Venezuelans gathered at Brewster Street Icehouse on the South Side to celebrate a historic moment they say they\u2019ve been waiting for a very long time.<\/p>\n
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 The Venezuelan community is celebrating what they call the liberation of their nation following U.S. strikes and the capture of President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro early Saturday morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this is just the beginning. It\u2019s not going to take one day,\u201d said Dr. Jesus Gomez, a Venezuelan American.<\/p>\n
Gomez was born in Venezuela but made the difficult decision to leave nearly 27 years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has been an exodus of more than 9 million Venezuelans around the world in the last 25 years,\u201d Gomez said.<\/p>\n
He says it\u2019s a relief to see his country turning a corner, with hope replacing years of suffering.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou realize how people have been suffering slowly \u2014 the oppression of the legal structure and legal system. Thousands of people have been killed,\u201d Gomez said. \u201cThere are many political prisoners and a lot of political persecution for no reason, just because they want to stay in power.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joanne Guastaferro grew up in Venezuela and worked as a doctor but left the country for her safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been waiting for this after years of living under a dictatorship \u2014 the way they managed the country, the hospitals, the poverty, people dying of hunger,\u201d Guastaferro said. \u201cThis is happiness for a lot of people. We\u2019re not here to analyze politics, just to be happy this could be the beginning of the end of a terrible era for Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n
The moment is also impacting younger generations, including Catalina and Joaquin Garza.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so heartwarming that we can finally be free and go back to peace and harmony and eventually return to our country,\u201d Catalina said. \u201cI\u2019m excited because I\u2019ve never been there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guastaferro said she knows the country faces a long recovery but believes Venezuela will overcome it.<\/p>\n
\u201cVenezuela has all the potential in the world. It\u2019s a beautiful country full of minerals and oil,\u201d she said. \u201cThere is no reason for Venezuela to be poor or for anyone to die of hunger. What we want is progress, education for everyone and peace.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Venezuelans gathered at Brewster Street Icehouse on the South Side to celebrate a historic moment they say they\u2019ve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":{"0":"post-112066","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-corpus-christi","8":"tag-corpus-christi","9":"tag-corpus-christi-headlines","10":"tag-corpus-christi-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}