Hey, everybody. Ira here. This thing that you're listening to right now is a little bonus episode that we decided to throw down the feed in addition to the new show that we just made, which is called New Lore Drop, which came out of the regular time on the feed Sunday night and should be sitting right next to this bonus episode in your podcast app. Let me take a second and explain what you're listening to right here. When the United States attacked Venezuela last week and captured its President, Nicolas Maduro, I kept thinking about this story that Nancy Updijk did for our show a while back about the 2024 election in Venezuela. In that election, there was this massive grassroots effort, not just to oust Maduro and elect the opposition candidate, but also they knew that they were going to have to prove that the opposition actually won. And so what that meant is tens of thousands of volunteers around the country planned and trained for months. Then on election day, they not only managed to get a huge turnout, going out and voting, they also organized this whole thing where they went around and they collected paper copies of the vote totals from most of the voting centers around the country.
They have these paper receipts. They scanned these vote totals, added them up, put everything online, proving that the opposition candidate, Edmundo González, beat Maduro and beat him decisively. Their numbers showed a two to one victory. People hated Maduro that much. But election authorities declared Maduro the winner. He stayed in power. People protested. Maduro cracked down with mass detentions, over 1,500 people. The United Nations looked into it and found that many of those detainees were tortured. The world knew who won. Countries around the world, including the United States, went through the opposition's numbers, looked at the receipts, concluded they were solid, and officially recognized González, the opposition candidate, as the winner and rightful President of Venezuela. But this past week, as you probably saw, when the United States captured President Maduro, President Trump did not say, Okay, here's the guy who actually won the election. Here's the woman who leads the opposition that he's part of, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Karina Machado. Let's finally put them in power. Which made me wonder, what do all those Venezuelans who were part of this big, organized movement to vote Maduro out of power and prove that they won, who did all that so, so well, what do they think of the events of the last week.
What's this been like for them? Are they angry? Do they see any hope that they might get a shot? Nancy Epdeic and reporter Ana Yancey Dias-Cortés reached out to one of those people and talk to her. She said all kinds of interesting and eye-opening things that we have not heard elsewhere in the coverage. What you're about to hear, you'll hear Ana Yancey interpreting. She's helped us with all of our Venezuela coverage. What you're going to hear is her live translation recorded during the conversation. It's not word-for-word exact, but it's close. Because this conversation is so of this moment, we thought it made the most sense to put it out now and not wait for some theme or something. Hence this extra episode this week that you're listening to. Here's Nancy Updike.
A lot of Venezuelans were expecting some big move. The US had been bombing Venezuelan boats for months. American aircraft carriers and destroyers had been assembling in the Caribbean. It was clear something was about to happen. The woman I talked to, Theresa, had also been expecting. She didn't know what. When the attack happened, she was at home in her neighborhood, just outside the capital, Caracas, with her family, including her two children. Teresa is not her real name. It's still too dangerous in the country for anyone who organized against Maduro. The attack started in the middle of the night, her time.
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How I experienced it is that we're on vacation. It was late, but we were up late. We were watching a series on TV, me and my daughter. Then suddenly, we're watching the series and I hear a long, droning sound that sounded like a plane. Then,. I immediately go to the window. I go to the window. I'm a little bit. I'm a little bit far away from the scene, but it was a full moon that night or close to a full moon. You could clearly see six helicopters with no lights on and a lot of noise through my window.
. There were six or seven helicopters that were far away, but also really near my house.
It was quite easy to see.
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How can I explain it? It was almost like a live-action situation where we're like, what we're seeing outside our window and the information we're getting is It was totally communicating with each other. It wasn't like live. It was in vivo. It was basically live. We would get the information on our phone, and then we would see it playing out in front of us. We would see it playing out in front of us, and then we would get it on our phone. It was a live event, basically.. It's a lot of dual feelings or mixed feelings, found feelings, as you say in Spanish. On the one hand, it's like, yes, they're bombarding our country, they're bombarding Venezuela, there's a invasion. But on the other hand, they're going after the bad guys. That was the feeling that they were going after the bad guys. I felt split. I felt both invaded and also like they were going after the bad guys. Did we feel happy? Yes, we felt happy, felices. We felt so happy and grateful.
Grateful that something was finally happening, that there was movement finally happening, and at the same time, worried, of course, that there are people paying for this.
A friend, her house exploded. She was fine, but everything in her house, all the windows were broken. The death of a lot of those soldiers also worried me, who was paying that price? Then so we're sitting there feeling happy and feeling grateful. Then we hear an explosion, like a huge light just exploding near an airport.
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We have a full visual of that, too. It just went like a lightning flash.
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There was a expectation. It wasn't a complete surprise. There was an expectation that something was going to happen. There was something afloat, but I did feel a sense of panic, I would describe it, and that duality of feelings of panic, but also not knowing what's happening and that happiness. That's when I went upstairs to where my kids were. But I went upstairs, and then that's where we were observing everything that was happening at around 2 AM. This was happening.
When you When I went upstairs, what did you say to your kids, and what did they say?
. When I went upstairs, I saw my son, and he was jumping up and down.
They arrived. Honestly, I was more in shock. My daughter, she was stuck to her phone from that second. We were on WhatsApp. We were just trying to understand what was happening. But I will say we are close enough to have felt the explosion.
What we didn't know was if Maduro had been extracted or not extracted, who was dead or who wasn't dead.
That we didn't know. But my daughter, who's bilingual, was following X and following Trump's tweets. We were waiting for Trump to tweet. Then once Trump tweeted, my daughter translated that, and we knew that Maduro had been extracted.
When your daughter saw President Trump's tweet or announcement that Maduro and his wife had been taken out of the country, what was your reaction?
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At first, the first moment, the only thing I felt was verify to my daughter. I told her, Verify, verify, verify. That's all I want. I want to know if this is really true because there's so much fake news and so much fake news out there. What's real, what's not real. But what am I going to tell you, Nancy? We were happy. We were filled with joy. We were jumping around. I had these feelings of the moment we realized it was real. I I wanted him to suffer what we've suffered. I know that's not very good of a man. He's not going to suffer like we suffered. Sometimes I'm like, he's in good hands. But we don't have the capacity to be rational in those moments, just feeling things and what I felt was satisfaction. Of course, I didn't believe it at first and that this could happen so fast. It was two hours is a long time, but it was also a short time and without resistance because really right now, in Venezuela, there's nothing to resist with. So that's all we wanted was the truth. And I don't know how else to put it, but we felt a grand sense of satisfaction.
That feeling of satisfaction changed over the next day or so. After President Trump, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegset, and others held a press conference, the United States would run Venezuela, Trump said. He barely mentioned Therese's political hero, opposition leader Maria Karina Machado. Trump dismissed Machado as, quote, a very nice woman. The person Trump did talk about as the new leader of Venezuela was the vice President, Delce Rodriguez. Trump said she would be in charge. Delce Rodriguez is a devoted member of Maduro's team. And what Teresa slowly realized is that Maduro's entire government, the government she and tens of thousands of others had organized and voted to change, the whole thing was going to remain intact.
In the days that did follow, what is very clear to me and my family is that his interests are of his country and of his party and of his people and the people close to him.
His interests aren't of our people, and that is very, very clear. A lot of my time in these days have been spent understanding the decisions of his administration and understanding gringo politics and what that is. I'm still trying to understand. I don't totally get it. There's a lot of decisions that, of course, feel risky to me and not great, but it's clear that it's his interest, not ours. But I also wasn't expecting the other side, which was I began to listen to Marco Rubio, and we all started to just feel this sinking feeling and just feel very, very bad, and just not really... How can I put it? I don't understand why Trump is saying this, is negotiating with Delcie Rodriguez. Delcey and her brother, it's very risky and dangerous to negotiate with her, and it's a very risky and dangerous play the United States is doing. It's been so emotional for me to see that play out that I haven't even listened to Maria Corina yet in what she has said, I'm just processing this negotiation of Marco Rubio and the Trump administration negotiating with Vice President Delsy Rodriguez, who's now in power.
What is on TV, on the government channels or radio? What are they saying?
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The news says nothing. They do circus. They do music. They don't do anything. They've just taken it over. So, yeah, it continues to be circus. I just want to make clear. I have two kids. One may be more politicized than the other or not, but before all this, we knew this was coming. We We didn't know how it was coming. We didn't know when it was coming, but we knew that something big was coming. For weeks and months now, I've been like, Don't be on the street. Where are you? Just completely paranoid and keeping track of them. I'm just so grateful that how this all happened, when this all happened, that we were all at home. But as I look at them sometimes in their 20s, and I'm like, They can't even go on the street. They can't go outside. They're spending their youth, their best years, living inside with their mother in fear. When I tell you that even as much as Trump scares me, I think Trump needs to come again to get Delcie or whatever. It really scares me that he's negotiating with her. But just to give you a sense and to also tell you that it will only be with Delcie Rodriguez, with the person in charge, with this government in charge, it will only get harder to talk to you.
It will only get harder to speak with you over time. I am but one Teresa, but there are many, many, many Teresas, and it's only getting harder to speak the truth.
You were saying that you're spending time now trying to understand gringo politics What are you… What do you think? What's your take on what we're doing?
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To be honest, I'm very worried. They're giving so much time to this government, this government that continues to be alive. Whether you give them three weeks or three months, they're not stopping. They're only solidifying their power. Yes, they took away Maduro, but the power structure is still alive. Yesterday, they took, I don't know how many journalists. They're still taking political prisoners. The oath that Trump took with us of reestablishing some semblance of democracy, that's not happening. For the Teresas like me, the ones on the street, the ones walking the street, I don't know what to tell you. We're tormented. We're worried. Today, today, today, today. Not three days ago, not in a way. Today, Trump is not doing what he says he has, and Trump still doesn't have power here. Four days into this, and we're still seeing more arrest, more impunity. We're seeing more of the same.
I guess I'm wondering if a Democratic election, if a democratic government, seems just as far away as it did before this happened or farther.
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Yes, I believe we are on a path to democracy. Why do I believe this? Because I have to, because this fight can't be in vain, because the path for me has to be democracy, because that's what I've invested my life in, in all these years in. Am I worried? Yes, I've told you, I am worried. I don't think that Trump is taking the best path. To me, it's a little bit mareo politico, which is like mareo, mareo. What is mareo? Dizziness. It's political dizziness. Trump is making us dizzy with politics. I don't think elections are going to happen immediately, but they need to happen. If we held elections right now, we could change this government. My worry, my main worry is the interim, the right now, from today to the new elections. If Trump really has power here, then Trump needs to make sure that the political prisoners are free. They don't all have to come out today. It can be three at a time. That is how you show power, and then you hold elections. If you hold elections, I guarantee that there will be a new government in place, but that's what has to happen.
Nancy Updike is one of the producers of our show. Since she did this interview, the Venezuelan government has released some political prisoners. The government of Delcey Rodriguez has been talking about expanding diplomatic ties with the United States. President Trump has said that Venezuela cannot hold elections until the United States can, quote, rebuild the country. This mini episode was put together by Nancy with Ana Jónsi Díaz-Cortés, Laura Starchesky, Dorothy Cronik, Helena Carpio, Stone Nelson, Suzanne Gabber, and me. We have a whole new regular episode this week. As I said, it's really good. It's fun. It's called New Lord Drop. Keep an eye out for that. It should be in your feed right now. Thanks for listening.
In this special mini-episode -- an extra episode this week! -- we hear from someone in Venezuela with a very specific take on last week's U.S. attack.