In the aftermath of the early-morning raid that plucked Nicolás Maduro from his bedroom, the Donald Trump administration said it had acted in defence of the Venezuelan electorate, removing a pretender to the oil-soaked country’s throne.
In 2024, Venezuelans voted for Mr. Maduro’s ouster, choosing his opponent. The Venezuelan strongman ignored their ballots, but the U.S. President has made clear that he has no more intention of abiding by those voters’ wishes.
Instead, Mr. Trump has placed the country in the hands of interim president Delcy Rodríguez, leaving untouched the feared leaders of its military and security apparatus.
Along with Mr. Maduro, it is those leaders who have filled prisons with hundreds of opponents and forced many others to flee. Together, those who have left constitute a worldwide assembly of political exiles who have for years looked back at their homes from a distance, nurturing hopes that an end to dictatorship would offer a fresh beginning for themselves – and for Venezuelan democracy.
Now, Mr. Maduro is gone. And as an uncertain future unravels, those opponents are weighing what role they might once again expect in Venezuela, assessing how they can work their way back and laying plans for how they can reshape the country.
In the wake of Nicolás Maduro's capture, pro-government armed civilians, known as 'colectivos,' have roamed the streets of Caracas enforcing calm and compliance.Gaby Oraa/Reuters
The regime remains in place. But those in exile spy cracks in its armour, enough to stir optimism that what comes ahead may be different than the oppression, imprisonment and torture that has come before.
For Venezuela, this is not yet “the beginning of a transition. But it is the beginning of our liberation,” said Fernando Marcando, who was a state co-ordinator for Vente Venezuela, the party of Nobel Peace Prize-winner María Corina Machado. He fled five months ago.
On the surface, that is a hard sentiment to square with the reality of an ancien régime still almost entirely intact. In the days after Mr. Maduro’s capture, Venezuelan authorities have arrested people for mocking the fallen leader or celebrating his fate. The feared colectivos, armed militants on motorcycles, have roamed to enforce calm and demand compliance.
Mr. Trump, too, has given little reason to believe that he wants political change. He has directed his presidential energies to securing commitments for the U.S. to access and expand Venezuela’s oil output.
He has also dismissed any governing role for Ms. Machado, the opposition leader whose party was widely seen as having beaten Mr. Maduro in a July 28, 2024 election. On Friday, her chosen presidential candidate, Edmundo González, said the international community should not be content with half measures.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, in Caracas in 2024. U.S. President Trump has dismissed any governing role for Ms. Machado, whose party was widely seen as having won the 2024 election.ADRIANA LOUREIRO FERNANDEZ/The New York Times
“Venezuela needs a real transition, and for that there must be freedom for all political prisoners, an end to the persecution, disarmament of the paramilitary groups and respect for the popular will expressed on July 28,” he wrote on X.
None of those things have happened.
Yet late this week, Mr. Trump said he would soon meet with Ms. Machado, who has offered him her Nobel Prize. And on Thursday night, the country began to release a small number of the hundreds of political prisoners from its jails.
In Venezuela’s far-flung community of political exiles, many have been preparing for their return from the moment they entered exile.
Gladys Castillo is part of the national leadership of Voluntad Popular, a Venezuelan party founded by Leopoldo López, a former mayor in Caracas who fled the country in 2020. Ms. Castillo is the party co-ordinator for Venezuela’s influential central area, including Caracas.
She now lives in Argentina, but remains in close contact with Mr. López, who is in Spain, and with others around the world.
“We continue to do politics through Zoom,” she said. She also continues to co-ordinate work inside Venezuela.
Rebuilding politics there will be difficult. The Maduro regime took aim not merely at national leaders like Ms. Machado and Mr. López, but at party functionaries down to the municipal level.
Richard García, 60, a Caracas political co-ordinator for Voluntad Popular in exile in Bogotá, Colombia, on Jan. 9.NATHALIA ANGARITA/The Globe and Mail
Those arrested in the days after Mr. Maduro’s capture include dozens of people associated with opposition parties, said Richard García, a Caracas political co-ordinator for Voluntad Popular. He fled years ago after being accused – falsely, he says − of arson and kidnapping.
It is difficult to imagine political progress in the country, he believes, while people like Diosdado Cabello, the feared Interior Minister, remain in power.
“They have the weapons and they have the bosses of the military and police units,” said Mr. García, who has lived in Colombia since 2018. His wife, Mirleidy Uzcátegui, arrived in that country in 2019. She was among the founders of Voluntad Popular. A critic of the regime, she left Venezuela after someone ran a Jeep into her house.
Even in exile, she has had reason to fear Mr. Cabello, who has threatened a foundation where she works in Bogotá advocating for children. Mr. Cabello called it anti-revolutionary and traitorous.
García has lived in exile in Colombia since 2018. His wife, Mirleidy Uzcategui, joined him a year later after someone ran a Jeep into her house in Venezuela.NATHALIA ANGARITA/The Globe and Mail
“We don’t feel safe,” Ms. Uzcátegui said. Colombia and Venezuela share a lengthy border that is easily crossed. “We know that truly, at any moment, they could attack any of us,” she said.
In October, two Venezuelan activists were shot in the Colombian capital, including security analyst Luis Peche. He is skeptical that Venezuela has been steered onto a path different from the Chavista ideology that has dictated life there for more than a quarter-century.
Take this week’s promised release of political prisoners: in the first 24 hours, just nine were let go. More than 800 remain.
“You have to be cautious about the possibility that Chavismo will do one of the things they most like – and that is lie,” he said.
Yet some glimmers have appeared.
Mr. García has some confidence that U.S. oversight of petroleum resources can work in the favour of the Venezuelan people. Historically, foreign companies played a critical role in developing crude production that, for a time, made Venezuela among the world’s wealthiest countries – 75 years ago, its GDP per capita exceeded that of Canada. Standards of living remained high well into the 1980s.
“All that infrastructure was built by the gringos, and the country was prosperous,” Mr. García said. When it comes to extracting oil, “China, Russia, Iran and Cuba are taking it for free,” he said. “The U.S. will pay.”
The sun rises over Caracas a week after the U.S. military operation that launched airstrikes on parts of the city and resulted in the capture of Maduro.Matias Delacroix/The Associated Press
A stabilized economy could be enough to begin reuniting some Venezuelans with their country. Nearly three million live in Colombia alone. Johan Hernández, a Venezuelan political exile who works with those migrants, estimates that well over half want to return. He has been told that some started making plans the moment Mr. Maduro was gone.
“That already says where things are going,” he said.
What people want most, he said, is to have jobs and see economic improvement. Security matters, too, and until the 2024 election results are realized or there is a new vote, he said, “there can be no security.”
Still, the release of some prisoners was enough to persuade José Antonio Colina that “the United States is in control of the situation inside Venezuela.” As a result, “I’m thinking that maybe Venezuela is going to go in the direction of freedom.”
Mr. Colina arrived in the U.S. in 2003, claiming asylum as a Venezuelan military officer who had openly called for the resignation of Hugo Chavez.
People hold a vigil while waiting for news about the release of prisoners outside El Rodeo prison in Miranda, Venezuela on Jan. 9.Jesus Vargas/Getty Images
Based in Miami, he now runs an organization of Venezuelan political refugees in exile, which has grown into an influential group, in contact with more than 20,000 people across the U.S., Argentina, Colombia, Peru and Spain.
Mr. Colina, who plans to return and enter Venezuelan politics, isn’t bothered that Mr. Trump covets the country’s oil. That crude might just be the price of future democracy.
“Maybe we are buying our freedom,” he said.
What Mr. Trump has shown is that forceful confrontation is needed to remove a tyrannical regime, added Walter Molina, a Venezuelan political scientist and columnist.
“For years, we asked for help from the entire world, no matter their ideology, and never received it. Now, we have. Is it only for democracy? No, but it serves precisely to help us achieve it.”
Before the Chavistas took power, Venezuelans experienced four decades of democracy. That memory has not faded.
“Chavismo’s first defeat was exactly there: they could not colonize the minds of Venezuelans,” Mr. Molina said.
“Not even those of the young people who were born during those dark years and, without knowing democracy and freedom, yearn for them.”