War on Hugo Chávez

By May 17, a Venezuelan government news release reported that more than 100 Colombian paramilitaries had been captured in connection with the Daktari plot. In another strange twist, a dead body had been found.

But apart from a pistol found on one man, no weapons were seized, and some people questioned whether the government had crafted the plot. A detainee shouted "sham" in court. Eventually only 27 of the 100-plus Colombians were convicted, and three Venezuelan officers were sentenced, for conspiring. A month and a half ago, Chávez freed the convicted Colombians. It was a way to promote peace within the neighboring nation, he said.

As to the alleged paramilitaries, Alonso and his wife say the Colombians were likely sent to his property as payback for the e-mail alerts urging chaos to overthrow Chávez. "If it was a real crime scene, why would they let those people in our home to destroy the evidence?" Siomi says, referring to the day her underwear starred on the news.

In October 2004, Venezuela demanded Alonso's extradition after his name popped up in a Miami newspaper report. Alonso says his family's address was later posted online. They fled to Washington state, where he had spent time on a farm as a teen. He recalls the shabby cabin where they stayed in Onalaska, a town of a few thousand. When he told a gas station attendant he was from Venezuela, the response was "Where's that?" Alonso's reply: "Oh, it's a few miles from the Mississippi, just across the river."

The family returned to Miami, and after consulting a lawyer and quashing the extradition, the Alonsos were granted legal residence in 2005. Their Cuban nationality helped speed up the process. They rented a tiny efficiency. "The kids played PlayStation five inches from where their father was writing things against Chávez," Siomi says.

Siomi's saintly patience with her husband's world of spies and freedom fighters, contras and communists, traitors and good Americans seems endless and absolute. She doesn't blame him for losing Daktari: "[His political work is] his passion. I guess he feels that's his calling. But it drains him. It doesn't allow him to lead a normal life."

For the next year or so, Alonso took various jobs, such as driving a private ambulance and shuttling elderly people to medical appointments. In 2006 he began producing and posting online videos under the tag Guarimba TV. Soon he branched out to Internet radio. In early August he was hired as editor of Venezuela Sin Mordaza ("without a gag"). He's wrapping up another book. And on radio station La Cadena Azul 1550 AM, he cohosts La Voz de la Resistencia, a Saturday-morning show dedicated to promoting freedom in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

What does he talk about? On an Internet radio show one afternoon in early September, he said, "I spend 25 hours a day in Miami analyzing Venezuela. The country is lost. We must get it back."

In a Don Pan bakery in Miami's suburbs, Robert Alonso plots the next Guarimba. It's a mid-September day, and he's peering over his gold wire glasses at a recent edition of Venezuela Sin Mordaza.

Some highlights: "A Communist, Me?" "Dictionary of International Castro-Stalinism," a poem by José Marti, a piece about Sharp's book, and "The Mission of This Traitor," which describes the opposition leader who urged Venezuelans to stop the 2004 Guarimba and negotiate with the government.

Other newspapers and books clutter the faux-marble table where he sits as nearby customers mull over chatos, empanadas, and strawberry-topped cakes in smudged glass cases.

Alonso looks like a retiree who stopped by for an afternoon cafecito. He's wearing blue sweatpants, tan sandals, and a turquoise T-shirt. Clamor from the espresso machine and blenders fills the room as a man in a button-down shirt carrying a briefcase strides through the bakery doors and beelines for the table. He silently drops a manila folder before Alonso.

The mystery man is Marlon Gutiérrez, a 45-year-old former Nicaraguan Contra. Alonso takes some papers from the folder and looks them over. They are bylaws for their new group, Fundación Interamericana por la Democracia, which will organize Guarimba resistance movements in Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela.

"Robert is Chávez's strongest adversary," Gutiérrez says.

"This is a historic moment," says Alonso, signing the papers. "With this, we take down the tyrants."