READING, Pa.- When news broke that Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro had been captured and brought to the United States, for many Venezuelans in Berks County, like Jos\u00e9 Parra, it was more than just a headline.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt 2 o’clock in the morning she told me, \u2018Chamo, something happened in Venezuela,\u2019\u201d Parra said. \u201cSo, after I opened social media, I saw what had happened. I cried. I said, \u2018Oh my God.\u2019 I told my wife. We want to be free.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parra left Venezuela decades ago. He says he\u2019s lost family there and couldn\u2019t even return to say goodbye. He told 69 News the Venezuelan government has not renewed his passport, and as a dual U.S.\u2013Venezuelan citizen, he says he must enter and leave Venezuela using a Venezuelan passport.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, my father died, my mother died, my sister died,\u201d Parra said. \u201cEven I can\u2019t go say goodbye to my family.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela is constant and deeply personal.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes in Venezuela, there\u2019s no food,\u201d he said. \u201cYou wait in line for two hours to buy chicken\u2026 and then they say, \u2018Oh, the chicken is gone.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Maduro is now facing federal drug trafficking charges in the United States, charges that are legally separate from the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Venezuela.<\/p>\n
But Parra says for families like his, the story goes far beyond the courtroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand the people, they don\u2019t know Venezuela. They never lived there. They don\u2019t know the situation,\u201d he said. \u201cNobody wants a war. Nobody wants people to die. The situation right there is very bad.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa.- When news broke that Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro had been captured and brought to the United…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,40191,31345,28,736,128,130,129,66,40192,39665],"class_list":{"0":"post-78816","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-berks-county","9":"tag-jos-parra","10":"tag-nicols-maduro","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-reading","13":"tag-reading-city","14":"tag-reading-city-headlines","15":"tag-reading-city-news","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-venezuelan-government","18":"tag-venezuelan-presidential-crisis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}