Caracas, Venezuela – American warships vaporize south of the Caribbean. The Trump administration denounces to the realization of Nicolás Maduro, “Narco President”, and doubles a reward in its head to $ 50 million. The rumors of an invasion, coup d'etat or other form of American intervention flood social networks.
For the besieged people of Venezuela, plunged in more than a decade of crisis (hyperinflation, food shortage, authoritarian government and manipulated elections), a new phase of anxiety returns to touch the nerves. Even so, Venezuelans are trying to continue soldiers.
“We try to maintain our activities, our schedules despite uncertainty,” said Leisy Torcatt, 44, mother of three children who runs a baseball school in a nation where the passion for sports helps defend against despair.
Students of the small league team for the practice of the Los Angeles de Baruta school in a park in Caracas.
“Our daily problems continue, but we cannot paralyze ourselves … We continue advancing trying to solve our differences,” he said.
Here is an inescapable sense that imports are largely out of people's control. The huge protests of Antimaduro Street in recent years did little to evict, or undermine, Maduro, and the opposition has been deeply divided. The authorities have imprisoned dissidents and have broken coup attempts.
And now, once again, Venezuela seems to be in Washington's sights.
“We have already seen everything,” said Mauricio Castillo, 28, a journalist. “It is not that we have lost faith in the possibility of a real change. But we are fed up. We cannot simply stop our lives, put them waiting for” something “.”
People buy from the Central Business District in the center.
Here in the capital, Venezuelans are accustomed to the improved martial ritual: more blocked roads, more troops in the streets, more barricades that protect the presidential palace of Miraflores, where Maduro launches diatribes against the possible “imperialist” invaders.
However, despite the current naval accumulation in the Caribbean, the Trump administration has given very mixed signs about Venezuela.
During Trump's first presidency, his administration recognized an opposition president in the shadow, accused Maduro for drug trafficking charges and imposed draconian sanctions to the oil and financial sectors. The sanctions effectively collapsed an already unstable economy in what was once the richest nation in South America.
The economic crisis led to an exodus of about 8 million Venezuelans, almost a third of the population. Most ended another part of South America, but hundreds of thousands arrived in the United States. Trump has emphatically pointed out that they are not welcome, ending the protections of the age of the Biden administration and intensifying deportations.
A man fixes a Spider-Man costume in the Popular Market of San Jacinto in Caracas.
During the presidential campaign, and since he returned to the White House, Trump has repeatedly said, without evidence, that Venezuela had emptied his prisons and sent the worst criminals to the United States.
But shortly after assuming the position for his current mandate, Trump sent a special envoy, Richard Grenell, to meet with Maduro, generating hopes of better relationships. Later, Washington gave Chevron, the United States oil giant, a license to continue operating in Venezuela, home of the world's largest oil reserves, in a movement that provided very necessary cash for Caracas and oil for the US market.
Then, in July, the Trump administration praised the release of 10 US citizens and permanent residents arrested in Venezuela in exchange for the return of hundreds of Venezuelan citizens who had been deported to El Salvador.
Meanwhile, the United States has regularly sending others deported to Venezuela in another bilateral cooperation signal.
“So far we have seen President Trump to support very clearly a policy of commitment to Venezuela,” said Geoff Ramsey, the main member of the Atlantic Council, a Washington headquarters in Washington. “The United States is not going to invade Venezuela in the short term.”
Janeth, 45, teacher of a community school, poses for a portrait in Caracas.
Others say that they are not so safe, despite Trump's declared aversion to get involved in more wars, and the probable negative setback in much of Latin America, where the perspective of American intervention inevitably revives the memories of past invasions, the monopming of land and support for right -wing dictators.
In the opinion of US officials, Maduro and drug trafficking are inextricably intertwined. The White House labels Maduro, the head of the “Suns Cartel”, a smuggling network allegedly linked to the Venezuelan government and army. And according to reports, Trump has ordered the Pentagon to plan a possible military action against Latin America posters. (Maduro denies drug charges, dismissing them as a disinformation campaign of the United States).
The massive scope of the US naval employment seems to reflect the policy point of view of the hawks as the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who for a long time has defended a hard line position against Venezuela.
According to reports, the accumulation includes more than half a dozen warships, including at least one submarine and thousands of marines and sailors. The White House says it is destined to deter the traffic of maritime narcotics, not to the defeat of Maduro.
“This is a great effort to put in something that is a performance, right?” Laura Cristina Dib said, who directs Venezuelan research at the Washington office in Latin America, a research group.
1. “Faith in our people” says an advertising fence with the face of President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas. 2. A patriotic backpack with the colors and stars of the Venezuelan flag.
In response, Maduro has reinforced inscriptions in the militia, deployed 15,000 troops on the border with Colombia and insisted that US forces “in no way” can enter Venezuela. It mocks the statement of the United States that naval accumulation is an non -slip effort, correctly pointing out that the majority of cocaine occurs in neighboring Colombia and enters the United States through Mexico.
“It is ridiculous to say that they are struggling against drug trafficking with nuclear submarines,” journalists Samuel Moncada, a UN ambassador to Venezuela, told Thursday.
According to most independent stories, Maduro probably lost last year's elections, the monitors played their claimed victory, but their many sponsors are making a sample of high profile support given the noise of the US saber. UU.
1. People walk in front of a politically loaded mural near the Plaza Bolívar. The Iranian forest ship represented on the right side of the mural arrived in Venezuela during fuel shortage in 2020. 2. An old military tank in the heroes near the Military Base of Fuerte Tiuna in Caracas.
The Government has orchestrated the public inscriptions of the members of the militia that demonstrate their desire to fight for the socialist legacy of the deceased Hugo Chávez, the mentor and predecessor of Maduro in the Miraflores Palace.
“None of us will be afraid when it is time to defend our country from foreign aggression,” said Orlando López, 54, a grandfather and a proud militiaman. “It is not justified that the president of another country wants to impose his will.”
He rejected the notion of a generalized sensation of nervousness.
“The climate in the city is of tranquility, of peace,” said López, who is part of a civil militia force more than 1 million that supports Maduro.
On a recent Sunday in the Roman Catholic Church of Santo Domingo de Guzmán in the district of Baruta of the capital, Father Leonardo Marius urged the parishioners to ignore the drum of the war that hits the waves and the Internet. Venezuelans, he said, should focus on more basic concerns.
“In Venezuela, half a million children do not have enough to eat, nobody talks about that,” Marius told the parishioners in his sermon. “But we love Hollywood's stories of ships and aircraft carriers, the show … 'They come! They are disembarking!” Please, Hollywood has done a lot of damage.
A skating team for patina girls in the propceers near the Military Base of Fuerte Tiuna in Caracas.
On the other side of the city, in an exclusive sports club, Javier Martín, a businessman, said the noise was difficult to ignore.
“The atmosphere throughout the country, but especially here in Caracas, is fear, anguish, uncertainty,” Martín said. “You see hooded officials in the streets and makes you feel fear, as if you were in a war.”
Venezuelans, he explained, live a kind of “surreal” existence, struggling to maintain their lives and families, while always anticipating improvements and changes, which never seem to come.
“We live cornered every day,” he said. “It is not sustainable.”
What follows?
“Everyone expects something to happen,” Martín said. “I just hope it's positive.”
The Mogollón special correspondent reported by Caracas and the writer of the Times McDonnell staff of Mexico City.
