Inside Venezuela's uncertain path to freedom | Leopoldo López

Elise Hu (0:03)

You're listening to TED Talks Daily where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh.

Democracy is under strain in more places than at any point in recent memory. From rising authoritarianism to disinformation, the question of how free societies grow and prosper has never felt more urgent. Leopoldo López is the Venezuelan opposition leader and former mayor of Caracas. He spent seven years as a political prisoner under Nicolás Maduro before escaping into exile.

Leopoldo López (0:36)

I learned what freedom was when I was in prison.

I learned what freedom was when I was in a solitary confinement cell. When I, it was real for me that someone else was deciding what I was going to eat, when I was going to eat, if I was going to eat at all, when I was going to see the sunlight, when I was going to see and talk to another human being.

Elise Hu (0:56)

Today, we're bringing you a conversation that widens the lens to the state of democracy worldwide. He discusses the role each of us can play in building a freer world.

Leopoldo starts with a sobering idea at the heart of his work, that autocrats have gotten far better at working together than the freedom fighters have.

Leopoldo López (1:16)

So I think autocrats collaborate and they do it in a very pragmatic way. It's not an ideological collaboration. You have the autocrats, the Communist Party from China, to the nationalists from Russia, to the theocrats from Iran, to the kleptocrats from Venezuela. It's not along ideological lines. They have a common purpose, a common objective, which is to hold on to power.

Elise Hu (1:38)

In this conversation with TED curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers, Leopoldo also gets into the dramatic fast-moving changes in Venezuela this year, and despite everything, why he remains hopeful about the future of freedom. That's coming up right after a short break.

And now our TED conversation of the day.

Whitney Pennington Rodgers (2:07)

Please welcome Leopoldo López.

Leopoldo López (2:11)

Thank you. Thank you, Whitney. Thanks to all of you. It's a great honor to be here with you.

Whitney Pennington Rodgers (2:15)

You delivered that talk in April at our Flagship Conference, and you shared some really personal moments from your life in the talk, your seven years that you spent as a political prisoner. How did it feel watching it back just now?

Leopoldo López (2:31)

Well, I had not seen it since I delivered it in April. So it's always strange to look at yourself, right?

And it's also a period that not just for me, but for millions of Venezuela has been very hard. So it's tough to look back on what happened and what we've gone through in Venezuela. But it's also a moment of optimism because we're in a moment of transition in Venezuela. And that transition has many layers, and I'm sure we'll talk more about that.

But what was Venezuela five months ago is very different from the Venezuela today. And I'm sure it will be very different from the Venezuela in five months. And I think the same happens with technology. Five months ago, talking about personal agents was something not many people knew about it, even at the TED conference. I mean, it was something almost at the fringes. And now I'm sure everyone has an agent. Five months after that, I'm sure everyone that is looking at this talk today even has one and knows exactly what agentic AI is. And I think that the questions that were presented in April are still true. You know, who holds the keys to your technology? Who holds the keys to your individual relationship with money, with communications, with connectivity, with AI, with content, you or someone else? And I think that question and that idea that technology can be used for freedom, it's still there and it's very relevant. In the same way that technology can be used for social control, because I think technology is neutral. And I have seen in my own country, and I have seen it through the World Liberty Congress in other countries, how technology is used by autocrats to control, to promote self-control in more and more sophisticated ways. So the realm of freedom is no longer just the physical realm of freedom. It's also the digital realm of freedom.

And I think that it's also true even in democratic countries. So looking back into it, I think that the questions are still there. And with regards to Venezuela, I continue to be very optimistic.

Whitney Pennington Rodgers (4:48)

Well, as you mentioned, so much has happened since April and just in this year alone, when you think about Venezuela, when you think about technology, there's so much we'll cover in this conversation. But I guess to the point of technology, this was your second talk you gave at TED, the first sort of looked at the rise of authoritarianism and how we might stifle that, which is really the crux of your life's work.