Venezuela's Current Status
I have no news that will surprise anyone that hasn't already seen what's been going on today. Yes, there were air strikes against military infrastructure in Venezuela. At this point, the Venezuelan regime has acknowledged USA succeeded at ~something~ and the VP, who allegedly isn't even in Venezuela but in Russia atm, has gone on record to ask for proof of life of Maduro and his wife, which suggests that Trump's announcement of their capture is true.
With all this, the perspectives of the actual Venezuelan people easily get buried under heaps of condemnation and guilt-ridden Americans who can't help but hate their own country for all the terrible things it does. Often speaking over Venezuelans, refusing to give them any kind of credence unless their perspective validates theirs.
The truth about Maduro is that he is an illegitimate president since who-knows-when, we only have evidence of it when it comes to the 2024 elections, but we all believe the electoral hijacking started from much earlier than that. His seating government, thus, is effectively illegitimate, illegal in every sense you can think of. Almost 70% of Venezuela voted against him. The Carter Center, which had often validated Venezuela's elections, publicly denounced that the 2024 elections did NOT meet the transparency standards expected from any such events. The official website of the CNE (the National Electoral Center) has not been functional since 2024 even though it's where the results that back the government's story are supposed to be published, ergo, there's NO PROOF that Maduro won in 2024 and in fact all proof suggests the opposite.
So, what this means when it comes to what Trump has done now:
I am under no delusions of Trump's nobility or human decency. He has neither thing. He's currently under a fuckton of scrutiny over the Epstein investigation. He's picking fights left and right internationally, from attacking Nigeria to trying to claim Greenland, and perhaps most importantlywhen it comes to what's happening, he wants immigrants OUT. Thus, while a lot of people believe his attacks on Venezuela are oil-motivated, there's a much more favorable narrative for you all, that Trump has served you on a silver platter: he's trying to remove Maduro from the equation so he can have the green light to deport as many Venezuelans as he can get away with for the sake of his racist crusade.
If I can say all this, it's because I don't trust that Orange bastard, because I am no MAGAzuelan, as many people have called the blind Trump supporters in Venezuela. I KNOW he's a bad person!
Which leads me to the very uncomfortable and painful position of asking why, exactly, does Venezuela find itself needing this particular monster to be the one to save it from its own destruction.
Maduro's regime has been suffocating Venezuela across the past 13 years. Chávez started doing so before him, all the way back in 1999. Under the banners of "socialism", Maduro and Chávez have rejoiced in the complicit silence or ignorant support from international parties all across the globe, simply because "well, they're on the left, they can't be THAT bad!" even though EVERY socialist issue that you can think of has never seen any progress or improvement in Venezuela across 27 years of tyranny. LGBT rights? Non-existent. Abortion? Don't even joke, lad. Corruption? Off the charts. You can't even go out past 8 PM unless you have a death wish and want to risk getting assaulted, robbed or gunned down. Every single person I know has been a victim of some kind of violence in Venezuela, whether at gunpoint or not.
This is also a regime that has taken over 800 political prisoners, several of whom were minors, many of whom are tortured in illegal dungeons all across the country.
And we don't even know HALF of the horrible things this regime is responsible for. We only know about what they've been unable to hide because it was that scandalous, such as that time a political prisoner, a known member of the opposition, "jumped out the window of a tenth floor and killed himself", only for a government figurehead to admit years later that he had been murdered by the state police that kept him in custody and they threw his lifeless body out the window to fake that it had been suicide.
Or that time a political and military insurrectionist tried to instigate a poorly strategically planned coup against Maduro across a year, only to end up massacred with his allies (including a pregnant woman and a child) by Maduro's military forces.
If you can read all of this and still conclude that Maduro is somehow the victim here, rather than the Venezuelan people who are currently rejoicing in his apparent capture and removal from the country, it means you're no better than the MAGA crowd who believe their side is righteous regardless of the horrible things their leaders are responsible for. Political corruption knows no sides. The left is NOT immune to horrible leadership, corruption, or being powerhungry bastards who will pocket as much money as they can, and resort to every violent trick up their sleeve in order to get away with everything they want to do.
So the question is basically how, exactly, do we end up in a situation where Trump can play hero to the extent that he's playing it, and getting away with heaps of support from the people of Venezuela, WHILE treating Venezuelans as subhuman as he deports them?
The real reason we've reached this point is because nobody else has even TRIED.
Because the international community was happy to turn a blind eye on everything awful the Maduro regime might do -- solely because he was doing it to his own people rather than going beyond borders to inflict his bullshit on another country. Because nearly every leftist government across the past 30 years has unanimously held their silence or even voiced their support of the Chávez-Maduro's regime, dutifully so, in order to continue profiting off the oil that so many people are worried USA wants to seize -- somehow, nobody was worried that Russia was actively IN Venezuela, with mercenaries, offering military support, profiting off our oil anyhow. It's only bad if USA does it, but everyone else is entitled to breach other countries' sovereignity!
The best case scenario for everyone is that Trump saves Venezuela at the cost of his own presidency, in short. That his latest stunt effectively liberates a desperate country in need of respite from the suffocating, unbearable government that has spent decades blaming everyone else for their own incompetence, causing the worst hyperinflation the nation ever saw, the most unfathomable basic services and resource shortages you can think of in a country that ISN'T at war and that is renowned for all its "natural riches". If Trump somehow committed an accidental political suicide by setting Venezuela free, we're all going to be happier for it in the end.
But I will not cease to bring up that it's actively humiliating and disgusting to see my country led to the point where Trump, of all people, gets to put on a medal and call himself a hero for being the only international actor who would actually ~do something~ about the Venezuelan regime and its brutal dictatorship. This year marks 27 years since this regime took power. And every sign by neutral organizations pointing towards the irregular situation in Venezuela, including its starring spot as the THIRD MOST CORRUPT COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, went ignored by anyone with the power or alleged integrity to do something about it.
This is only a win for Trump because the rest of the world has largely allowed to make it so. And protesting the US military action against the Venezuelan regime will not change the reality of the situation: this IS what most Venezuelans were hoping for, for DECADES. It was a running gag that people were "waiting for the marines", preparing meals for them, looking forward to their arrival! The desperation across the country to finally live free of this madness is such that, as long as Trump didn't actively victimize civilians, which it seems US troops DIDN'T do, they were going to be welcomed and thanked for this intervention. And no amount of first-world guilt will change that. The only thing I really, SERIOUSLY would like for people who feel disgusted at USA's actions to do... is to ask themselves just how much they know or understand about Venezuela. If they've so much as heard about the fights and the struggles that we've been through as we try to find any kind of freedom from the horrors we've collectively endured. If they've actually tried to put themselves in the position of feeling like an actual prisoner in your own country, of having to pick out bugs from your food because you have no other choice since there's nothing else to eat, of having to stand in line since before the break of dawn to buy a singular pack of toilet paper, sold in limited quantities based on what your national ID number may be. These were my personal experiences, as someone who isn't even a political actor in Venezuela. Anyone with political presence had it MUCH worse than I did.
There's so much adoration towards post-apocalyptic stories, so much swooning over heroes who topple bad governments... and yet none of it has ever taught heaps of people who love such stories to recognize that exact kind of evil when they see it in real life: listen to the perspectives of someone other than yourselves, educate yourselves on how many times Venezuela has tried to fight its way out of its current hellhole, and found no light at the end of the tunnel due to the international community's total silence over everything, or the muted "we're watching with sooo much concern what's happening in the country and hoping that dialogue and negotiations will save you all", when any attempt to negotiate with the Maduro regime has resulted in NOTHING.
I don't know if this is truly going to end Maduro's regime. For any Venezuelan with common sense, this isn't proof that Trump is a good egg: for anyone across the globe with common sense, it should not be proof that Maduro is a victim. We're not done here yet. Maybe we will be, and maybe things will finally work for my people again. But don't speak for us. Speak WITH us. Listen!
And for our sakes, please hope that Venezuela knows freedom at last. We've faced almost 30 years of an encroaching, oppressive tyranny that has only gotten worse day after day. Have some compassion for the actual people who have endured things you never have... and be grateful for it, if you haven't. Fight for your rights, if you ever notice your own country is headed in the same direction. Political freedom is a fight that needs to be fought, regardless of which side the evil authoritarian powers that be may come from.
I'll potentially make more posts on the matter if anything else happens. For now, I can say my family has reported it's safe and everything seems to be calm and quiet in the city for the time being. We'll soon see if this works out for Venezuela's benefit or not.
