Under the threat of a U.S. invasion, Venezuelans try to carry on with their daily lives

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At the Plaza Bolívar in Caracas’s historic downtown, people form conga lines and dance salsa beneath tunnels of lights and glowing electric stars in front of a statue of the country’s founding father, Simón Bolívar. Scenes like these capture how Venezuelans have learned to live with the prospect of military confrontation with the United States.

Despite a surge in police checkpoints across the capital and the deployment of anti-aircraft defences to its military airport, life is going on largely as usual, even as the U.S. administration continues to ramp up pressure on the government of Nicolás Maduro to relinquish power.

Warships, aircraft and submarines have been deployed off Venezuela’s coast, ostensibly as an anti-drug operation. On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump escalated the crisis further by ordering a “total and complete” blockade of sanctioned oil tankers entering and exiting Venezuelan waters, which will have a severe impact on its oil-dependent economy. Mr. Maduro’s government said in a statement that it rejected Mr. Trump’s “grotesque threat.”

The apparent nonchalance of ordinary Venezuelans masks the fear and self-censorship that have silenced public conversation here. After opposition candidate Edmundo González won the 2024 presidential election by a wide margin – according to overwhelming evidence – the authorities proclaimed themselves victorious and unleashed a sweeping crackdown on protesters, the opposition and civil society.

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Those who do speak out reveal a mix of uncertainty, hope and fear.

Coromoto, an engineer from Baruta, a leafy, middle-to-upper-class municipality and opposition stronghold within the metropolitan area of Caracas, said she supports an American intervention to oust Mr. Maduro, “albeit under specific and strict conditions,” explaining that it would depend on how long such an operation and U.S. military presence would last.

“Should it occur, the country would have to pay a very high immediate price in terms of sovereignty and reconstruction. However, that sacrifice could be worthwhile in the long run,” she said.

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The Globe and Mail is not identifying most of the interview subjects for this story by their surnames in order to protect them from reprisals.

Fear has also left the views of Venezuelans underrepresented in international media and has cast doubt on polls and news stories, which critics say are often skewed by self-censorship. Online, anti-Maduro activists and journalists have also questioned what they see as misreporting by legacy media outlets.

“No one in their right mind dares to openly give their opinion,” said Benigo Alarcón, a political analyst. “People speak [to the media] on condition of anonymity on a daily basis. They speak with distorted voices and without showing their faces.”

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For Mr. Alarcón, people falsifying replies in polls or not talking openly with the media “evidently is creating a significant distortion” that complicates efforts to gauge public support for the opposition or assess tolerance for foreign intervention.

Segundo, a truck driver from a working-class area near the Caracas neighbourhood of El Paraíso, said an operation to remove Mr. Maduro would be positive, as it could bring better conditions for workers and a systemic change to restore credit, access to health care and legal certainty for the companies he works for. Nevertheless, he said, he felt the current escalation might be a bluff and end without any intervention or military strikes.

“We’re living in constant suspense – and we couldn’t possibly live in worse jeopardy,” he said.

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Others wrapped their views in the familiar shield of Venezuelan humour.

“If the Americans come, I’ll give them coffee and make them arepas,” said a young woman at a nightclub, referring to the cornmeal flatbreads that are a Venezuelan staple, as her group of friends discussed the political situation.

“The intervention in Venezuela is necessary because it’s the only way this government will leave power and we can welcome Edmundo González as our president,” said Omaelis, a grassroots opposition activist from Petare, a sprawling settlement full of little brick houses with zinc roofs in easternmost Caracas, sometimes described as Latin America’s largest favela.

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Over the years, Petare, once a bastion of Chavismo, the socialist movement of Mr. Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, has gradually drifted toward the opposition, mirroring the slow erosion of loyalty in Venezuela’s urban poor strongholds as the country sank into a humanitarian crisis and an economic collapse rarely seen outside of war.

Others weren’t as enthusiastic about a confrontation with the U.S.

“A foreign military intervention seems like a very dangerous option to me,” said a university student from Antímano, a working-class area in Caracas, warning that she feared greater fracture, instability and violence. At the same time, she said, María Corina Machado, the opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, gave her hope.

“I feel she’s one of the few people who has spoken clearly, without fear, and who genuinely wants real change for Venezuela,” she said.

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On a recent Friday, on the rooftop of a corporate tower in the capital, a local services company held its Christmas party. Merengue and reggaetón blared as employees belted out karaoke, their voices rising above the city’s office buildings, lit up against the night sky.

Phone screens lit up between songs. In WhatsApp chats, screenshots from flight-tracking apps circulated, claiming a U.S. F-18 fighter jet had entered Venezuelan airspace over Falcon state, about 512 kilometres from Caracas – probably the first time a U.S. plane had flown over Venezuelan land since the Caribbean escalation began. No one seemed particularly alarmed.

“Hahaha guys, should I keep doing my makeup [for my sister’s birthday night out] or not?” a young female economist wrote in a group chat where the radar images were being shared. “Let me know.”

With a report from Reuters