Distinguished Senior Fellow in Political and Human Rights Leadership

NOTE: Alejandro Penã Esclusa, jailed last year by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez (read here), has been recently released.

Former Venezuelan presidential candidate Alejandro Peña-Esclusa is a prominent Latin American leader, widely respected for combining political experience with a solid moral and intellectual foundation at a time of rapidly increasing geopolitical danger and unprecedented security threats in the region.

Peña-Esclusa was the pioneer of the mass mobilizations against Chavez’s totalitarian project, which has resulted in fierce government persecution against him ever since. Many consider Peña-Esclusa the arch-nemesis of vehemently anti-American Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, a militant Marxist, heir and protégé of Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

In the evening of July 12, 2010, a few hours after Peña-Esclusa had publicly denounced a character assassination campaign led by Chávez against him, the Venezuelan political police arrested Venezuela’s pro-democracy fighter.

Mr. Peña-Esclusa has fought courageously against resurgent Castro-communism in Latin America and, following the steps of Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho, also contributed to exposing to the world the existence of the São Paulo Forum, a multi-national anti-American alliance created by Fidel Castro and Brazilian President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva in 1990, to which Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales (among many other Latin American leaders) and the powerful, heavily militarized Colombian guerrillas and other major drug lord networks belong, and with which Middle Eastern terror organizations are collaborating against American security.

He is president of UnoAmérica uniting democratic forces in North, South and Central America against the Marxist-Islamic Jihadist-drug lord alliance. He is also president of a Venezuelan NGO, Fuerza Solidaria (Solidarity Force), and a prominent leader of Venezuelan resistance against the increasingly oppressive Chavez government.

Peña-Esclusa has been invited many times to lecture in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Uruguay, Spain and the United States and has carried specific charges against the Chavez regime to the World Court.

He is a prolific writer and opinion leader who for many years has written as a columnist for Venezuelan and Argentinian newspapers and the Brazilian news and mediawatch website midiasemmascara.org. An engineering graduate, Peña-Esclusa was a successful entrepreneur, who decided to become a politician twenty years ago, because he foresaw the current sweeping crisis throughout Latin American, the failure of the old political parties and the return of communism – all still poorly understood by governments, academics and media in United States and Europe.

He has authored six books, among which areThe São Paulo Forum: A Continetal Threat, in which he analyzes the constitutional and political crisis in Honduras, The São Paulo Forum: A Threat to Freedom in Latin America, and Classic Art and Good Government, where he points out how classic literature may help restore transcendent values in the materialistic culture of today. Peña Esclusa was named a foreign member of the Brazilian Academy of Philosophy in 2009.

Because of his decisive action in denouncing Chávez’s interference in Honduras internal affairs, Peña-Esclusa was decorated by the Honduran government in 2009 with the highest honor given to foreigners: the José Cecilio del Valle Medal. And as a recognition of Peña-Esclusa’s strong opposition to the Venezuelan dictator, the Alabama state legislature took up a resolution commending his actions in March 2010.