Ariana Figueroa at her father’s home in Cúcuta, Colombia, on Sunday.Yader Guzman/The Globe and Mail
Hours before U.S. forces descended on Caracas this weekend to seize Venezuela’s leader, Ariana Figueroa was hundreds of kilometres away, crossing the border into Colombia.
She didn’t know yet that Nicolás Maduro would be taken from his home and sent to New York. She had no reason to think Donald Trump would, hours later, declare that the U.S. would wrest control of the affairs of the South American country.
Ms. Figueroa had, however, heard the insistent rumours that a U.S. attack was looming and worried that any incursion would result in the immediate closure of the border. “That is what one fears the most, because when they shut the border, you can’t get through,” she said. People said it “was going to be chaotic in Venezuela.”
So she left, returning to the home her father built years ago in Cúcuta, a Colombian border city that looks out on the green hills of Venezuela. The news of Mr. Maduro’s capture brought a surge of emotion: joy, sadness, disbelief. “Deep down, it seemed impossible,” she said.
Venezuelans went out Saturday to stock up amid an atmosphere of uncertainty following the capture by the United States of President Nicolás Maduro and the first lady, as well as attacks in several parts of the capital, Caracas, in the early hours of the day.
The Associated Press
The celebrations that broke out among Venezuelan communities across the world were a long-awaited moment of catharsis, an outpouring of optimism after nearly a quarter-century of Chavist rule that deeply impoverished the oil-rich country and filled its jails with political prisoners.
“Of course, the hope is that someone new will come, right?” said José Pepicano, Ms. Figueroa’s father. There is, too, “a hope that is longing for what has been lost,” he said.
But a day later, as it became clear that Mr. Maduro’s role as president was quickly occupied by his second-in-command, vice-president Delcy Rodríguez, while the feared leaders of the country’s military and domestic security establishments remained in place, Ms. Figueroa was left with a more disquieting thought.
Perhaps those still in power, she now worries, will even more tightly circumscribe life for Venezuelans as they seek to hold on to their privileged positions.
“It’s change,” said Ms. Figueroa, a nurse who lived through the fear and stifling political pressure of life in Venezuela, “but for the worse.”
José Pepicano, Ms. Figueroa’s father.Yader Guzman/The Globe and Mail
The U.S. military stunned the world this weekend with its brazen efficiency, swooping in to remove Mr. Maduro from his Caracas bedroom and spirit him and his wife away to face charges in New York. It was a precisely conducted operation to remove a dictator who spurned an election loss and oversaw a corrupt regime that the Trump administration has called “narco-terrorists.”
But merely taking away Mr. Maduro amounts to playing a Jenga game in which “they removed the piece at the top of the tower,” said Rafael Osío Cabrices, the Montreal-based editor of Caracas Chronicles, an online news site. “In order to make the tower collapse, they have to remove more pieces.”
Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello continue in their roles, as does Alexander Granko, whom Mr. Osío calls Venezuela’s “torturer in chief.”
“We’re happy that Maduro is in a prison in New York,” he said. “But we all know the dictatorship is still there and that they are in power.”
Among the key questions for Venezuela is whether the person now charged with its leadership, Ms. Rodríguez, can replicate Mr. Maduro’s skill in holding together the disparate interests of the regime he assembled – all while satisfying the demands of a White House that has threatened a more muscular military invasion if its demands are not met.
It is a question complicated by the regime’s interwoven interests with a drug trade the U.S. has promised to squelch.
“Delcy is inheriting the trap that Maduro was in,” Mr. Osío said. “Maduro was trapped between the sword of American pressure and the wall of the hawks.”
It’s possible that leaving such difficult circumstances to Mr. Maduro’s successor is deliberate, said Luis Peche Arteaga, a Venezuelan international affairs specialist and security analyst. Perhaps, he said, it’s an attempt by the Trump administration to engineer fragmentation of the country’s power structures without further intervention.
“The current situation is so volatile that we can’t expect any outcome to be stable for more than a few weeks,” Mr. Peche said.
But Mr. Maduro survived in part by ensuring that even bitter political rivals shared a commitment to the continuity of the regime on which they relied for wealth and power.
People cross from Venezuela into Colombia in Cúcuta.Yader Guzman/The Globe and Mail
And Ms. Rodríguez “is probably smart enough to do that,” said Phil Gunson, senior analyst for the Andes region with International Crisis Group. Reconciling the demands of Mr. Trump with those of her ministers of interior and defence will be no easy task, Mr. Gunson said. “On the other hand, I think for now the two of them have an interest in not creating instability by seeking to replace her.”
On Sunday, Mr. Padrino, the Defence Minister, spoke in support of Ms. Rodríguez and called on Venezuelans “to resume their economic, work and all other types of activities, including education, in the coming days.”
It is time, he said, for the country to return to normal.
For the many millions in Venezuela who have spent years frustrated in their efforts to seek and vote for change, that prospect offers little reason to expect better days ahead.
If the removal of Mr. Maduro ”manages to place us in a better economic position, or improve our standing with the rest of the world, or if the country opens up more – that would already be something positive,” said Gabriela, a Venezuelan consultant.
“But what predominates at this moment is a deep sense of uncertainty and quite a bit of skepticism about where we are headed.”
Colombian military personnel stationed at the Simon Bolivar International Bridge along the border with Venezuela.Yader Guzman/The Globe and Mail
Marisela, a psychologist from Caracas, said she could do little but resign herself to a fate that is being decided by others – including a superpower whose leader covets Venezuelan oil.
“We have to try to trust that this was not done recklessly, but that there is a plan behind it – one we have no way of knowing – and hope for the best,” she said.
The Globe and Mail is using only the first names or changing the names of people in Venezuela because they fear reprisal for speaking publicly.
For others, though, the eviction of a dictatorial leader – something they spent a lifetime waiting to witness – brought a much dimmer sentiment.
“One of the things I feel the most is sadness,” said Karina Sainz Borgo, a Venezuelan author whose novels include It Would Be Night in Caracas and No Place to Bury the Dead. “We have lost so many times. We have lost so many lives.”
Ms. Sainz, who left Venezuela two decades ago and now lives in Spain, has marvelled at the strength of those who have stayed and persisted in advocating for a better future.
But “I cannot understand how a regime that has killed so many people is still in power.”
With reports from Caracas