Montgomery County Council President Natali Fani-González, who came to the U.S. as a teenager, began receiving calls from family members still living in Venezuela as America’s weekend military operation unfolded.
Hearing her relatives’ accounts and seeing the news on TV left her struggling to process what was happening.
Fani-González said the first call came at about 4 a.m. on Saturday, when her brothers told her “Caracas was being bombarded.”
“One of them could see the fire, the explosions from his house,” she said.
The initial confusion gave way to concerns about what could be next for a country that’s been under the leadership of Nicolás Maduro, who’s been accused of stealing elections to stay in power.
“I think that’s the frustration and the concern that Venezuelans have, including those of us who live outside of Venezuela, because we just don’t know what’s going to happen next. Is it going to be worse than it was before?” Fani-González told WTOP in an interview.
For the moment, Fani-González said, her relatives in Caracas describe a sense of calm.
“People were really calm,” she was told. “People were making lines in the supermarkets very respectfully.”
But, she said she was told that Venezuelans are “in a state of shock, to be honest.”
Given the history of U.S. and Latin American relations, Fani-González said, “It’s kind of hard for me to say that the actions that the Trump administration took are OK.”
Fani-González said while Venezuelans who have left their home country may be happy to see Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, out of power, she was quick to add, “Yes, we don’t like Maduro, we don’t want Maduro there, but diplomacy and the respect for democracy and principals of justice and international law should always be embraced.”
