Shock. A very, very cautious optimism. And concern about the future.
That was the reaction by many members of the Venezuelan community in B.C. to the capture of that country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife in Caracas by U.S. soldiers.
Meriely Arias, a director of the Venezuelan Canadian Society of B.C. (VCSBC) first learned about the raid when an family member from Europe texted her late that evening, around 11 p.m.
Then, the phone calls started coming in from other family members and friends.
“It was a matter of finding out what’s going on, what’s happening,” Arias told the Langley Advance Times.
“We started seeing videos [posted online] but it was just the explosions. We didn’t know what it was, who was doing what, the extent of it, is it a protest, is it internal, is it a coup? What is it? And then little by little, we were able to find out.”
In the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 3, what president Donald Trump described as a “large-scale strike” was carried out, with Trump announcing on social media that Maduro and his wife had been captured and flown out of the country.
Arias said for those Venezuelans in Canada who have reasons to dislike the Maduro regime – widely considered an authoritarian government characterized by electoral fraud, human rights abuses, and corruption – the first feeling was hopeful, but cautiously hopeful.
“It’s like, okay, so there is something that is changing,” Arias told the Langley Advance Times.
“As Venezuelans, we have looked and tried many times to generate this change. So that was the first reaction.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Maduro was to stand trial on criminal charges in the United States.
“The fact that he was apprehended and he’s going to face justice for the crimes that he’s been accused of, that is definitely something to look forward to,” Arias commented.
But there is also uncertainty, some of it created by Trump’s reported comments about how the U.S. would “run” Venezuela and how U.S. oil companies will be managing the country’s oil industry and the largest proven oil reserves in the world.
“I hope the best for my country,” Arias said. “I hope that we can move on in a positive way as a sovereign country, and that we can find ways to rebuild our democracy and our country itself. There is a lot of suffering, humanitarian suffering, that we need to take care of. I’m hoping that this would trigger the change that we’re looking for.”
After the apprehension was carried out by the US Army’s Delta Force, Maduro and his spouse were initially transferred to the USS Iwo Jima, then flown to the United States, arriving at Stewart Air National Guard Base in upstate New York where the president was taken into federal custody to face narco-terrorism charges.