It started with a surprise but ended like so many other protests against Venezuela’s autocratic government. And predictably, the Trump administration blamed it all on the Cubans and the Russians.
On Tuesday morning, Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader sworn in by the National Assembly as president in January and now recognized in favor of embattled Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by much of the international community, surprised his fellow citizens and the world when he appeared at dawn alongside the well-known opposition leader Leopoldo López and members of the military, calling for the armed forces to join his seemingly spontaneous popular protest. Flanked by military officers and civilians outside the La Carlota Air Base, in a video released at the start of the protest, Guaidó declared that Maduro’s “usurpation” of power must end and called supporters and the military to join him in the “final phase,” saying defiantly that “the moment is now.”
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