The day Edmundo González was plucked from obscurity and chosen to take on the longest-ruling authoritarian leader in South America, technicians were busy making sure his house wasn’t bugged.
“This was not in our plans,” his wife, Mercedes López de González, said in an interview that April day in their apartment in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela.
Not long ago, González, 74, was a retired diplomat and grandfather of four children with no political aspirations. He stayed busy writing academic articles, giving lectures, and taking his grandchildren to haircuts and music classes. Few in his native Venezuela knew his name.
Now, many Venezuelans have pinned their hopes on him to end years of repressive rule as he challenges President Nicolás Maduro, who has held power since 2013, in elections scheduled for late July.
Suddenly, González had a full-time job again.
“I have to clean my phone twice a day,” he said in a brief interview. “I deleted almost 150 messages. I go to bed at 1 in the morning and at 4 in the morning I am back on my feet and working again. “I never imagined this.”
After years of rigged elections and political persecution, Venezuelans longing for a return to democracy have learned to expect disappointment.
A coalition of opposing parties, the Democratic Unity Roundtable, had been working to unite behind a single candidate who could pose a viable challenge to Maduro, but his government put up a series of obstacles.
In the end, González emerged as a candidate that the government would not try to block and that the opposition would support.
He accepted the role, but friends and colleagues say he had never prepared for it.
“Edmundo is not a man who has ever had political ambitions,” said Phil Gunson, a Venezuela expert at the International Crisis Group in Caracas and a friend of González. “He is someone who does what he considers his duty.”
Some experts say his low profile could make it difficult for González to gain traction among voters, particularly outside Caracas, where information comes from government-controlled media that is unlikely to give his campaign much coverage.
González, unlike other opposition leaders, has also not openly criticized the Maduro government and its human rights record, raising concern among some analysts who say holding officials accountable for abuses is crucial to restoring the state. of law in the country. .
At home, the day it hit the ballot, González refused to speak at length about the election.
González, the youngest of three brothers, was born into a family of modest means in the small city of La Victoria, about 50 miles west of Caracas. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father was a merchant, which discouraged him from his childhood dream of being a diplomat, calling it “a profession for rich people,” according to the candidate’s daughter, Carolina González.
Undeterred, he went on to study international relations at the Central University of Venezuela.
In college he was a dedicated student, recalled his classmate and lifelong friend, Imelda Cisneros. It was a politically tumultuous time when a far-left communist ideology was becoming popular on campus and tensions were high.
But González became a student leader “with a very calm approach to reconciliation,” he said.
“I wanted to be a diplomat,” Cisneros added. “He was very clear about his objective from the beginning.”
He joined the Foreign Service shortly after graduating in 1970, with postings in Belgium, El Salvador and the United States, where he earned a master’s degree in international affairs from American University in Washington.
He was later named ambassador to Algeria and then to Argentina, where he was stationed when Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1999. Chávez would continue to consolidate power under the banner of a socialist-inspired revolution.
Mr. González returned to Venezuela in 2002 and soon retired from the foreign service.
In 2008, he was active in a coalition of opposition parties called the Democratic Unity Roundtable, advising behind the scenes on international relations issues.
He became president of the coalition’s board of directors in 2021, said Ramón Guillermo Aveledo, former executive secretary of the coalition.
But most people, even in Venezuelan political circles, did not know he played that role until his presidential candidacy was announced because opposition leaders often face persecution.
That makes it a risky decision for González to appear in the spotlight against a ruler bent on retaining power.
“I’m nervous because we don’t know if something could happen to us,” said López de González.
Those who know González say mounting a presidential campaign is not something he would take lightly.
“He is an extremely balanced, calm, quite serious and above all sober man,” said Ramón José Medina, who headed the Democratic Unity Roundtable until 2014 and has been a friend of González for decades.
Maduro signed an agreement with the opposition in October to take steps toward free and fair elections, and the United States temporarily lifted some tough economic sanctions as a gesture of goodwill.
Days later, a former national lawmaker, María Corina Machado, won a primary election with more than 90 percent of the vote, making her a significant threat to Maduro in a head-to-head matchup.
Since then, Maduro’s government has put up obstacles to prevent a serious rival from reaching the polls.
First, the country’s top court disqualified Machado in January for what judges said were financial irregularities that occurred when she was a national lawmaker, a common tactic used to keep viable competitors out of the polls.
Then last month, the government prevented an opposition coalition from fielding another preferred candidate using technical electoral maneuvers just before the registration deadline.
Only one politician, Manuel Rosales, whom political analysts believed Maduro had given the green light, was allowed to register. For a moment it seemed that the effort to present a unified candidate had been defeated.
But, surprisingly, the coalition announced that the national electoral authority had granted it an extension, paving the way for González to officially enter the race. Rosales stepped aside and supported González.
González’s career as a “consensus seeker” helped him unite the opposition, Gunson said.
“He’s someone who’s acceptable to a lot of different people,” he added. “And he doesn’t offend anyone.”
Those qualities may also make it more likely that Maduro’s government will cede power to him if he wins, said Tamara Taraciuk Broner, a Venezuela expert for the Inter-American Dialogue, a research organization in Washington.
Maduro, experts said, might be willing to admit defeat if he were granted amnesty for human rights abuses and if his party was given a continued role in the country’s political system.
On this front, González has been more conciliatory than other candidates. Machado has said that Maduro and members of his administration should be held criminally responsible for corruption and human rights abuses.
González has said in interviews that he is open to talking to the Maduro government to ensure a smooth transfer of power.
“His main challenge will be to maintain that balance between keeping the opposition aligned behind a unified candidacy and ensuring that his candidacy does not represent an unbearable threat to the regime,” said Ms. Taraciuk Broner. “And that’s a very fine line.”
One poll already shows him defeating Maduro, although the poll also shows that about a third of respondents said they were unsure who they would vote for and that about 20 percent said they would not vote for any candidate in the race.
Aveledo said he was hopeful Gonzalez could win over the Venezuelans in the coming weeks.
“Finally someone who speaks calmly, with moderation, who thinks about problems and solutions, who speaks without shouting, without insulting,” he said. “Because the country is very tired of the conflict.”