The crowd sang the Venezuelan national anthem.
Photo by Michele Eve Sandberg
While the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Saturday sent shockwaves throughout the world, the effect was magnified for the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants in South Florida.
With the largest concentration of Venezuelan immigrants in the U.S., Doral quickly became the scene of jubilant celebrations, with scores of people clad in yellow, blue, and red — the national flag’s colors — some draped in the flag itself. But not everyone was in a celebratory mood about the U.S. military intervening in another nation’s political landscape.
The split was evident in a social media post over the weekend. Nearly 1,000 commenters joined the discussion, offering disparate views of the action.
One Redditor asked Venezuelan-Americans’ opinions on the matter, writing, “Now that Donal Tron officially attacked Caracas I’m so curious to hear the side of Venezuelan-Americans from Miami on this and your justification if you have one.”
One commenter wrote, “I’m married to a Colombian and she has family in Venezuela. They are ALL happy. Does that make them bad people? Nope.”
One user, who is married to a Venezuelan woman, says this is the happiest she’s been since their daughter’s birth, writing, “Her family calling us at 4 a.m. from the country celebrating as well, but they need to take out the rest of cabinet. Maduro was just a puppet.”
Many users agreed, with many commenters celebrating the apparent end of Maduro’s authoritarian rule, while recognizing it as a double-edged sword.
“They’re happy because they’re getting rid of a nightmare but at the same time why are Americans even involved, right?” a user wrote.
“Venezuelan here. I don’t like Trump and I don’t like war and I hate that this is happening BUT let us Venezuelans be happy about this, this regime has been in power for over 26 years stealing elections and killing us every time we went out to protest that they stole said elections,” another user wrote. “Let us be happy that there will probably finally be a change of regime in Venezuela, WHATEVER comes is better than Maduro and his cupule, you guys simply don’t understand.”
But the comment that seemed to resonate the most with the Miami Reddit community, garnering the most upvotes, came from someone who admits they aren’t Venezuelan.
“Most Venezuelans I know, and I know a lot of them, are happy about it,” they wrote. “I don’t think anyone in the world hates their government as much as Venezuelans.”
Many weren’t as thrilled about the action, with users pointing out how military interventions have gone in other countries. Commenters argued the intervention was motivated more by Venezuela’s vast oil and gold resources.
“As a person born in the DR Congo I can tell you that I can always get worse … way, way worse … and never get better,” one user wrote. “The U.S. will keep you poor and milk you dry and install a puppet dictator that will have a cult of personality. He will then end up getting overthrown after he has served his purpose and be replaced by another greedy asshat.
“I mean it’s not like they have not done this before.”
Another concerned user wrote, “I’m Venezuelan. I hate Maduro (and dictators in general). But I’m mostly worried of what can happen in the future, U.S. interventionism has hurt severely many countries in the past.”
“For the Venezuelans that are cheering this, and it sounds like that’s most of you, are you willing to enlist and serve in the U.S. forces (army, marines, etc) that are going to have to occupy and pacify Venezuela until a new government is set up? And will almost certainly need to stay for years afterwards to help prop it up?” another user asked. “I’m not trying to troll here, but it’s REALLY easy to write online about your support, but as we learned in Iraq, ‘You break it, you buy it.’
“Many people in Iraq also cheered when U.S. forces rolled into Baghdad, but that goodwill usually only lasts so long. And it became an utter shit show before long.”