Venezuelan Americans Break Out Into Celebration Over Maduro Capture
DORAL, Florida (AP) — Revelers chanted “liberty” and draped Venezuelan flags over their shoulders in South Florida on Saturday to celebrate the American military attack that toppled Nicolás Maduro’s government — a stunning outcome they had longed for but left them wondering what comes next in their troubled homeland.
People gathered for a rally in Doral, Florida — the Miami suburb where President Donald Trump has a golf resort and where roughly half the population is of Venezuelan descent — as word spread that Venezuela’s president had been captured and flown out of the country.
Outside the El Arepazo restaurant, a hub of the Venezuelan culture of Doral, one man held a piece of cardboard with “Libertad” scrawled with a black marker. It was a sentiment expressed by other native Venezuelans hoping for a new beginning for their home country as they chanted “Liberty! Liberty! Liberty!”
“We’re like everybody — it’s a combination of feelings, of course,” Alejandra Arrieta, who came to the U.S. in 1997, said. “There’s fears. There’s excitement. There’s so many years that we’ve been waiting for this. Something had to happen in Venezuela. We all need the freedom.”
Trump insisted Saturday that the U.S. government would run the country at least temporarily and was already doing so. The action marked the culmination of an escalating Trump administration pressure campaign on the oil-rich South American nation as well as weeks of planning that tracked Maduro’s behavioral habits.
About 8 million people have fled Venezuela since 2014, settling first in neighboring countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. After COVID, they increasingly set their sights on the United States, walking through the jungle in Colombia and Panama across the southern border, or flying to the U.S. on humanitarian parole with a financial sponsor.
In Doral, upper-middle-class professionals and entrepreneurs came to invest in property and businesses when socialist Hugo Chávez won the presidency in the late 1990s. They were followed by political opponents and entrepreneurs who set up small businesses. In recent years, more lower-income Venezuelans have arrived in the United States.
They are doctors, lawyers, beauticians, construction workers, and house cleaners. Some are naturalized U.S. citizens or live in the country illegally with American-born children. Others overstay tourist visas, seek asylum, or have some form of temporary status.
Niurka Meléndez, who fled her native Venezuela in 2015, said Saturday she’s hopeful that Maduro’s ouster will improve life in her homeland. Meléndez immigrated to New York City, where she co-founded Venezuelans and Immigrants Aid, a group striving to empower the lives of immigrants. She became a steadfast advocate for change in her home country, where she said her countrymen were “facing a humanitarian crisis.”
She hopes those hardships will end as a result of American intervention.
“For us, it’s just the start of the justice we need to see,” Meléndez said in a phone interview.
Her homeland had reached a “breaking point” due to forced displacements, repression, hunger, and fear, she said. She called for international humanitarian support to help in Venezuela’s recovery.
“Removing an authoritarian system responsible for these crimes creates the possibility, not a guarantee, but a possibility, for recovery,” she said. “A future without criminal control over institutions is the minimum condition for rebuilding a country based on justice, rule of law, and democratic safeguards.”
___
Schreiner reported from Shelbyville, Kentucky.
The Western Journal has not reviewed this Associated Press story prior to publication. Therefore, it may contain editorial bias or may in some other way not meet our normal editorial standards. It is provided to our readers as a service from The Western Journal.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
