While some U.S.-based Venezuelans celebrate the Jan. 3 capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, others have begun protesting U.S. intervention in the Latin American country.
On Saturday, Jan. 10, Caracas-born Venezuelan Vida Gomez, of the Northern Nevada Democratic Socialists of America, joined members of the anti-war group Code Pink Reno to stage a protest against U.S. action in Venezuela.
Gomez addressed the more than 40 people standing in front of the Bruce R. Thompson Federal Building from a median in the center of Virginia Street—first in Spanish, then in English.
“Nací en Caracas, y mi hogar fue bombardeada por el gobierno de Estados Unidos,” Gomez shouted into a microphone. “I was born in Caracas, and my home is being bombed by the U.S. government.” Her voice rang loud as cars drove by—some honking in support of the protestors.
“This government does not care for the Venezuelan people,” she said. “They do not care about democracy. If they truly did … they would not slander Venezuelan migrants as rapists and criminals. … If they cared about democracy, they would not have pardoned all those January 6 clowns.”
The crowd cheered in agreement, but not every passerby agreed with the demonstration. During the protest, a truck hauling an ATV with a design that read “We the People” drove by. The driver chanted “Donald Trump” while flipping off the crowd.
Continuing the fight
“It’s important that people stay informed,” said Maya Delgado, a representative from Code Pink Reno. “Many people just see something cross their news feed and then they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s terrible,’ and they ignore it.”
The goal of the protest was to show that people are paying attention to what is happening in Venezuela, and to provide a counternarrative to what some are calling a victory for democracy.
Delgado believes that the U.S. interference will not only affect the people in Venezuela, but also cut into resources for U.S. citizens.
“So green energy, education, infrastructure, all of that’s pretty much going down the drain,” she said. “We need to focus on America’s problems, and then we need to let Venezuela work on their own things.”
However, a Reno-based Venezuelan told the RN&R that the U.S. has a responsibility to facilitate democracy after capturing Maduro.
“I think that facilitating, especially at this point, is necessary,” said Leo Davis, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Venezuela and lives in Reno. “You cannot just snatch the president and then tap out.”
Davis left Venezuela in 2009, when the country was headed toward an economic crisis under President Hugo Chávez. In 2013, Maduro became president, and millions were pushed into poverty, causing a mass migration of more than 7.7 million Venezuelans.
Davis wanted to see Maduro out of power, but the attack on Caracas left him conflicted.
“Of course we want to see that group of people gone, but it just created more questions and uncertainty, not only about the future of Venezuela as a country, but what it means for the whole continent and this country too,” Davis said.
Since Maduro’s capture, President Donald Trump has made claims that the U.S. will run Venezuela. On Jan. 11, he posted a fake Wikipedia image on social media claiming he is “acting president” of Venezuela.
“This kind of immediate destabilization of a situation doesn’t really help anything,” Gomez said in an interview a few days before the protest. “We saw it with Saddam in Iraq. I thought we learned our lesson.”
In 2003, the U.S. invaded oil-rich Iraq with the same claim of fighting for democracy, but instead led the country into years of violence and power struggles between loyalists to then-president Saddam Hussein, al-Qaida and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers and approximately 200,000 Iraqi civilians were killed, according to NBC News.
“Removing any kind of leader just creates these unstable power vacuums,” Gomez said. “There’s talk of a military split in Venezuela, which would inevitably lead to a civil war.”