“No sabemos una verga,” said Alejandro, a 25-year-old from Venezuela who works at a restaurant in the Mission.
Rough translation: We don’t know shit.
Days after the United States attacked Caracas and captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, immigrants from the country living in San Francisco aren’t sure how to feel. Alejandro and other Venezuelan-born residents said that while they were happy to see Maduro dethroned, they had little idea of what would come next for their home country.
On Monday, Maduro and his wife pleaded not guilty to federal narco-terrorism charges in a Manhattan courthouse. Alejandro, who withheld his last name for privacy reasons, offered a colorful analogy to explain the geopolitical powerplays of the previous few days.
Imagine you live in an apartment with an abusive spouse, and you’ve been asking your neighbors for help for years, to no avail. Then, one day, your crazy neighbor who lives in the penthouse upstairs comes down and drags your abuser out by his hair.
You’re not necessarily happy that your crazy neighbor broke into your house, but at least your tormentor is gone.
“People aren’t celebrating U.S. intervention in Venezuela,” Alejandro said in Spanish while on his lunch break at work. “They’re celebrating the removal of a dictator.”
That doesn’t mean they’re confident that a new government will be better. Alejandro looked down at his lunch and speared a sweet plantain (the kind known, incidentally, as a “maduro”) with his fork.
“Maduro is one plantain. But there’s a whole plate of plantains,” he said, adding that he has little confidence that acting President Delcy Rodríguez will pursue systemic change.
Elena Diaz, who manages another Venezuelan restaurant in the Mission, said Rodríguez is just as bad as Maduro and his ally Diosdado Cabello, who has reportedly (opens in new tab) sworn revenge on the United States and is rallying Maduro loyalists to retake control of Venezuela.
“I don’t know what’s going to be the next step,” the Arepas Latin Cuisine manager said. “Everybody was super happy, celebrating, but now everybody is tense.”
Diaz said her friends and relatives in Venezuela have been staying indoors for fear of bombs in the wake of the strikes ordered by President Donald Trump. She worried about the precedent the U.S. has set for other countries, such as China and Russia, to grab territory or pursue regime change. But Diaz also questioned if anything other than military action could have removed Maduro from power.
“I don’t believe in politics,” Diaz said, although she noted that she’d support opposition leader and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado (who until recently (opens in new tab) enjoyed an alliance with Trump) over anyone in the current Venezuelan government. “Everything is about power.”
Still, Diaz remains cautiously optimistic. Some of her friends have been more bullish — one, Diaz said, anticipated Maduro’s ouster and moved back to Venezuela from the U.S. two weeks ago. Others are talking about going back later this year. But for Diaz, it’s far too soon to make plans. Her coworker Ricardo, who withheld his last name for privacy, said the same.
Ricardo had to close his restaurant in Caracas due to the collapse of the Venezuelan economy. He immigrated to San Francisco in 2022 for more opportunities. Returning home “is the dream of all Venezuelans,” he said from behind the bar at Arepas. But he characterized the celebration of Trump’s incursion by some of his countrymen as “fanaticism.”
“I’m not celebrating or speculating,” Ricardo said in Spanish. “The conditions are not right for [returning]. There needs to be an atmosphere of personal safety and economic stability.”
Diaz, Ricardo, and Alejandro all acknowledged that Venezuela’s mammoth oil reserves played a part in Trump’s decision to oust Maduro. Trump has made that rationale clear in public statements and said he’s meeting with oil executives (opens in new tab) and working on plans to boost Venezuela’s production.
But many in the country are less concerned with the global economy than with survival.
“The people are happy because a dictator is gone,” Alejandro said. “What happens tomorrow? I don’t know. We don’t know what price we’ll pay for this.”