The Curious Case of Venezuela’s Jewish Mayor in Exile

The graffiti appeared on his house in crude, hateful letters. “Zionist shit,” it read, spray painted across the home of David Smolansky, then mayor of El Hatillo municipality in Caracas. On Venezuelan state television, Diosdado Cabello, one of the Venezuelan government’s most powerful figures, denounced him as “Zionism’s project,” trained by Mossad and representing “death and terror in Venezuela.”

At his peak, Smolansky was one of the most prominent Jewish politicians in Venezuela. His paternal grandparents had fled Soviet Ukraine in 1927 precisely to escape the same brand of persecution now being weaponized against their grandson. They settled first in Cuba, where they lived for 43 years before that island’s Communist revolution forced another exodus. In 1970, when Smolansky’s father was just 13 years old, the family escaped to Venezuela, seeking the freedom that had eluded them across two continents.

Now, two generations later, history was repeating itself. The young mayor who had become a symbol of democratic resistance found himself targeted not just for his politics but for his Jewish identity.

When Hugo Chávez shuttered Radio Caracas Televisión in May 2007, David Smolansky was 22 years old and studying journalism at Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, one of Venezuela’s most prestigious institutions. The closure of the country’s oldest television station sparked massive student protests, and Smolansky found himself thrust into a movement that would define his generation.

He co-founded the Venezuelan Student Movement that year, helping coordinate protests against Chávez’s constitutional reforms. The students developed innovative tactics of resistance, painting their palms white and holding them up before National Guard troops to signal peaceful intentions. The symbolism proved powerful, and the movement grew.

What happened next shocked the hemisphere. The student-led campaign achieved the impossible, handing Hugo Chávez his only electoral defeat when voters rejected his attempt to remove presidential term limits. At an age when many of his peers were focused on career prospects and social lives, Smolansky had helped orchestrate a victory against one of Latin America’s most successful populist leaders.

The experience shaped everything that followed. Smolansky became a founding member of Voluntad Popular (Popular Will), the opposition party established by imprisoned leader Leopoldo López. Smolansky subsequently pursued graduate education in international affairs, earning a Master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and fellowships from Georgetown and Stanford.

In December 2013, at 28 years old, Smolansky won election as mayor of El Hatillo, a municipality of Caracas, with 44 percent of the vote, becoming one of the youngest mayors in Venezuelan history. The campaign itself had been a David versus Goliath affair. Smolansky started as an asterisk in polls, facing a favored candidate from a rival opposition party. But he proved tireless, attending multiple events daily and building grassroots support. The Caracas Chronicles documented how the race tightened into a dead heat, culminating in a massive rock concert featuring the band La Vida Boheme, the largest such event El Hatillo had ever witnessed.

His administration established the municipality’s first true public transport service, reactivated the Police Academy, and revitalized collapsed education and health systems. In 2015, the Junior Chamber International recognized him as the World’s Outstanding Young Politician, while Americas Quarterly identified him as one of ten leaders who would help rebuild Venezuela after Maduro.

The Maduro government viewed Smolansky’s achievements with alarm. Here was a young, charismatic opposition figure demonstrating that alternatives to the ruling Chavista model could build a competing power base. Mayors like Smolansky represented an electoral base the government could not control.

The crackdown came systematically. According to Global Americans, the Venezuelan government removed 13 opposition mayors, imprisoned six, and forced the rest into exile. Smolansky observed that “no other authority has been more persecuted than mayors. If you represent 10 million people and those people now do not have the majority of the mayors they elected, this is very dangerous for a country, especially because local authorities are closest to people.”

But the persecution of Smolansky carried an additional dimension. The Venezuelan government took a hard look at Smolansky’s Jewish heritage, accusing him of being the “boss of Zionism in Venezuela” according to The Times of Israel.

Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello used his television platform to denounce Smolansky repeatedly, linking his opposition politics to international Jewish conspiracies. The 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom documented these systematic attacks on his Jewish identity as part of the government’s broader campaign of persecution.

On August 9, 2017, Venezuela’s Supreme Court sentenced Smolansky to 15 months in prison for sponsoring marches against President Maduro and allegedly failing to prevent anti-government protests in his municipality. He was immediately removed from office, disqualified from holding public office indefinitely, issued an arrest warrant, and had his passport voided.

Smolansky would then spend 35 days in hiding, evading government capture while planning his escape. The BBC documented his flight, during which he navigated more than 35 regime checkpoints using false identification before finally reaching Brazil. He later expressed deep discomfort about using fraudulent documents but deemed it necessary for survival.

The escape carried profound psychological weight. “My grandparents left the Soviet Union in 1927, my father left Cuba in 1970, so I am the third generation of Smolanskys who’ve had to leave a country because of a totalitarian regime, ” he would later reflect to The Times of Israel. By November 2017, Smolansky had reached the United States and established himself in Washington, joining a growing community of Venezuelan exiles organizing resistance from abroad.

Rather than retreat into private life, Smolansky transformed his exile into a platform for advocacy. The Organization of American States appointed him Special Envoy to address the Venezuelan migration and refugee crisis, the largest humanitarian displacement in the Western Hemisphere. He authored 15 comprehensive reports and conducted official visits to 11 countries, documenting the scale of suffering and advocating for Venezuelan migrants to receive formal refugee status.

His academic credentials opened doors at prestigious institutions. Georgetown University brought him on as a visiting fellow researching citizen security and regional threats. Johns Hopkins University currently hosts him as an SNF Agora Institute Fellow and Visiting Professor, designated as “Dissident in Residence” for the 2024 to 2025 academic year.

But Smolansky never abandoned frontline politics. He led diaspora organizing for opposition candidate María Corina Machado during the 2023 primary election, coordinating campaigns across 77 cities in multiple countries. When Machado contested the disputed July 2024 presidential election, Smolansky became a central figure in her international advocacy.

It’s an open secret that the Venezuelan opposition’s relationship with U.S. government funding has generated persistent controversy. While direct funding to Smolansky personally remains undocumented, his party Voluntad Popular and the broader opposition have received substantial American support through the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID.

According to Venezuelanalysis, these organizations channeled over $14 million to opposition groups between 2013 and 2014 alone, with over $1.7 million specifically directed to anti-government organizations within Venezuela. During Juan Guaidó’s “Interim Government,” USAID provided $98 million in “humanitarian aid,” with opposition figures like Carlos Vecchio receiving $116 million through USAID programs according to Monthly Review Online.

Rather than distance himself from the Jewish heritage the government had used against him, Smolansky embraced it more publicly. He attended the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference and urged Israel to speak out against the Maduro government, arguing that since Israel had vacated its embassy in Venezuela, it had little to lose diplomatically by defending human rights there.

At 40 years old, Smolansky maintains an exhausting schedule of teaching, research, and advocacy. He appears regularly on international media as a spokesperson for the opposition, teaches courses on democracy and migration at Johns Hopkins, conducts research at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation where he serves as Senior Fellow of Latin American Studies, and runs the Miranda Center for Democracy, his own research organization.

His current work emphasizes documenting Venezuela’s role as an alleged hub for drug trafficking and organized crime. He has warned about Hezbollah’s presence in Venezuela, which he notes places the terrorist group “three hours by plane from the United States.” Like many hawks in world Jewry, he has advocated for continued international pressure on the Chavista government through sanctions and diplomatic isolation for it being a de facto member of the “Axis of Resistance,” through its strong relationship with Iran.

In her televised address amid the chaos of Nicolás Maduro’s capture by Delta Force, acting President Delcy Rodriguez blamed “Zionist overtones” for the American raid—echoing government accusations against figures like David Smolansky. In Venezuela’s transitional turmoil, Jewish actors like Smolansky, who are notorious for their ability as spies and agents of subversion, could be reactivated at any moment.

While the Trump administration appears to be satisfied with its current arrangement with the Rodriguez government, the game is far from over. Smolansky and other Jewish agents with an axe to grind in Venezuela stand poised to lead the wider subversion effort to topple the Venezuelan government once they believe the opportunity is ripe. Jewish perfidy should never be underestimated in these cases.