Vladimir Padrino Lopez, Venezuela’s Minister of Defence, speaks to members of the Bolivarian militia reserve force in Caracas, Venezuela, on September 23. Many observers say the Trump Administration’s real goal is to go after President Nicolas Maduro. Photo / Adriana Loureiro Fernandez, The New York Times
In one corner of Venezuela’s capital, hundreds of government supporters held guns to their chests, as one speaker after another, microphone in hand, urged them to defend the nation with their lives.
In another corner, businesspeople and diplomats were worried about the escalating tensions between Venezuela and the United States, about what they see as a lost opportunity for dialogue between the two countries and about the possibility of a US strike that could unleash bloodshed and chaos.
Still, in other parts of the capital, Caracas, there was a battle-weary calm and scepticism that there will ever be political change in Venezuela.
Granted a rare visa for foreign journalists, I spent a week in Venezuela at a particularly tense time.
Relations with the US are at a crossroads, with the Trump Administration sending warships into the Caribbean.
The build-up’s size and US President Donald Trump’s public threats against President Nicolas Maduro have raised the spectre of strikes, of commando raids in the South American nation, or of some broader conflict.
Trump has said he wants to unleash the military on cartels and stop trafficking to the US, and his Administration has called Maduro the head of a terrorist organisation threatening the US and flooding it with drugs.
The US says it has blown up at least three drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean, including at least two from Venezuela, in a significant escalation of the kind of pressure that Trump has put on Mexico to crack down on fentanyl.
While some drugs do come from Venezuela, fentanyl does not, and the cocaine that does is a very small percentage of the trade, far less than what comes from Colombia and exits from Colombia and Ecuador, according to the US Government’s accounting.
That has led many observers to say that the Trump Administration’s real goal is to go after Maduro.
In interviews, some Venezuelans said they supported any action that would lead to the ouster of Maduro, who is accused of major human rights violations and whose movement has led the country for a generation.
The group supporting the use of force is led by Maria Corina Machado, an opposition leader. Her base says that by removing Maduro, the US could defend the result of last year’s presidential vote, which Maduro is widely believed to have lost.
Independent vote monitors and many countries, including the US, recognized Maduro’s opponent, Edmundo González, a surrogate for Machado, as the legitimate victor.
One of Machado’s advisers, Pedro Urruchurtu, said she was co-ordinating with the Trump Administration and had a plan for the first 100 hours after Maduro’s fall.
That plan involves the participation of international allies, he said, “especially the US,” and would “guarantee a stable transition” to González.
But in interviews, other Venezuelans were far less eager to see the US get involved.
Many, even those who said they wanted to see Maduro gone, arguing that he has held on only through repression, said that a violent US move was not the solution. Many people spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation.
Some said they doubted the willingness of the US to keep a large contingent of troops on the ground to ensure the stability of a US-backed government.
Three diplomats said they saw few signs that anyone in Maduro’s inner circle would split to support an opposition leader, or that the military would turn on him.
Other Venezuelans warned that ousting Maduro would only invite the armed actors left behind — the military, Colombian guerrilla groups, paramilitary gangs — into a battle for the spoils.
And in Venezuela, with its oil, gold and other minerals, there are many spoils.
“You kill Maduro,” said one prominent businessperson, “you turn Venezuela into Haiti”, which descended into chaos after its last president was assassinated.
Still others were sceptical that Trump was willing to get involved militarily and said that the President’s gunboat strategy, led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, would only push Venezuela further from the US and toward China, Russia and Iran.
Maduro has responded to Washington’s mobilisation by arming civilians, sending tanks into the streets and announcing military exercises throughout the country, which have been publicised on state television and social media.
His advisers say the central message to Washington is that their government does not want war.
The Venezuelan President sent a letter to Trump this month praising his efforts to halt other conflicts and said he was open to a “direct and frank conversation” with Trump’s special envoy to Venezuela, Richard Grenell.
Early this year, Grenell seemed to be trying to improve relations, travelling to Venezuela to meet Maduro just after Trump took office. But more recently, Trump has appeared to favour Rubio’s hardline approach.
In an interview at her office inside the country’s Oil Ministry building, Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez said that she believed Trump was leading the world into “a stage where the US has openly declared war on the world”.
“The Ministry of Defence is no longer Defence, it’s the Ministry of War,” she said. “Trade relations are no longer trade relations, they are a trade war.”
She called the boat attacks “absolutely illegal” and called for a normalisation of economic relations with the US, which has imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s vital oil industry.
“The people of the US do not want war in the Caribbean,” she said.
Even amid escalating tensions, Venezuela has continued to accept twice-weekly flights of deportees from the US, said the country’s Foreign Minister, Yvan Gil.
Several diplomats and business leaders in Caracas said that they hoped the US would shift back to a policy of diplomacy, believing that persistent negotiations could eventually persuade Maduro to hand power to a reformist successor or moderate opposition leader in exchange for sanctions relief and other conditions.
They also said that he is tired, but cannot leave office if he thinks he will be arrested. Maduro, who is 62 and has led the country since 2013, is under indictment in the US on drug conspiracy charges.
On the streets of Caracas, the strain between the two nations has produced contrasting images of war and peace.
On a recent day, a downtown boulevard filled with people the government had gathered for a rally: some civilians, others members of the Bolivarian militia, a reserve force.
Several people said that they worked for the Government, that their superiors had required attendance, and that they had been given unloaded guns to hold during the event. Many quickly left as soon as it ended.
Others said that patriotism had brought them out and vowed to defend Maduro and his movement.
“If there is an invasion,” said Marisol Amundaray, 50, “I will safeguard my children and head to the street with my rifle.”
In other parts of the city, though, normal life continued. Not far from the presidential palace one morning, Constanza Sofía Arangeren twirled on a cobblestone street in a gold ballgown as a photographer snapped away.
She was preparing for her 15th birthday celebration, and her mother was more anxious about the coming party than a possible invasion.
No one interviewed said they were hoarding supplies. Some said they were not worried about an attack; others said they couldn’t afford to.
“In a normal country where there is a threat like this, the first thing people do is stock up on food,” said Estefanie Mendoza, 42, a social worker with two children. “But we can’t do that.”
While the country’s economy has recovered somewhat since a protracted crisis helped fuel a migrant exodus, the rebound has been uneven.
Trump and Rubio have argued that significant amounts of cocaine are trafficked through Venezuela and that they are seeking to stop US overdoses. A 2020 report from the US State Department said just 10% to 13% of the global cocaine supply goes through Venezuela.
Fentanyl, which causes far more overdoses than cocaine, is almost entirely produced in Mexico with chemicals imported from China, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
The boats that US forces have bombed in the Caribbean have killed at least 17 people, according to the Trump Administration.
Some legal experts have called it a crime to summarily kill civilians not directly taking part in hostilities, even if they are believed to be smuggling drugs.
In the state of Sucre, on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast, the first boat to have been destroyed, on September 2, is widely believed to have been carrying people from the towns of San Juan de Unare and Guiria, on a spit of land known as the Paria Peninsula.
For years the region has been dominated by cocaine trafficking, according to Ronna Risquez, a Venezuelan journalist who has conducted field work in the area.
But migrants, trafficking victims, and government-subsidised Venezuelan fuel — which can be sold at a higher price in Trinidad and Tobago, just 10km away — also leave from this area, she said.
In an interview, one woman who identified herself as the wife of one of the dead men said that her husband was a fisherman with four children who left one day for work and never came back.
Some in Venezuela said they feared US military action would mean more loss. And they said they didn’t believe that Machado, who says she is in hiding in Venezuela, and Gonzalez, in exile in Spain, could guarantee their security.
“Name one successful case in the last few years of a successful US military intervention,” said Henrique Capriles, an opposition politician who has clashed with Machado.
A bloodless US “extraction” of Maduro was the stuff of Netflix, he said, not reality.
“And the cost for us Venezuelans, what will it be? What guarantee do we have that this will translate into a recovery of our democracy?”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Julie Turkewitz
Photographs by: Adriana Loureiro Fernandez
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