Local Venezuelan reacts to seizure of Maduro
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI) – The seizure of Nicolás Maduro by the U.S. military over the weekend reverberated in political shockwaves around the world.
Maduro, the handpicked successor of Hugo Chávez, ruled Venezuela for almost 13 years.
Here in Idaho, some Venezuelan immigrants celebrated Maduro’s removal.
Local News 8 spoke with one Venezuelan immigrant who lives in eastern Idaho, who said he was only 12 years old when the dictator came to power.
During our interview, we granted anonymity to our source to protect his family who is still living in Venezuela.
“It is important to be clear that Maduro is a human rights violator on top of leading a cartel, a drug trafficking organization,” the man said. “... They have tortured, imprisoned, and killed many people in the last time. He's also not the legitimate president of Venezuela. They lost that election. He doesn't have the people’s support.”
Our source said he moved to Idaho to escape political violence in his homeland, where he saw people shot in the street for protesting peacefully.
“We saw police escorting armed civilians that were driving towards these protests that these people were doing right there on the street,” he said. “These armed civilians shot and killed somebody. They shot him in the head. They killed him right there. …That's one of the things that, you know, that day I went home and I cried all night.”
He also described economic opportunities as scarce.
“The working situation was difficult. Everything was difficult. There was no peace,” he said. “I had to close all my media, all my social media accounts. I stopped talking about politics at some point because it wasn't safe.”
Maduro held onto power in Venezuela’s 2024 election, despite the opposition receiving more than 80 percent of the vote, leading to the U.S. Department of Justice to declare him “illegitimate.”
Maduro was arraigned Monday in the U.S. District Court of Southern District of New York, where he said he had been “kidnapped.”
“So some people think he's a champion of the people. He's not,” said the local Venezuelan man. “He's just a tyrant.”
