Peace (at Least a Little) on Earth

Ricardo Sánchez A young leader and an Internet-era movement are watchdogs for freedom in Venezuela

STUDENT

As the oldest of five brothers, Ricardo Sánchez is used to taking a leadership role. But today the 24-year-old student has more responsibility than ever: he heads a nationwide coalition of students bent on safeguarding their country's democracy. An international-studies major at Central University of Venezuela, Sánchez is a star in a nascent movement, one that is making itself felt in a political system critics say has vested inordinate power in one man: President Hugo Chávez.

It was last May, after the government refused to renew the license of an anti-Chávez broadcast network, Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV), that Sánchez and other students first decided to push back at what they called Chávez's increasingly autocratic leadership. Sánchez helped lead thousands of student protesters into the streets, their hands painted white to symbolize nonviolence. That traditional method of expressing discontent was combined with decidedly 21st century ones, as the activists used text messages, Facebook groups and YouTube broadcasts to draw crowds. Despite some clashes with police, the marches were significantly more peaceful than the militant student mobilizations of Latin America's past. "We believe in a civic, peaceful fight," Sánchez says, citing the examples of Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The government pulled the plug on RCTV anyway, but rather than fade with the network's signal, the movement only grew. When the President later proposed constitutional reforms that among other things would have allowed him to run for re-election indefinitely, more protests followed. At their peak, Sánchez reports, nearly 200,000 people, from union laborers to business executives, participated in a single Caracas march. People across the nation responded to the students' message, and the reform package was narrowly defeated at the polls. "We were victorious," Sánchez says, "which has allowed us to have democracy."

Nevertheless, it's a fragile, polarized democracy--one that Sánchez feels requires constant vigilance. He works 16-hour days to monitor democracy in Venezuela and stability outside it, and recently led about 400 classmates across the Colombian border, calling for peace during a diplomatic meltdown between the feuding neighbors. Sánchez says that while his movement has "taken away [his] youth," it can be an example to the rest of Latin America. "Youths in any nation, I believe, can do the same," he says. "They can make history."