Fear and hope in Venezuela as US warships lurk
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
By JULIE TURKEWITZ
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 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 U.S. strike that could unleash bloodshed and chaos.
Still, in other parts of the capital, Caracas, there was a battle-weary calm and skepticism 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 United States are at a crossroads, with the Trump administration sending warships into the Caribbean. The buildup’s size and President Donald Trump’s public threats against President Nicolás Maduro have raised the specter 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 United States, and his administration has called Maduro the head of a terrorist organization threatening the United States and flooding it with drugs.
The United States 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.
But 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 U.S. 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 United States 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 United States, recognized Maduro’s opponent, Edmundo González, a surrogate for Machado, as the legitimate victor.
One of Machado’s advisers, Pedro Urruchurtu, said she was coordinating 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 United States,” and would “guarantee a stable transition” to González.
But in interviews, other Venezuelans were far less eager to see the United States 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 U.S. move was not the solution. Many people spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation.
Some said they doubted the willingness of the United States to keep a large contingent of troops on the ground to ensure the stability of a U.S.-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 skeptical 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 United States and toward China, Russia and Iran.
In an interview at her office inside the country’s Oil Ministry building, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said that she believed Trump was leading the world into “a stage where the United States has openly declared war on the world.”
“The Ministry of Defense is no longer Defense, 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 normalization of economic relations with the United States, which has imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s vital oil industry.
“The people of the United States 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 United States, said the country’s foreign minister, Yván Gil.
Several diplomats and business leaders in Caracas said that they hoped the United States 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 United States on drug conspiracy charges.
The boats that U.S. 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 Sept. 2, is widely believed to have been carrying people from the towns of San Juan de Unare and Güiria, on a spit of land known as the Paria Peninsula.
For years the region has been dominated by cocaine trafficking, according to Ronna Rísquez, a Venezuelan journalist who has conducted field work in the area.
But migrants, trafficking victims and government-subsidized Venezuelan gasoline — which can be sold at a higher price in Trinidad and Tobago, just 6 miles 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.