:54,430
the UN, and many other independent organizations did the audit and actually concluded that we won

892
01:10:54,430 --> 01:11:01,770
the election with 70% of the vote. What happened afterwards is what happens in autocratic countries.

893
01:11:02,390 --> 01:11:12,550
Maduro decided not to recognize the election and he did do another coup. He announced bogus results,

894
01:11:13,410 --> 01:11:19,070
took the people, came out to the streets. He took the military and started to repress the people.

895
01:11:19,070 --> 01:11:28,490
And for the past year, year and a half, it's been a completely new territory in terms of the way we do politics.

896
01:11:28,950 --> 01:11:31,950
Before, we were semi-clandestine.

897
01:11:32,510 --> 01:11:34,610
Now, we are fully clandestine.

898
01:11:35,050 --> 01:11:40,270
Thousands of new political prisoners, people being tortured, entire families being disappeared.

899
01:11:41,010 --> 01:11:46,930
And it's become a very suffocating situation for the Venezuelan people.

900
01:11:46,930 --> 01:11:50,750
So it's obviously amazing that you can pay these people who want to protest in Bitcoin.

901
01:11:51,190 --> 01:11:55,870
And like you say, you just can't do that with the normal financial rails.

902
01:11:56,570 --> 01:12:06,630
But if every time, you know, the parties that you're getting behind win an election, Maduro just says no, then what's the hope?

903
01:12:06,730 --> 01:12:08,130
Like what can change?

904
01:12:08,130 --> 01:12:20,410
Well, at this moment, I don't know if you've been following the news, but the U.S. government has deployed the U.S. Navy to the South Caribbean.

905
01:12:20,790 --> 01:12:20,970
Yeah.

906
01:12:21,070 --> 01:12:22,710
And it's been pressuring Maduro.

907
01:12:22,710 --> 01:12:44,510
And I think that the Trump administration and Rubio that is leading this, they are on spot by framing the problem of Venezuela, not just as a problem of an autocrat that stole an election, not just as a problem of massive human rights abuses,

908
01:12:44,510 --> 01:12:58,070
not just as a problem of a humanitarian crisis that has led to 10 million Venezuelans, a third of the population, to leave our country.

909
01:12:58,070 --> 01:13:09,450
But they have framed the problem at the root cause, very rightly so, as a law enforcement criminal issue.

910
01:13:09,790 --> 01:13:14,130
Understanding that Maduro is the head of a criminal organization.

911
01:13:14,510 --> 01:13:21,770
Maduro has been indicted by the U.S. government in 2020 as the head of a drug cartel.

912
01:13:22,490 --> 01:13:25,950
And as I told you before, we know this very well in Venezuela.

913
01:13:26,170 --> 01:13:31,390
I was sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment for calling Maduro anarcho.

914
01:13:31,710 --> 01:13:33,630
So this is not a made-up story.

915
01:13:33,830 --> 01:13:35,350
We know this in Venezuela.

916
01:13:35,710 --> 01:13:38,550
We know that we are no longer an oil economy.

917
01:13:38,550 --> 01:13:52,210
Venezuela today is a criminal economy that has different pillars, contraband, the extraction of gold, the corrupt and dark sale of oil and cocaine.

918
01:13:52,210 --> 01:14:15,150
And in all of those areas of that criminal economy, Maduro has deployed the military and the business enablers that have created a web of interest that allow that criminal structure to grow and to go beyond borders, not just to the Latin American region, but to the United States.

919
01:14:15,150 --> 01:14:20,630
When Trump says that cocaine is going from Venezuela to the United States, he's completely

920
01:14:20,630 --> 01:14:20,990
right.

921
01:14:21,130 --> 01:14:22,870
But it's not just the United States.

922
01:14:23,230 --> 01:14:25,770
It's also crossing the Atlantic and going to Europe.

923
01:14:25,990 --> 01:14:35,810
So I think that this pressure moment against Maduro as the head of a criminal organization

924
01:14:35,810 --> 01:14:44,530
is a window of opportunity that can spark the moment of a massive popular reaction that

925
01:14:44,530 --> 01:14:52,430
our hope happens soon that will allow us to finally transition to democracy. It's not an easy

926
01:14:52,430 --> 01:15:00,150
path to go through. It's not a straight line, but it's where we are now. And we are very hopeful.

927
01:15:00,630 --> 01:15:02,850
So are you more hopeful now than you were a few years ago?

928
01:15:03,110 --> 01:15:09,750
Well, I would say that we've been in baseball terms. We've been in third base many times.

929
01:15:10,590 --> 01:15:12,710
It's been hard to go to the home plate.

930
01:15:13,150 --> 01:15:14,690
So we are in third base again.

931
01:15:15,170 --> 01:15:16,850
And yes, I am hopeful.

932
01:15:17,330 --> 01:15:19,950
Last year, when we had the election, I was hopeful.

933
01:15:20,270 --> 01:15:24,450
In 2014, when we were in the streets, I was hopeful.

934
01:15:24,870 --> 01:15:26,830
So I am an eternal optimist.

935
01:15:27,050 --> 01:15:32,430
And I think that's a necessary characteristic in this business of fighting against dictators.

936
01:15:32,670 --> 01:15:34,770
I mean, you cannot be a cynic.

937
01:15:35,070 --> 01:15:35,750
Well, you just wouldn't do it.

938
01:15:35,870 --> 01:15:36,770
Yeah, you just won't do it.

939
01:15:36,770 --> 01:15:40,070
You cannot be a cynic and you cannot be completely rational.

940
01:15:40,350 --> 01:15:42,950
You cannot be rational about your motivation.

941
01:15:43,510 --> 01:15:46,150
You need to be rational about your strategic approach.

942
01:15:46,690 --> 01:15:52,250
But, you know, it's what we all are now in Venezuela.

943
01:15:52,370 --> 01:15:52,830
We're hopeful.

944
01:15:53,150 --> 01:15:56,130
I've seen the videos of, like, the drug boats being blown up

945
01:15:56,130 --> 01:15:57,250
coming out of Venezuela,

946
01:15:57,250 --> 01:15:58,890
and I've seen Trump ramping up the pressure.

947
01:15:59,330 --> 01:16:02,230
And Maduro must be feeling insane pressure right now.

948
01:16:02,870 --> 01:16:05,630
What I can't figure out is he can't step down

949
01:16:05,630 --> 01:16:06,830
because he's going to go to The Hague,

950
01:16:07,530 --> 01:16:09,330
or he's going to get killed somewhere.

951
01:16:09,810 --> 01:16:12,590
So is the only real outcome of this,

952
01:16:12,630 --> 01:16:13,590
someone needs to kill Maduro?

953
01:16:14,130 --> 01:16:16,050
Well, Maduro could take the decision of negotiate.

954
01:16:16,510 --> 01:16:19,690
That's always an open position that he has.

955
01:16:19,970 --> 01:16:23,950
But not negotiate for him to stay in different conditions.

956
01:16:24,510 --> 01:16:27,270
For him to negotiate, to leave power,

957
01:16:27,670 --> 01:16:31,150
and to be part of at least having some say

958
01:16:31,150 --> 01:16:33,090
of how the transition could happen,

959
01:16:33,090 --> 01:16:39,070
as it happened in Chile, as it happened in South Africa, as it happened in many transitions where

960
01:16:39,070 --> 01:16:45,790
the incumbent autocratic regime had a lot to say in what the transition was going to look like.

961
01:16:46,250 --> 01:16:52,670
But that's one alternative. The other alternative is that nothing happens. I hope that that's not

962
01:16:52,670 --> 01:16:59,110
the scenario. And the other one is that there is more pressure that will just

963
01:16:59,110 --> 01:17:02,510
will suffocate Maduro somewhere or another.

964
01:17:03,090 --> 01:17:03,190
Yeah.

965
01:17:03,610 --> 01:17:06,710
And a military uprising is probably a likely one as well in there.

966
01:17:06,790 --> 01:17:08,330
Well, I think a military uprising,

967
01:17:08,630 --> 01:17:10,870
it's something that could happen,

968
01:17:11,190 --> 01:17:14,290
but it won't happen in a void.

969
01:17:14,650 --> 01:17:16,750
I mean, it won't happen without an action.

970
01:17:16,750 --> 01:17:19,810
The military uprising could be a reaction

971
01:17:19,810 --> 01:17:21,470
to what's happening now

972
01:17:21,470 --> 01:17:23,950
and to what I think is going to happen

973
01:17:23,950 --> 01:17:25,110
in the upcoming weeks

974
01:17:25,110 --> 01:17:26,730
that we are going to see

975
01:17:26,730 --> 01:17:36,170
strikes inland. So far, we have seen strikes against boats that are carrying cocaine at sea.

976
01:17:36,170 --> 01:17:43,930
I think this is going to move to targeted strikes inland that could, you know, there is a wide range

977
01:17:43,930 --> 01:17:52,010
of possibilities of what those strikes could look like. I hope, and this is what we need to work on,

978
01:17:52,010 --> 01:17:54,050
is that one of those strikes,

979
01:17:54,650 --> 01:17:55,970
or one of those actions,

980
01:17:56,330 --> 01:17:58,610
leads to an internal reaction,

981
01:17:59,090 --> 01:18:03,350
which is the way and the path to a transition.

982
01:18:03,650 --> 01:18:05,190
And that reaction is people.

983
01:18:05,310 --> 01:18:06,190
It's people power.

984
01:18:06,490 --> 01:18:07,630
It's people in the streets.

985
01:18:08,030 --> 01:18:09,710
So let's say all this happens.

986
01:18:09,770 --> 01:18:10,490
I hope it does.

987
01:18:10,670 --> 01:18:12,170
I hope that the Venezuelans

988
01:18:12,170 --> 01:18:13,330
manage to get their country back.

989
01:18:13,810 --> 01:18:15,610
But what did he say?

990
01:18:15,650 --> 01:18:17,350
A third of the population have left

991
01:18:17,350 --> 01:18:18,730
over the past few decades.

992
01:18:19,190 --> 01:18:20,310
No, in the past decade.

993
01:18:20,450 --> 01:18:21,110
In the past decade.

994
01:18:21,110 --> 01:18:25,070
So just to put that into context, because, I mean, that's very easily said.

995
01:18:25,250 --> 01:18:25,830
10 million people.

996
01:18:25,970 --> 01:18:26,830
Okay, what does that mean?

997
01:18:27,110 --> 01:18:28,690
That means a third of a population.

998
01:18:29,350 --> 01:18:32,050
So the U.S. has, what, 300 million people?

999
01:18:32,770 --> 01:18:37,750
Imagine 100 million U.S. citizens living in 10 years.

1000
01:18:37,830 --> 01:18:38,290
It's crazy.

1001
01:18:38,950 --> 01:18:40,070
A third of a population.

1002
01:18:40,830 --> 01:18:47,010
And that third of a population is mostly young people, professionals,

1003
01:18:47,010 --> 01:18:51,390
people who are looking for a future, for opportunities,

1004
01:18:51,390 --> 01:18:54,730
because they cannot find those opportunities in Venezuela.

1005
01:18:55,430 --> 01:18:57,490
And this is where it gets tricky in terms of, like,

1006
01:18:57,530 --> 01:18:59,910
if all this happens, the Venezuelan people get their country back.

1007
01:19:00,290 --> 01:19:01,190
How do you rebuild?

1008
01:19:01,310 --> 01:19:03,570
Because you've lost so many people,

1009
01:19:03,570 --> 01:19:07,690
and the people that are leaving are probably the middle class of society,

1010
01:19:07,810 --> 01:19:08,610
I would guess.

1011
01:19:09,270 --> 01:19:10,270
No, no, no, no, no.

1012
01:19:10,430 --> 01:19:10,950
Is that not true?

1013
01:19:11,070 --> 01:19:11,810
No, no, everybody.

1014
01:19:12,030 --> 01:19:14,970
I mean, I don't think that today there is a family in Venezuela,

1015
01:19:14,970 --> 01:19:22,830
middle class or the poor classes, that they don't have someone from that family that has not left

1016
01:19:22,830 --> 01:19:26,290
Venezuela. So this isn't like they're leaving to go to a university in the United States.

1017
01:19:26,490 --> 01:19:28,330
No, no, no. They're walking out of the country going to...

1018
01:19:28,330 --> 01:19:37,030
Oh, yes. They are walking. So let me tell you a story. I was in Costa Rica two years ago,

1019
01:19:37,690 --> 01:19:44,290
and I see in the roads a group of seven people walking. One of them had the Venezuelan flag,

1020
01:19:44,290 --> 01:19:46,570
So I stopped the car, started talking to him.

1021
01:19:46,830 --> 01:19:48,690
This was in January.

1022
01:19:49,370 --> 01:19:51,210
And I asked him, so when did you leave?

1023
01:19:51,230 --> 01:19:53,770
He said, after Christmas, I left.

1024
01:19:54,250 --> 01:19:55,370
And where are you going?

1025
01:19:55,850 --> 01:19:57,930
And he said, I want to go to Canada.

1026
01:19:58,090 --> 01:20:00,430
I said, to Canada, man, how are you going to cross the border?

1027
01:20:00,930 --> 01:20:06,470
And he said, you know, I'd rather have the uncertainty of how I am going to cross the border

1028
01:20:06,470 --> 01:20:11,270
than the certainty of staying in Venezuela and not being able to feed my kids.

1029
01:20:11,270 --> 01:20:19,630
And that's, I think that story, that mentality is what motivates millions of people that have left.

1030
01:20:19,790 --> 01:20:25,070
Walking. Imagine walking from Venezuela to Mexico to the US. Walking.

1031
01:20:25,450 --> 01:20:28,930
Crazy. But so how do you rebuild?

1032
01:20:29,090 --> 01:20:35,830
If so many people have left, if the country's been stripped of, you know, all of its resources by this dictatorship, how do you rebuild?

1033
01:20:35,830 --> 01:20:45,530
Well, the first I think that we need to understand is that we will be rebuilding at a moment where everything has been destroyed.

1034
01:20:45,770 --> 01:20:55,130
So all of the rebuilding process, it's going to revert the current tendency of continuous and prolonged destruction.

1035
01:20:55,610 --> 01:20:58,990
So just reversing the tendency is going to be a big win.

1036
01:20:58,990 --> 01:21:07,190
I think that there is going to be a main challenge, which will be to have a stable transition.

1037
01:21:07,930 --> 01:21:10,870
So the security aspect of it is going to be very important.

1038
01:21:11,230 --> 01:21:23,690
But in my view, the quick win that will lead to more stability will come from addressing the purchase capacity of the population.

1039
01:21:23,690 --> 01:21:50,950
And if we are able to show that we can stabilize the economy and start the economy to grow and people start to see the benefits of living in a non-inflationary economy, in having wages that can actually buy what they need, I think that that is going to be the beginning of a reconstruction that will have to touch everything.

1040
01:21:50,950 --> 01:21:56,030
education, healthcare, infrastructure, energy, oil, you name it, everything will have to be

1041
01:21:56,030 --> 01:22:03,730
reconstructed. But the priority in, I think in the first months and year will be the political

1042
01:22:03,730 --> 01:22:11,590
stabilization, security, and the economic stability. It's a big task. It's huge, but it's

1043
01:22:11,590 --> 01:22:17,390
one we're dreaming for. Absolutely. It's a far better future than... Oh, absolutely. And we all

1044
01:22:17,390 --> 01:22:23,830
know that. And, you know, I think that the fact that 10 million Venezuelans have left our country,

1045
01:22:24,310 --> 01:22:30,350
it's also a huge potential. We heard in the conference, a couple of Venezuelans speak about

1046
01:22:30,350 --> 01:22:34,810
what they're doing. So there are, in the Bitcoin community, there are tons of Venezuelans that are

1047
01:22:34,810 --> 01:22:40,650
doing incredible things. And this is happening in all industries, in all industries. I don't think

1048
01:22:40,650 --> 01:22:47,190
everybody will go back physically. But I think most people, especially people that have been

1049
01:22:47,190 --> 01:22:54,110
successful in whatever area, they will figure out a way to be part of the reconstruction of Venezuela

1050
01:22:54,110 --> 01:23:01,650
with ideas, with capital, with connections. And that's, I think, one of the biggest assets

1051
01:23:01,650 --> 01:23:04,930
that we will have for the reconstruction of Venezuela.

1052
01:23:04,930 --> 01:23:09,670
Well, Mauricio was saying it on stage yesterday. He was saying that he's obviously left Venezuela.

1053
01:23:09,670 --> 01:23:13,530
He left quite a long time ago now, but he's still hiring people in Venezuela.

1054
01:23:13,710 --> 01:23:15,250
He said there's some of his best workers there.

1055
01:23:15,310 --> 01:23:16,590
He's still trying to support the country.

1056
01:23:16,650 --> 01:23:18,130
And I think there'll be a lot of people doing that.

1057
01:23:19,810 --> 01:23:25,990
So in terms, this almost feels like a bit of a trivial thing when this is such like a human story.

1058
01:23:26,110 --> 01:23:30,550
But you have talked about the opportunities that Bitcoin has in Venezuela.

1059
01:23:30,910 --> 01:23:32,670
You have a ton of power.

1060
01:23:33,390 --> 01:23:36,110
Like, do you think things like Bitcoin mining will play a part in this rebuild?

1061
01:23:36,390 --> 01:23:37,610
Yeah, I'm convinced.

1062
01:23:37,610 --> 01:23:43,610
So let me give you, so I think Bitcoin has a lot of potential in two phases.

1063
01:23:44,070 --> 01:23:55,490
The current phase, which is the resistance phase, that as I said before, I hope that soon we will be walking towards transition.

1064
01:23:55,870 --> 01:23:57,870
But we need to prepare for all scenarios.

1065
01:23:58,290 --> 01:24:01,690
So how can Bitcoin support the resistance movement?

1066
01:24:01,690 --> 01:24:13,070
And we're working in evolving what we have been doing, as I said before, supporting activists, supporting different sectors of society through Bitcoin and stablecoin.

1067
01:24:13,270 --> 01:24:21,010
And we are working on this idea of decentralized resistance using not just Bitcoin, but also Nostr.

1068
01:24:21,010 --> 01:24:31,750
I think Nostar has a huge potential because when Nostar came out, I had a conversation with Jack Dorsey two years ago, and he was very pumped about Nostar.

1069
01:24:32,110 --> 01:24:36,390
And I listened to him and said, well, it sounds cool, but, you know, I don't see the use case.

1070
01:24:37,010 --> 01:24:46,450
But a year ago, after Maduro stole the election, X was banned in Venezuela and WhatsApp was criminalized in Venezuela.

1071
01:24:46,450 --> 01:25:10,410
So something like NOSTER is very useful now. So we are working to onboard activists on NOSTER in a completely private way, in a completely anonymous way, and in a way that we can support them directly through microsupports and SAPs.

1072
01:25:10,410 --> 01:25:19,610
and many people require support to do things or even for their personal emergencies that are less

1073
01:25:19,610 --> 01:25:25,770
than a hundred dollars to get a grant from an organization not even a hundred let's say five

1074
01:25:25,770 --> 01:25:32,270
thousand dollars it's it's not possible so there are many things that could happen in terms of

1075
01:25:32,270 --> 01:25:38,530
supporting people by sapping just small amounts of money so we are working on this idea of um

1076
01:25:38,530 --> 01:25:45,490
decentralized micro-philanthropy through NOSTER. And what we want to do is to

1077
01:25:46,070 --> 01:25:53,010
onboard hundreds and hopefully thousands of activists that will be anonymous. We will be

1078
01:25:53,010 --> 01:25:59,510
able to verify them. We will be able to take the content from NOSTER, export it to other social

1079
01:25:59,510 --> 01:26:07,950
media through our own channels, and to link those activists and whatever their activities are

1080
01:26:07,950 --> 01:26:10,650
to people in the Bitcoin community

1081
01:26:10,650 --> 01:26:13,510
that could engage in this micro-philanthropy.

1082
01:26:13,790 --> 01:26:16,330
So that's something we're doing now with Bitcoin

1083
01:26:16,330 --> 01:26:17,610
for the resistance.

1084
01:26:17,930 --> 01:26:19,430
So when we were in Bali, you were telling me about this.

1085
01:26:19,470 --> 01:26:20,690
And I think it's a really cool idea

1086
01:26:20,690 --> 01:26:22,450
because you almost want to incentivize people

1087
01:26:22,450 --> 01:26:24,890
to go out and protest and like take pictures on the street.

1088
01:26:25,190 --> 01:26:26,630
And if I saw that sort of thing on Nostra,

1089
01:26:26,690 --> 01:26:27,890
I'm zapping that all day long.

1090
01:26:27,890 --> 01:26:30,530
And the idea of them getting, you know, $50 to $100 easy,

1091
01:26:30,730 --> 01:26:32,110
they're going to get that every single time.

1092
01:26:32,190 --> 01:26:34,030
And like, if that little bit of support

1093
01:26:34,030 --> 01:26:36,850
changes the direction of a country, like it's insane.

1094
01:26:36,850 --> 01:26:40,070
I think Nosser is very cool for different reasons.

1095
01:26:40,490 --> 01:26:41,230
You know, it's decentralized.

1096
01:26:41,550 --> 01:26:45,310
You don't have a company that is owning the social media.

1097
01:26:46,010 --> 01:26:51,470
But I think something that is really transformative is the SAPs.

1098
01:26:51,530 --> 01:26:52,070
100%.

1099
01:26:52,070 --> 01:26:56,270
I mean, the SAPs can become something so transformational.

1100
01:26:56,610 --> 01:26:57,390
I mean, think about this.

1101
01:26:57,650 --> 01:26:59,990
People get obsessed with likes.

1102
01:27:00,550 --> 01:27:03,950
And likes is just a number with a hand, with a heart.

1103
01:27:03,950 --> 01:27:19,970
You know, a SAP is something that can materialize in money. It could be small amounts of money for the people giving, but it can be a significant amount of money for the people receiving.

1104
01:27:20,450 --> 01:27:28,530
And I think this can create also a way of linking people out in democratic and free countries with people who are fighting in the front lines.

1105
01:27:28,530 --> 01:27:54,150
And I think this type of globalization is not the state-to-state, company-to-company globalization, but this is something much more powerful. This is the citizen-to-citizen globalization. And if we make that about freedom, if we make that about a common hope that the world should be free, it could be very, very strong.

1106
01:27:54,150 --> 01:28:01,330
I love it, man. So you have a lot of hope, Venezuela. You think things will get better. I obviously hope you're absolutely right.

1107
01:28:02,330 --> 01:28:15,530
But the other part, just to not to dump this idea. So one, Bitcoin for resistance. But then let's think about the scenario of Venezuela transitioning to democracy.

1108
01:28:16,250 --> 01:28:18,090
Bitcoin can play a huge role.

1109
01:28:18,450 --> 01:28:19,570
And let me give you some examples.

1110
01:28:20,270 --> 01:28:26,270
Venezuela is the second largest hydroelectricity producing country in South America.

1111
01:28:26,890 --> 01:28:35,450
We are currently wasting 55% of the energy that is being produced for two reasons.

1112
01:28:35,450 --> 01:28:44,990
Because of the destruction of the transmission infrastructure and for the collapse of the industrial network in Venezuela.

1113
01:28:45,390 --> 01:28:48,070
That's not going to change anytime soon.

1114
01:28:48,390 --> 01:28:50,890
But the energy is being produced every day.

1115
01:28:51,090 --> 01:28:52,590
The water is going through the dam.

1116
01:28:52,870 --> 01:28:54,330
It's going through the turbines.

1117
01:28:54,330 --> 01:28:59,330
And that 55% of wasted energy is happening as we speak.

1118
01:28:59,530 --> 01:29:12,330
So it's a no-brainer to immediately reach out to the private sector and to build the largest Bitcoin mining in South America and maybe in the world in the Goody Dam.

1119
01:29:12,330 --> 01:29:34,470
And then we can do the same with the natural gas flaring. Venezuela is the country that flares the most amount of natural gas in its process of producing oil. Let me just explain this. When you have an oil field, most of the time, the oil coexists with natural gas.

1120
01:29:34,470 --> 01:29:46,750
So if you don't have the capacity to extract the natural gas and capture it, to use it, that natural gas, which is highly toxic, goes into the atmosphere.

1121
01:29:47,150 --> 01:29:50,870
And that happens at a huge rate as we speak.

1122
01:29:50,870 --> 01:30:04,050
So hydroelectricity and natural gas flaring are two wasted energy that are happening today in Venezuela that we can link to Bitcoin mining immediately.

1123
01:30:04,470 --> 01:30:06,730
then what do we do with the Bitcoin?

1124
01:30:07,210 --> 01:30:11,090
Well, I truly believe that one of the ways

1125
01:30:11,090 --> 01:30:17,170
in which Bitcoin can be adopted at a much faster rate

1126
01:30:17,170 --> 01:30:20,970
is if people start to be paid in Bitcoin.

1127
01:30:21,570 --> 01:30:23,670
Because if you think about it,

1128
01:30:23,870 --> 01:30:25,910
I mean, the people who listen to this podcast

1129
01:30:25,910 --> 01:30:27,310
are Bitcoiners, mostly.

1130
01:30:27,530 --> 01:30:30,590
And I am sure that everybody listening to me,

1131
01:30:30,590 --> 01:30:32,550
they have their own personal story

1132
01:30:32,550 --> 01:30:35,210
of how they became a Bitcoiner.

1133
01:30:35,210 --> 01:30:40,110
But it's mostly a kind of a process of being convinced

1134
01:30:40,110 --> 01:30:42,830
that this is something,

1135
01:30:43,130 --> 01:30:47,010
and then you were able to buy your Bitcoin as a store of value.

1136
01:30:47,530 --> 01:30:49,810
But if you are paid in Bitcoin,

1137
01:30:50,510 --> 01:30:55,610
then you start to see that Bitcoin is also a means of saving.

1138
01:30:56,170 --> 01:30:59,810
Nobody saves a penny in countries that are inflationary.

1139
01:30:59,810 --> 01:31:08,450
And Venezuela went through one of the toughest hyperinflation periods in the world only a couple of years ago.

1140
01:31:09,850 --> 01:31:23,050
And I think that that Bitcoin being produced can be part of a pilot program of asking part of the civil servants in Venezuela if they would voluntarily would like to be paid in Bitcoin.

1141
01:31:23,690 --> 01:31:29,850
So maybe 10%, 5% of the people say at the beginning, yeah, I would like to do that.

1142
01:31:30,430 --> 01:31:36,930
I'm sure that after six months, 50% of the people would be wanting to be paid in Bitcoin.

1143
01:31:37,110 --> 01:31:38,270
Maybe that won't be possible.

1144
01:31:38,270 --> 01:31:49,370
But I think that that will create a very fast adoption rate and it will create an ecosystem where Bitcoin is familiar to everybody.

1145
01:31:49,370 --> 01:32:11,570
Then another thing that can be done that it's a no brainer, super fast, making Bitcoin attractive for Bitcoiners worldwide. No capital gains. Make it legally safe for Bitcoiners to move to Venezuela, to move their businesses to Venezuela and to be a reference for the Bitcoin community.

1146
01:32:11,570 --> 01:32:23,070
So I think that Venezuela is positioned as one of the few countries that can have the fastest

1147
01:32:23,105 --> 01:32:29,765
adoption of Bitcoin if we do it in the right way. And these are just three things of many that we can

1148
01:32:29,765 --> 01:32:35,665
do. Yeah, as bad as it has all been in Venezuela, if you do manage to get rid of Maduro and rebuild,

1149
01:32:35,785 --> 01:32:40,985
you have an opportunity to just run this thing at light speed and get way ahead of almost every

1150
01:32:40,985 --> 01:32:47,845
country in the world. Well, that's what we hope. It's very cool. So what do you want people to do

1151
01:32:47,845 --> 01:32:52,385
in terms of finding out more about this World Liberty Congress that you're running, more about

1152
01:32:52,385 --> 01:32:57,685
you more about the projects you're working with? Well, I would invite people to go into our website,

1153
01:32:58,325 --> 01:33:05,885
worldlibertycongress.org. And next month, in November, we're going to have a huge event.

1154
01:33:06,465 --> 01:33:12,065
So last year, we were invited to give a keynote speech at the 35th anniversary of the fall of the

1155
01:33:12,065 --> 01:33:18,665
wall in Berlin. And basically, what Masi and I said was that you guys are celebrating this as

1156
01:33:18,665 --> 01:33:37,483
something of the past but we want to talk to you about the walls of the present in Iran in Venezuela and in more than 80 countries in the world So the mayor said I really like what you said What can we do So we said well in the same way that Paris has the Paris Fashion Week

1157
01:33:37,843 --> 01:33:40,803
why don't we organize the Berlin Freedom Week?

1158
01:33:40,963 --> 01:33:41,823
He liked the idea.

1159
01:33:41,823 --> 01:33:44,923
So that's going to happen next month in Berlin.

1160
01:33:45,483 --> 01:33:49,223
We're going to have our General Assembly at the Berlin City Parliament,

1161
01:33:49,563 --> 01:33:52,003
and we're organizing more than 80 events,

1162
01:33:52,003 --> 01:33:59,343
small, large, cultural, technical around the city of Berlin, which is a very cool city.

1163
01:33:59,343 --> 01:34:04,683
I think it's no better city in the world to do something like this. It's a very cypherpunk type

1164
01:34:04,683 --> 01:34:13,323
of city. It has a complete attitude for this rebellious attitude to it. And I think for those

1165
01:34:13,323 --> 01:34:19,083
people who are interested, you know, go into our website, look at the programming, reach out to us

1166
01:34:19,083 --> 01:34:23,663
and help us in any way and be part of this community.

1167
01:34:23,663 --> 01:34:27,503
It's a community with purpose, very cool people,

1168
01:34:27,503 --> 01:34:31,003
very motivated people, people with incredible stories

1169
01:34:31,003 --> 01:34:41,980
and people who wanna change the world We wanna change the world And we wake up every single day thinking of what are we going to do today to change the world Let go Leo I love that

1170
01:34:42,360 --> 01:34:45,820
I assume if Venezuela gets to the point

1171
01:34:45,820 --> 01:34:47,560
where you have free, fair elections, democracy,

1172
01:34:47,900 --> 01:34:48,680
everything changes,

1173
01:34:49,000 --> 01:34:51,600
would you go back and try and do something politically?

1174
01:34:51,780 --> 01:34:52,720
Or is that behind you now?

1175
01:34:52,860 --> 01:34:54,260
No, no. Of course I will go back.

1176
01:34:54,320 --> 01:34:55,400
I will go back immediately.

1177
01:34:55,560 --> 01:34:57,220
But would you want to run to be the leader of the country?

1178
01:34:57,460 --> 01:34:59,160
You know, we'll see what happens.

1179
01:34:59,240 --> 01:35:00,480
Now we have an elected president.

1180
01:35:00,620 --> 01:35:00,780
Yeah.

1181
01:35:00,780 --> 01:35:07,340
So he will lead the transition and I will be fully backing him in the process of the transition.

1182
01:35:07,800 --> 01:35:10,300
I first want to go back to my country.

1183
01:35:10,660 --> 01:35:18,520
I want to go around my country and I want to do what I like to do the most, which is to build a movement.

1184
01:35:18,920 --> 01:35:28,960
And I want to go around the country, just organize young people, organize community leaders, and again, strengthen a movement of leaders.

1185
01:35:28,960 --> 01:35:30,340
That's my real passion.

1186
01:35:30,780 --> 01:35:37,380
If that leads me to the opportunity of running for office again, yeah, I, of course, will

1187
01:35:37,380 --> 01:35:54,678
open that door when it comes But my passion is seeing Venezuela free and to build a very strong movement that will keep freedom alive because the fight won be over when Maduro is out The fight will

1188
01:35:54,678 --> 01:35:59,638
continue in a different terrain with different challenges, but we will need to have strong

1189
01:35:59,638 --> 01:36:06,158
movements, strong committed leaders, and a strong passion for freedom, democracy, and human rights.

1190
01:36:06,158 --> 01:36:10,358
I love it, man. It's very cool. I hope we see this world sooner rather than later.

1191
01:36:10,578 --> 01:36:11,278
I hope so, too.

1192
01:36:11,278 --> 01:36:14,758
I hope that next time we do an interview, Venezuela is a free country again.

1193
01:36:15,038 --> 01:36:17,518
Well, I hope in a couple of weeks we can do it.

1194
01:36:18,218 --> 01:36:20,278
Hey, as soon as it happens, we're doing it again.

1195
01:36:20,498 --> 01:36:23,418
But yeah, thank you so much, man. It's been cool to get to know you.

1196
01:36:23,558 --> 01:36:25,298
And your story is absolutely wild.

1197
01:36:25,638 --> 01:36:26,378
Thank you very much.

1198
01:36:26,538 --> 01:36:30,298
This has been great. And I will probably see you in the sea next time I see you.

1199
01:36:30,358 --> 01:36:30,678
Absolutely.

1200
01:36:31,478 --> 01:36:32,038
Thanks, man.

1201
01:36:36,158 --> 01:37:06,138
Thank you.