DORAL, Fla. (AP) — Revelers chanted “liberty” and draped Venezuelan flags over their shoulders in South Florida on Saturday to celebrate the American military attack that toppled Nicolás Maduro’s government — a stunning outcome they had longed for but left them wondering what comes next in their troubled homeland.
People gathered for a rally in Doral, Florida — the Miami suburb where President Donald Trump has a golf resort and where roughly half the population is of Venezuelan descent — as word spread that Venezuela’s president had been captured and flown out of the country.
Outside the El Arepazo restaurant, a hub of the Venezuelan culture of Doral, one man held a piece of cardboard with “Libertad” scrawled with a black marker. It was a sentiment expressed by other native Venezuelans hoping for a new beginning for their home country as they chanted “Liberty! Liberty! Liberty!”
“We’re like everybody — it’s a combination of feelings, of course,” said Alejandra Arrieta, who came to the U.S. in 1997. “There’s fears. There’s excitement. There’s so many years that we’ve been waiting for this. Something had to happen in Venezuela. We all need the freedom.”
Trump insisted Saturday that the U.S. government would run the country at least temporarily and was already doing so. The action marked the culmination of an escalating Trump administration pressure campaign on the oil-rich South American nation as well as weeks of planning that tracked Maduro’s behavioral habits.