J. J. Rendón

J. J. Rendón was born in 1964 in Caracas, Venezuela, in the Military hospital of San Juan parish.^[8] His father, Juan José Rendón González is a retired military officer. His mother, Zoraida Delgado, was one of the first militants of her parish registered in the Acción Democrática party, which promoted and helped end the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez in 1958. She was also executive secretary of the founder of OPEC, the Venezuelan Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso. He has a sister, Jehanny Rendón Delgado.^[9][10]

Before starting his career in an advertising agency in his early 20s, Rendón studied psychology at Andrés Bello Catholic University and Central University of Venezuela.^[11] He obtained a postgraduate degree in Ontopsychology from the Associazione Internazionale,^[12] an Italian institution founded by Antonio Meneghetti. He also obtained degrees in Psychology of Mass Communication, Strategic Planning, and Publicity and Marketing Management.

At the age of 24, Rendón volunteered for Carlos Andrés Pérez's second presidential run, where he met and assisted the American political consultant Joseph Napolitan.^[13] He became the creator of a campaign to stimulate the youth vote through a movement known as "La Venezuela 2000", which was transcendental for the presidential triumph.^[14]

Rendón founded an advertising company, Chiripa Publicidad, in Caracas, Venezuela. One of his first clients was the former Venezuelan president Rafael Caldera (1916–2009), who was re-elected for a second term in 1993. That year, he was hired as creative vice-president of the agency "Chiripa publicidad" which managed the presidential campaign of the then candidate Rafael Caldera, known as the "chiripero" campaign, in allusion to the new party formed by Caldera, Convergencia. The party was nourished by independents and dissidents (chiripas) of the two big traditional political parties, Acción Democrática and Copei.^[15]

In 1998, he was the strategist of the senatorial campaign of former president Carlos Andrés Pérez who, facing a trial for embezzlement, became the first candidate to win while in prison.

In the early 2000s, Rendón worked with various political organisations, such as the Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and Social Party of National Unity.^[16][17] In 2000, his career became international. In August of the same year, one month after the defeat of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which for 71 years had won all the presidential elections, he traveled to Mexico and became the party's strategist, taking charge of most of its campaigns throughout the country. For more than a decade he was in charge of the campaigns of governors, mayors, congressmen, and presidential candidates. In 2001 he ran a campaign that overcame negative indicators in the gubernatorial election held in Tabasco, and in the campaigns of Sinaloa and Veracruz, also with wins.^[18][19]

Rendón was the political advisor for Hipólito Mejía, the candidate of the Dominican Revolutionary party, during his successful presidential campaign in 2004.^[20]

In 2005, he advised the founding process of the New Alliance Party. That same year, 2005, he was in charge of developing the launching campaign of the National Unity Party, the Partido de la U, which emerged as a movement to support the reelection of Álvaro Uribe in 2006. The campaign challenged the traditional way of doing propaganda and advertising in Colombia. Uribe won reelection with a new party that broke 156 years of bipartisanship.^[19]

When Juan Manuel Santos was appointed Minister of Defense in Colombia during the presidency of Álvaro Uribe Vélez in 2006, J.J. Rendón became the ministry's chief strategist. During this time, there were notable military operations to rescue FARC hostages, including Operation Jaque on July 2, 2008, which resulted in the rescue of presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, two U.S. contractors, and several police and army officers held by the guerrillas for more than six years.^[21][22]

JJ Rendón was accused on various social media platforms of being behind the "historical fantasy" of the rescue by the Colombian government (former president Álvaro Uribe Vélez) of Emmanuel (a child that was captured and held hostage)^[23][24] and that the child was living in Bogotá, which ended up being true. Soon after, it was proven via DNA testing that the child was Emmanuel.^[25] Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro questioned the results of the DNA testing, stating that Colombia did not allow Venezuelan specialists to conduct their own tests and had created a "cloak of doubt". However, in January 2008, FARC rebels released a communiqué in which they admitted that Emmanuel "is the same three-year-old who was living in foster care in Bogotá, Colombia, who was due to be part of hostage deal."^[26]

The child was the son of Clara Rojas, Ingrid Betancourt's presidential running mate, both kidnapped by FARC rebels. The child was born in captivity during the kidnapping. In this case, then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frías and Senator Piedad Córdova were intermediaries with the FARC. They insisted that they would free the child Emmanuel and the rest of the hostages. But the rescue was finally made with the help of the military forces.^[27][28]

In 2009, the governor of the state of Veracruz, Fidel Herrera, made Rendón handle the crisis in the state after the media claimed that the origin of the world epidemic of influenza AH1N1 was in La Gloria, a cattle-raising town on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

That same year, with his audiovisual production company Get Real Films, Rendón produced and directed the documentary Here Comes The Wolf, in which he denounces the responsibility of the World Health Organization (WHO), governments, and the media in the handling of public information related to the events that led to the worldwide alarm. The documentary was narrated by the famous actor Andy García and participated in several international festivals.

Rendón, the lead strategist of the presidential campaign of Juan Manuel Santos in Colombia,^[29] helped turn a close presidential race in Colombia into a landslide victory for Juan Manuel Santos against the Green Party candidate Antanas Mockus.^[30][31] Santos was elected in a campaign that in just 35 days reversed the negative trend he had been running.^[32]

Honduran politician and agricultural landowner Porfirio Lobo Sosa, known as Pepe Lobo, was elected president of Honduras in 2010, with Rendón as his political advisor. Rendón was also consultant to Honduran politician Juan Orlando Hernández during his successful presidential campaign in 2012.

In 2012, Enrique Peña Nieto was elected 57th President of Mexico. Rendón was his political advisor.

Rendón joined Juan Manuel Santos for his re-election campaign in Colombia.^[33][34][35] In May 2014, Javier Antonio Calle Sernaby, leader of the Colombian drug cartel Los Rastrojos, alleged that he paid Rendón $12 million to help him negotiate favourable terms of surrender and avoid extradition to the US.^[36] Rendón denied receiving the money, but stepped down as campaign chief in the election's final stretch.^{[37][38][39][40]} Santos beat his opponent by six percent in a run-off election in June 2014,^[30] securing his second four-year term as Colombia's president.^[41][42] The Prosecutor's Office ruled that the allegations against Rendón were not in accordance with the evidence presented and that no such money had existed, and the case closed.^[43]

Rendón was the main strategist for the Venezuelan presidential candidate Henrique Capriles. Official results gave Nicolas Maduro—who had assumed the role of acting president since Chávez's death—a narrow victory over Capriles. Capriles claimed that electoral fraud had taken place on April 14, 2013, in the special election where Maduro was elected president.^[44] Capriles provided evidence of the alleged fraud and refused "to accept the vote-tally unless the electoral authority agrees to open all the ballot boxes and count the paper ballots".^[45][46] The authorities refused this methodology claiming it was not foreseen in the law.^[47]

Rendon became well known in 2013 through media outlets such as CNN^[48] and interviews with journalists including Jorge Ramos,^[49] Maria Elvira Salazar,^[50] Fernando del Rincón, and Jaime Bayly.^[51] He made an appearance on CNN to talk about the special elections being held in Venezuela to replace Hugo Chávez after his death in March 2013.^[52] In an interview with Jaime Bayly in January 2016, Rendón claimed that he had been a victim of political persecution and the victim of more than 140 attacks by the Venezuelan government.^[53]

Rendón gained international attention for his activism against what he regards as neo-totalitarian regimes.^[54] He is a self-declared enemy of socialism of the 21st century and supports presidential and governor candidates running in opposition to its policies.^[55]

His position with regards to these governments,^[56] especially the Venezuelan government, has drawn strong reactions from socialism of the 21st century, Hugo Chávez, and supporters of communism and socialism in general.^[57] On many occasions, Rendón has faced strong opposition from Venezuelan senior officials, including president Nicolás Maduro, who declared in July 2012 that Rendón was "the number one public enemy of the Venezuelan state".^[58][59]

The lead strategist of the Venezuelan government, Jorge Rodríguez, has repeatedly insinuated that J.J. Rendón is the main strategist of the Venezuelan opposition, calling him a "psychopath" on government-funded media outlets,^[60][61] including the public channel VTV (Venezuelan Television Corporation) and TeleSUR, a Caracas-based television network funded by the governments of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.

Since 2004, Rendón has claimed that the Venezuelan government has committed fraud in the presidential elections. On December 6, 2015, having won 19 elections in 15 years, the Venezuelan government recognised that the Venezuelan opposition had won 112 seats in the National Assembly.^[62] However, president Nicolás Maduro and lead strategist of the Venezuelan government Jorge Rodríguez, claimed on national television that the Democratic Unity coalition (Venezuelan opposition party, MUD) had won it because of the "economic and psychological war" allegedly led by Rendón and other opponents. On his daily show, Jaime Bayly congratulated Venezuelan opposition figures Henrique Capriles Radonski and Rendón for the victory.^[63][64]

In 2013, then-Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro declared that Rendón was a "stateless" person after accusing him of being linked to an audio recording "widely circulated on social media purporting to be the late Venezuelan leader saying that he's still alive".^[65] The Venezuelan government denied him the fundamental human right to a nationality,^[66][67] Despite being born in Venezuela, Rendón cannot obtain a Venezuelan passport as of 2016. He has claimed to be subjected to several other human rights violations and political persecution.^[68]

In May 2016, Rendón received political asylum from the United States government.^[69]

Rendón started The Power of One seminar series in 2013. It features practical strategies for political activists who wish to oppose neo-totalitarian regimes known as "The New Face of Dictatorship" as he named it during a TEDxMidAtlantic talk in 2014.^[72][73] Rendón has presented the lecture free of charge in more than 30 Latin American cities, for the TED lecture series in Washington D.C and at the United Nations headquarters in New York.^[72][74] Rendón calls himself an "enemy of neo-totalitarian governments" and gives examples of such governments Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, countries where democratic credentials have been questioned by many, including the U.S. government and President Barack Obama. He promised to wear black until freedom returns to Venezuela.^[75][76]

On 16 September 2016, Rendón was invited to present "The Power of One" at Harvard University of Boston. Because of the seminar, Rendón received a Doctor Honoris Causa from Cambridge University.^[77]

Rendón was faced with strong opposition from various Chávez-funded media outlets, centered on his work ethic and strategy tactics.^[78]

Allegations were brought forward in November 2013 by Venezuelan prosecutor Luisa Ortega Díaz who requested Interpol detain Rendón and extradite him to Venezuela under charges of assault.^[79] Rendón denied these claims and asserted that Venezuela could not legally ask for his arrest without a warrant being present.^[80] Despite the allegations, no such warrant was placed on Interpol's wanted persons list,^[81][82] and the claims were dismissed.^[83]

In 2014, President Mauricio Funes of El Salvador accused Rendón of conducting dirty war campaigns throughout Latin America. Rendón sued Funes for defamation in Florida, but the court ruled that Funes could not be sued for his official acts.^[84]

In March 2016, Andrés Sepúlveda, who was serving 10 years in prison for charges such as use of malicious software, conspiracy to commit crime, violation of personal data, and espionage, claimed that most of his work in the past eight years had been on the payroll of Rendón.^[85] Sepúlveda provided Bloomberg Businessweek with what he said were e-mails showing conversations between him, Rendón, and Rendón's consulting firm concerning hacking and the progress of campaign-related cyber attacks. Rendón denied using Sepúlveda for anything illegal, and disputed Sepúlveda's account of their relationship.^[84] Rendón filed a lawsuit against Bloomberg Businessweek and the journalists who signed the report, both in the United States and in Colombia, because of the story they ran.^{[86][needs update]} The lawsuit is still in process.

In August 2019, Juan Guaidó tasked Rendón with a "Strategic Committee" to investigate scenarios for achieving the removal of Maduro from office.^[6][87] Members of the Strategic Committee argued that the Venezuelan Constitution, the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, and other treaties justified action against Maduro.^[6][88]

On May 4, 2020, Rendón and Congressman Sergio Vergara, another member of the presidential committee to address the Venezuelan crisis, were accused by the regime of Nicolás Maduro of being linked to a maritime incursion known as "El macutazo" in which Venezuelan military and civilian dissidents, together with a contractor and former U.S. military member of the Silvercorp company, attempted to overthrow the Venezuelan dictatorship. Rendón denied the accusations, resigned from the strategy committee, and gave a series of interviews to media and portals around the world to inform that although there was a service agreement with Silvercorp, it had been canceled months before the incursion, something that the contractor himself confirmed in a public interview.^[89][90]

On 8 May 2020, Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab requested the extradition of Rendón from the United States, along with Silvercorp USA founder Jordan Goudreau and exiled Venezuelan lawmaker Sergio Vergara, for the "design, financing, and execution" of the plan to overthrow Maduro.^[91]

 

In 2014, Rendón was nominated as Political Consultant of the Year by Victory Awards.^[92]

• Power of one: JJ Rendon at TEDxUNPlaza 2013