In the days and weeks following the US intervention in Venezuela on the morning of Jan. 3, news outlets flooded the public with information about the nation’s past, present and uncertain future. It felt like all of a sudden everyone thought they knew what should be done in the homeland I grew up learning about: Venezuela.
When I was young, it was just learning Spanish and how to make arepas, but then as I grew, it started getting more serious. I found myself remembering how in 2024 I had sat in my living room on the phone listening for news about the Venezuelan presidential election.
I remember my relatives’ cautious joy about the results: Maduro had lost. The thought that he might finally be removed from office, that they could choose to return home, was squashed when his administration denounced the results and Maduro remained in power.
I have grown up hearing about how my mom gathered every Sunday with all of her family in her abuela’s house, listened to old stories about hidden gold and danced to merengue. How they would cross El Avila and go to the beach and spend the day on the sandbar because it was too nice to not be in the water somehow.
This is most likely not what you think of when you hear “Venezuela,” and while the time that this version of Venezuela existed is gone, the idea of it is not.
Right now, I don’t have a way to experience the life my family had in Venezuela. Maduro has driven Venezuela’s economy and quality of life into the ground due to the nationalization of its largest industries: the most prominent of which is oil, a key point of interest to the Trump administration.
Maduro comes from a legacy of Chavismo, created by Hugo Chávez whose philosophical goal was to support social welfare and gain ideological and economic independence from the United States.
While this ideal has been warped beyond recognition in the past several decades, a U.S. military intervention is not the way to go about repairing Venezuela.
I don’t know the right way forward, but I know that further upending the lives of the Venezuelan people with no clear goal or long-term plan is not it. What I do know is that Venezuela’s fight for its independence and democracy isn’t starting now, and it won’t stop, whether it be against the Spanish in the 19th century, its own dictators or U.S. influence.
My hope is that someday I will get to visit the country my mom has told me about: one where my abuela doesn’t have to time her calls with us around when she has rare access to basic needs like water or electricity.
Don’t let these stories slip through your fingers. Keep caring.
Venezuela can be repaired, but brash moves are not the answer. Our focus needs to be on its people, on our families and our loved ones’ families. We need to not be afraid to be informed, but not just that, we need to be well-informed, because it will make us more compassionate and better people.
If we don’t engage with the stories and people around us, we enclose ourselves in a self-enclosed loop of our own narrative bubbles.
So UPrep, please don’t be afraid to be curious and ask questions, talk to people and care.
