Freddy Guevara
Visiting Fellow
Freddy Guevara Cortez is a Venezuelan political leader, democracy advocate, and scholar-practitioner whose work focuses on nonviolent action, democratic resistance, and the challenges facing democracy under authoritarian rule.
Guevara co-founded the Venezuelan political party Voluntad Popular in 2010 and was elected to Venezuela鈥檚 National Assembly in 2015, where he served as First Vice President in 2017. He emerged as a prominent leader of the nonviolent protest movement challenging the government of Nicol谩s Maduro. His political activism made him a target of persecution. He spent three years deprived of his freedom, including as a guest in the Chilean Embassy in Caracas and later as a political prisoner, and has lived in exile since 2021.
Guevara has also represented Venezuela鈥檚 opposition in negotiations with the Maduro government and served as president of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Venezuelan National Assembly elected in 2015.
At Harvard Kennedy School, Guevara has combined his experience as a democracy practitioner with research on democratic resistance and nonviolent action. He has served as a research fellow with the Democracy in Hard Places Initiative and works with Erica Chenoweth at the Nonviolent Action Lab, where he has been involved since 2022. He earned a Mid-Career Master in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School in 2024.
As a Visiting Fellow at Vanderbilt University鈥檚 Center for Global Democracy, Guevara brings a practitioner and research perspective on nonviolent action, democratic resilience, authoritarianism, and strategies for defending democratic institutions.