Alejandro Peña Esclusa

Who is Alejandro Peña Esclusa?

Alejandro Peña Esclusa is a Venezuelan politician, leader of the Venezuelan NGO Fuerza Solidaria and president of the pan-Latin-American NGO UnoAmérica. A former member of the LaRouche movement, in the 1980s he co-founded the Partido Laboral Venezolano as the Venezuelan branch of LaRouche's International Caucus of Labor Committees, modelled on LaRouche's U.S. Labor Party. He has twice run for the Presidency. He was a columnist for the newspapers Últimas Noticias and Diario de Caracas, and has been a correspondent for Argentina's La Nueva Provincia. He has campaigned against the Foro de São Paulo since the mid-1990s, and in 2008 set up UnoAmérica as its "ideological antithesis". He has opposed current Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez since the mid-1990s.

In July 2010 Peña Esclusa was arrested on terrorism-related charges, after the Salvadoran Francisco Chávez Abarca was arrested in Venezuela and according to the Venezuelan authorities labelled Peña Esclusa an accomplice in a plan to use violence to disrupt the September 2010 parliamentary elections. Opposition groups say the arrest is for political reasons.