Waking up envisioning the rays of sun from my faraway land, and Reinaldo Arenas’ last words from exile:
“Dear Friends: Due to the precarious state of my health and the terrible spiritual depression I feel because I cannot continue to write and to struggle for Cuban liberty, I am ending my life. In the last few years, in spite of my illness, I have finished my literary work of almost thirty years. I leave you then, as my legacy, all my terrors, but also my hopes that Cuba will soon be free. I am pleased to have played a modest part in the achievement of that liberty. I put an end to my life because I cannot continue my work. None of the people around me are implicated in that decision. There is only one person responsible: Fidel Castro. The suffering of exile, the pain of banishment, the loneliness and disease, surely would not have come about had I lived a free man in my own country.
I urge the people of Cuba, in exile and on the island, to continue struggling for freedom. My message is not a message of defeat but of struggle and of hope.
Cuba shall be free. I already am.”
Signed, Reinaldo Arenas
The struggle of millions of people cannot be reduced to only a utilitarian narrative for ideology. Human beings, when unfortunately trapped in a dictatorship, are generally defenceless in front of a huge machinery of authoritarianism and power. This vast apparatus has one mission: the complete kidnapping of the institutions. Once this phase has been achieved, and its platform has been established – with several years of development, as is the Venezuelan case – the desperation to keep attacking any element of dissent becomes relentless. Control is the priority. Even in a South American society, where chaos is part of the usual order of the day, you could believe this is not possible.
Trust me, there are ways.
These past days, I have been appalled to read comments online from people abroad who take my country as an excuse to justify their ideological narrative. What outrages me the most is not the condemnation of a foreign power violating international laws, but the denial of our tragedy, and the absence of this same condemnation to our own oppressors. “They go for your oil,” say some, while others chant “free Maduro”. It is quite interesting that an international movement, which gives priority to those subjugated and repressed, can be so superficial while providing opinions on a humanitarian crisis caused by the same group of people they are defending. And what is more heartbreaking is: by doing so, they are justifying and endorsing the torture, extermination, and exile of millions. They deem us, Venezuelans, ignorant of our own experiences, geographical space and tragedy. They speak from their privilege the same way they criticize from white supremacists. It is entitling, reductionistic, it lacks human solidarity and, from my fellow feminists, sorority.
Today, I don’t write this to give a geopolitical lecture, nor to deem myself an expert of political science. I’m just another citizen of my country, a witness of the destruction of my own land, who painfully feels the words of Reinaldo Arenas as my own. I also have often thought about how it would have been to have a relatively normal country to return to, or how my life would have been if that was the case.
I packed up my suitcase to leave when I was 25. Today, I’m 32, and I have only returned once since. When I came back, I couldn’t understand my own currency (the bolívar), and I couldn’t bear the state of how my family was. Skinnier and more depressed. Buying food was more expensive than in Hungary – still is – my salary here felt like water there, and I could breathe the decadence out of the air that has been stolen from people’s lives. I felt that I was inside still, I was part of it, the years living there, going to sleep some nights with an empty stomach, not by choice, or crying because I didn’t have pads for my period.
I still feel guilty, as many Venezuelans abroad do, when their families are still there. Guilty for being able to eat a normal meal, or for walking without the fear that the government will stop me in the street to check my phone, and if they find a conversation where I spoke ill of them, I would go to jail and be tortured, while my family doesn’t know where I am, as is the case of some of the 800+ political prisoners in Venezuela.
This story doesn’t belong to me only. It belongs to my people.
Those who have fought to stay alive, and keep others alive during the hell that Chavismo constructed to stay in power all these years. A regime like this is even more dangerous when it can disguise itself under the flags of social justice, revolution, and anti-imperialism. Not everything that has this facade is actually honouring human values.
Let’s pay attention and listen to the human beings inside, those in turmoil, not to their oppressors.
Drops of Chaos: A New Year Awakening
In our country, there’s always something happening for the worse. After years of having Maduro leading by force, while designing and executing strategically silent genocide methods of mass starvation to keep the dictatorship economically afloat, the hurtful apathy of “now what?” – while rolling our eyes – tries to keep us going, acting as a defense mechanism, resigned to any kind of actual change.
On January 3rd, something different happened. Venezuelans were abruptly woken up, violently transitioning from Friday to Saturday, readjusting to the New Year. It was the sound of military helicopters and bombs. The bombings started around 2am, at specific military targets in Caracas and the neighbouring states of La Guaira and Aragua. This is the first time that the capital city has ever been under attack by the US military. Approximately 10 helicopters were eye-sighted to be part of what has now been dubbed by the US Government as Operation Absolute Resolve, which targeted Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. Their destiny: New York, to be charged federally with narco-terrorism and drug trafficking. The outcomes of this operation were, of course, the detention of those mentioned above, but also the destruction of military and civilian infrastructures . At least 100 people were killed, most of them Venezuelan and Cuban military officers.
Amongst them were 2 civilian women: Rosa Elena González, an 80-year-old Venezuelan citizen, and Yohana Rodríguez Sierra, 45 years old, a Colombian citizen.
How Did this Happen?
This conflict escalated over several months, after some ships in the Caribbean were also targeted , following orders from the US Administration. However, there’s no evidence whatsoever as to whether these attacks were what we call “false positives” or if they were real targets of cocaine trafficking. What we do know is that 100 people were killed during these operations. If there was the certainty of these illegal operations, then why weren’t these people detained and tried in court? Was this just a showcase excuse from Donald Trump in order to justify more military deployment and getting closer to his ultimate goal?
Donald Trump’s administration has violated international law. That is clear.
The US has a history of foreign interventions that leave behind violence, devastation and many victims. The President of the United States is, as his public record states, a convicted felon. His administration’s fascist moves and his constant contradictions are all over the news. As Venezuelans, we know this. But in this geopolitical game, we don’t get to choose. After many years of taking to the streets in massive, creative, strategic protests all over the country (2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2024) where people were either killed, disappeared, imprisoned or tortured and after attempts at diplomacy in Barbados, Norway and Qatar between the opposition and the regime, we then proceeded to escalate the request for help to the international community. We incessantly asked for Maduro to be tried for Crimes Against Humanity. Each time the same result was the same : nothing.
The last straw was in July of 2024, when Maduro lost in our last presidential elections by a very humiliating margin: more than 4 millions of votes (this website was created with the help of Venezuelan volunteers). During this process, people who were supporting Edmundo González and María Corina Machado were persecuted. Even those who provided a meal in a restaurant or a place to stay to any of them during their campaign had their right to keep their business open stripped away. After the results were announced by the Chavismo proclaiming their own victory – yes, because there is no separation of powers- the vote tallies were nowhere to be found. They didn’t show any copy of the results. Their website, as of today, is still down., regular citizens, NGOs, and political groups, during that time, were also out in the streets demanding the real results. Even the Communist Party of Venezuela, whose candidate for the elections, Enrique Márquez, was imprisoned for asking the electoral authority to showcase the results and the vote tallies.
Repression escalated, and the number of political prisoners increased day by day. Party leaders were taken from their houses by the SEBIN, the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, as is the case of María Oropeza, a lawyer and human rights activist who has documented human rights violations in her home state, Portuguesa. She was able to livestream her own detention. Today she’s still imprisoned in El Helicoide, one of the largest torture centers in the Americas. Created by Chavismo, this torture center is already registered in the UN report due to the testimony of the victims who have been able to speak out.
A meme, an audio message, and an informal chat could basically stop your life right then and there. For example, Marggie Orozco, a medical doctor in my hometown of San Juan de Colón, Táchira, was sentenced to the maximum penalty of 30 years in prison due to the fact that she sent an audio message expressing her discomfort and desperation with the situation in the country. Thankfully, after more than a year in prison, she was released in December.
This is what happened when we tried.
Did International Law fail us too, during these past 20 years? Many UN reports from official observers, and statements of distress, but no real consequences towards a criminal state torturing, starving and killing, relentlessly, its own population. What would have happened if Maduro and his collaborators had been taken to The Hague? What if the international left – at least in its majority, including other governments – hadn’t turned its back on us just for the sake of ideology? Just because Maduro is “from the left”, his actions were easier to ignore for some who are, to be honest, more fanatic than humanists.
I ask myself, here in front of you: why did international organizations for justice leave it up to an opportunist imperialist government to take the lead and in turn bombard our country? I am by default against imperialism, but I will not deny that I am very glad that Maduro is in jail. The Brooklyn Detention Center is known for having electrical issues. For us Venezuelans, who have suffered power outages all these years, that’s very good to know.
Venezuelan Intrusive Thoughts
On the day of the bombings, most Venezuelans inside the country were overcome by uncertainty, shock, and fear. The constant wondering whether something more will come; some other bomb, missile, or attack of another kind. Maduro is a very repudiated figure in the country, but also, the regime he belongs to, Chavismo, is feared due to its levels of cruelty, persecution of dissent, and arbitrary detentions. Contrary to what happened in Madrid, Santiago, Miami or New York, most citizens inside of the country didn’t dare to celebrate nor show similar emotions – with the exception of a group who asked for Maduro’s release – not only because of the distraught state, or the fear of being detained by Chavismo or targeted by the colectivos – an armed militia that the regime created as a support force for themselves – but also because Maduro’s group is still there, in power.
Oh, But the Oil
Right. The constant factor that we see everywhere. Yes, we have the largest proven oil reserves. We make presentations in elementary school about oil and its history. This is not a part of ourselves that we ignore.
This is the reason why we are also very aware of the following: for years, our oil has been given away to China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba. Shipments provided zero cash flow, with opaque deals, while we were all left to our luck, with a minimum wage of less than 1 USD per month. Who can logically think that we were actually profiting from this oil, as it were our right to do, given that the PDVSA is state-owned? Our crisis was fabricated by Chavismo to stay in power and keep enriching themselves. Maduro has been found to have 113 tons of gold stored in Switzerland. To give you some context, the Spanish Kingdom extracted over 100 tons of gold from South America in the first half-century of the Spanish conquest. Yes, from the whole continent.
Sanctions Are Not a Good Excuse
U.S. sanctions for individual Venezuelan officials started in 2014. I was in high school when our electrical system was already collapsing. It was 2008. My brother and I had to study and do our homework by lighting candles. My mom and dad had to take side jobs to make ends meet. So no, the sanctions didn’t ignite this disaster; corruption from Chavismo did.
Making the Indigenous Communities More Vulnerable…Again
What if I tell you that Indigenous people have been displaced, killed, and enslaved for years during the Chavismo regime in order to serve 20+ countries in the Arco Minero, a natural reserve which contains a large amount of minerals, amongst them gold and coltan?
At this time, the soil there bleeds, because there’s also an ecocide in place: fauna and flora are equally and gravely affected. Illegal groups are allowed to act outside the rule of law due to the fact that they serve Chavismo’s purpose.
Europe is Affected Too
Many European citizens were also held prisoners by this terror apparatus. Among those, we can count the arbitrary detention of Zsuzsanna Bossanyi, a Hungarian national, who became a political prisoner after the Venezuelan National Army (FANB) intercepted her ship in the Caribbean. She was part of a scientific research group for the study of marine and underwater exploration, and spent 9 months in jail. She was released on January 17th, 2026.
Buena Suerte, Muchacha
Women have been – and still are – specially affected by the political and humanitarian crisis. There are several key points for this:
Political repression and arbitrary detention: Besides the usual procedure of state forced kidnapping, the use of women as “bargaining chips”, or torturing them to terrify their families, is well-known. There are multiple reports of sexual violence, for women and teenagers, including rape, the threat of it, or cruel treatment, such as being forced to listen while other women are being abused, while in custody.
Humanitarian emergency and sexual/reproductive health: The downfall of the healthcare system has put many women in a state of high vulnerability. Lack of contraceptives, prenatal care, and oncological treatments has led to an increased mortality. Food is prioritized over reproductive health. Of course, duly noting that, after the bombings, prices have risen. Menstrual poverty and poor access to healthcare resurge.
Vulnerability in migration: During these years, Venezuelan women have become especially prone to human trafficking, sexual exploitation and violence while fleeing the country, especially when the moving is done through irregular and dangerous paths, like El Darién forest (Colombia-Panamá), the very Colombian regular car routes that have been used as a walking track for many to arrive to to this dangerous border zone, but also the unsafe “trochas” through Táchira or Zulia state, where ELN groups have been confirmed to operate.
After the attacks on January 3rd, at least in the Andean region of Táchira state, there were speculations that the guerrilla-insurgent group mentioned above, which has a vast presence at the border, was going to “defend the revolution” and maybe proceed with violent attempts towards the population. As of today, gladly, that hasn’t happened, as the bombings scared away – though perhaps only temporarily – these irregular soldiers. The Chavismo has been their main ally, but now that same ally is subordinated to the US.
In the midst of an uncertain future, the Caribbean shore and the Andean mountains coexist. There, in the same land where many walk with hope for survival and a potential end of a dictatorship, we keep asking ourselves “now what?”.
Written by María Cuellar.
Engineer by profession, social sciences enthusiast, with a passion for multiculturalism and human rights advocacy.
