‘We just want our lives back.’ Maduro’s gone, but what’s next for 8 million Venezuelans who fled?

MEXICO CITY — Andrea Paola Hernández has a sister in Ecuador and a sister in London. He has cousins ​​in Colombia, Chile, Argentina and the USA.

They all fled poverty and political oppression in Venezuela. Hernández, a human rights activist and outspoken critic of the country’s authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro, also eventually left.

He has been living in Mexico City since 2022, working odd jobs for below-the-table wages because he has no legal status. He cries most days and dreams of being reunited with distant relatives and friends. “We just want our lives back,” he said.

One of Maduro’s darkest legacies was the exodus of 8 million Venezuelans during his 13-year rule, one of the largest mass migrations in modern history. The flight of a third of the country’s population has torn families apart and shaped the cultural and political landscape in dozens of countries where Venezuelans have settled.

The surprise US operation to capture Maduro this month sparked mixed feelings in the diaspora. Relief but also anxiety.

Those who left Europe for Latin America and the United States are asking whether they can finally return home. If they return, what will they return to?

‘A gram of justice’

Hernández was disturbed by the US attack, which killed dozens of people and was considered illegal under international law. Still, he celebrated Maduro’s arrest as “a piece of justice after decades of injustice.”

He is cautious about what will happen.

President Trump has repeatedly praised Venezuela’s vast oil reserves and said little about restoring democracy in the country. He said the United States would work with Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who was sworn in as Venezuela’s interim leader.

Hernández distrusts Rodríguez, whom he believes is as responsible as anyone for Venezuela’s misery: eight-hour lines for food and medicine, the violent suppression of street protests, and a 2024 election that Maduro is believed to have rigged to stay in power.

Hernández also blames the regime for personal pain. Because an aunt died because there was no electricity to run the fans during the pandemic; For the widespread hunger that led his mother to tell her children: “We can have dinner or breakfast, but not both.”

Hernández, who believes he is being spied on by the Maduro government, says he will return to Venezuela only after elections are held. “I won’t go back until I know I won’t be killed or imprisoned.”

‘Our identity has been shattered’

Many in the diaspora are trying to reconcile conflicting feelings.

Damián Suárez, a 37-year-old artist who left Venezuela for Chile in 2011 and now lives in Mexico, said he was surprised to find himself defending the actions of Trump, a leader whose politics he normally despises.

“We were torn and demoralized, and then someone came forward and put the person responsible for all of this in jail,” Suárez said. “When you drown, you will thank the person who saved you, no matter who it is.”

Damián Suárez in his studio in Mexico City’s Condesa neighborhood on Friday. He came from Venezuela in 2011 and works as an artist and curator.

(Alejandra Rajal / For the Times)

Many countries condemned the attack on Caracas and Trump’s promise to “rule” the country in the short term as an unacceptable violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty.

According to Suárez, these arguments seem empty. For years, he said, the international community had done little to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela.

“The cry for help of millions of people remains unanswered,” Suárez said. “The only thing worse than intervention is indifference.”

One of Damián Suárez’s first embroidery art works, made as a child, is on display in his studio at la Condesa in Mexico City. To this day, he uses rope as his main material as a form of resistance and challenge based on the manual labor traditions of the society he comes from.

(Alejandra Rajal / For the Times)

Suárez, who is organizing an art exhibition about Venezuela, blames Maduro for the “moral void” he sees among immigrants who have lost not only their physical homes but also the people who give their lives meaning.

“Our identity has been shattered,” he said, comparing immigrants to “plants torn from their lands.”

Although Maduro is currently sitting in a Brooklyn jail on drug trafficking charges, Suárez has said he will not return to Venezuela.

He now has a Mexican passport and helped his family immigrate to Mexico City. After years of feeling stateless, he finally put down roots.

Building life in new countries

Tomás Paez, a Venezuelan sociologist who lives in Spain and studies the diaspora, says surveys over the years have shown that only 20% of immigrants say they will return to Venezuela permanently. Many of them are establishing lives in their new countries, he said.

Paez, who left Venezuela several years ago because of rising inflation and rising crime, has grandchildren in Spain and said he would not want to leave them.

“There is not a family in Venezuela that does not have a son, brother, uncle or nephew living somewhere else,” he said, adding that 50% of households in Venezuela depend on remittances from abroad. “Migration has expanded Venezuela’s borders. We are talking about a brand new geography.”

Migrants left Venezuela under various circumstances. Previous waves had taken flights with immigration documents. Those who have just left often take secret overland routes to Colombia or Brazil, or risk the perilous journey through the Darien Gap into Central America as they head north.

Restricted immigration law across Latin America has made it increasingly difficult for immigrants to find asylum. Paez said a quarter of Venezuelan immigrants globally lack legal immigration status. And the majority do not have Venezuelan passports, which are difficult to obtain or renew abroad.

‘I’m so tired of politics’

Throughout the Western Hemisphere, Venezuelan enclaves have sprouted up, such as Tuxtla Gutiérrez, a Mexican town near the Guatemala border.

Richard Osorio moved there with her husband after living in Texas for a while. Osorio’s husband was deported from the United States in August as part of Trump’s crackdown on Venezuelan immigrants. Osorio joined him in Mexico after a lawyer told him that U.S. immigration agents might also target him, even though he had tattoos of birds and flowers.

The couple is living off the record in Mexico and working for cash at one of the Venezuelan restaurants that have opened in recent months.

On the day of the US operation that resulted in Maduro’s arrest, hundreds of Venezuelans welcomed the news in a local square. Osorio was working a 14-hour shift and missed the party. It was fine. He didn’t have the energy to celebrate.

“I’m so tired of politics, these ups and downs we’ve been going through for years,” Osorio said. “There was pain at every turn.”

Richard Osorio poses for a portrait in Juarez, Mexico, in July.

(Alejandro Cegarra / For The Times)

He has struggled to drum up warm feelings toward Trump, given the U.S. president’s war on immigrants, including the deportation of more than 200 Venezuelans he claimed were gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

He said Maduro and Trump are more alike than many people realize. Neither of them care about human rights or democracy. “We felt the same thing in the United States that we felt in Venezuela,” Osorio said.

He said he would not return to Venezuela until decent jobs and protection are provided for the LGBTQ+ community. He said life in southern Mexico was dangerous and he did not make enough money to send money to relatives back home.

But returning to Venezuela didn’t seem like an option yet.

dare to dream

Hernández, a writer and activist, said many in the diaspora are too traumatized to imagine a future in Venezuela. “We were all deprived of so many things,” he said.

But when he dares to dream, he imagines a Venezuela with free elections, functioning schools and hospitals, and a vibrant cultural scene. He sees diaspora members returning and improving the country with the skills they learned abroad.

“We all want to go back and build,” he said. The question now is when.