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Venezuelans across the globe took to the streets after the capture of Nicolás Maduro, whose rule was marked by economic collapse and mass migration out of the oil-rich nation.
Venezuelans in Miami, Fla., Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Madrid, Spain, donned Venezuela’s national colors and waved flags hours after President Donald Trump announced that Maduro and his wife had been flown out of the country following an overnight U.S. military operation.
In Miami, Venezuelans danced and cheered, with celebrations also taking place outside Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Fla. In Doral, Fla., revelers chanted “Liberty!” and draped Venezuelan flags over their shoulders.
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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,” Alejandra Arrieta, who came to the U.S. in 1997, told The Associated Press.
“There’s fears. There’s excitement,” he said. “There’s so many years that we’ve been waiting for this. Something had to happen in Venezuela. We all need the freedom.”
Ecstatic crowds also gathered in Santiago, Chile, where one child held a sign reading “Somos Libres,” meaning, “We Are Free.”
The demonstrations reflected the scale of Venezuela’s diaspora, which has grown dramatically during Maduro’s years in power, as millions fled what critics describe as a period of economic collapse marked by hyperinflation and widespread food shortages.
Since 2017, roughly 8 million people have fled Venezuela, making it one of the world’s largest displacement crises, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency.
More than 6.9 million Venezuelans are currently hosted in Latin American and Caribbean countries, while hundreds of thousands more live in the United States and Europe, where diaspora communities have remained politically active and closely engaged with events back home.
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Maduro has been in power since 2013, when he succeeded longtime Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez following Chávez’s death, presiding over a period marked by economic decline, political unrest and mass migration.
Not all reactions to the U.S. action were celebratory.
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Protests both in favor of and against the strikes have been scheduled in Buenos Aires and other cities across the region, underscoring deep divisions over Venezuela’s future and Washington’s role in the crisis.
In Greece, members of the Greek Communist Party demonstrated against Maduro’s capture.
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