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- [00:00]
A
Every idea starts with a problem. Warby Parker's was simple. Glasses are too expensive. So they set out to change that. By designing glasses in house and selling directly to customers, they're able to offer prescription eyewear that's expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable. Warby Parker glasses are made from premium materials like impact resistant polycarbonate and custom acetate. And they start at just $95, including prescription lenses. Get glasses made from the good stuff. Stop by a Warby Parker store near you. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice. Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it@progressive.com, progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.
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B
From the center for Investigative Reporting and prx, this is Reveal. I'm Al Ledson. It's been two weeks since the US Secretly arrested the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, and flew him out of the country. That's all clear now. But in the early morning of January.
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C
3Rd, it was 2am and I heard some kind of explosion. And I thought, oh my God, I can't believe they are still using fireworks like we are. 3 of January. Please just go on with your life. It's not the New Year's Eve anymore.
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B
Mariana Zuniga is a journalist in Caracas.
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C
Then I heard the second one and I started hearing the planes or helicopters, and I realized, okay, this is not what I thought. This is something else.
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B
Mariana's trying to figure out what's going on. So she calls a friend who happens to live near a military base.
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C
And I asked her, what are you seeing? And she told me she was seeing, like, some explosions. Also, I went to my WhatsApp because we have to remember that in Venezuela, most media are censored. That's our way to get our news.
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B
She puts the pieces together.
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C
That's how I knew.
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B
Since then, Mariana, like many other Venezuelans, has been trying to navigate through a rollercoaster of feelings.
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C
In one hand, your head is screaming like.
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D
That.
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C
But on the other hand, we've lived through many weird and odd things.
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A
Things.
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B
Venezuela is now in a gray storm of transition. What was before has changed and what will come, no one knows. So this week, we decided to reach out to Venezuelan journalists, historians and politicians who are living this new chapter of the country's history to understand what's going on and what's at stake. The first person we called was Adriana Tapia. Adrianna grew up in Venezuela, but these days she's a reporter and producer in New York. Adrianna takes it from here.
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A
Since January 3rd, I've been existing on two planes. Physically, I'm here in the US taking the subway, buying groceries, playing with my cat. But my head, it's in Venezuela. I've spent most of my waking hours on WhatsApp and on social media, reaching out to friends for updates, for news, and trying to figure out what's going to happen next. I left Venezuela 10 years ago, and most of the people I love, they've left, too. But there's still my aunt who swears she'll never leave, and my building security guard who texts me pictures of abandoned packages. And there's also journalists I know who've said, like Mariana, who goes by Mari, sorry, my dogs.
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C
I'm going to close the door.
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A
I checked in with Mari to figure out what's happening on the streets of Caracas.
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C
Since everything went down that first weekend, we encountered some weird checkpoints.
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A
Venezuelans are used to checkpoints. A police officer will stop you, ask you where you're going. But these checkpoints that sprang up after Maduro's arrest, Mari says they felt different.
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C
It was weird to encounter a checkpoint with men dressed as civilians that were also very young, heavily armed, and some with their face completely hidden.
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A
Seeing security forces dressed as civilians is a red flag because it could mean that the government has called upon the colectivos, armed groups that do what the police cannot legally do. It reminds Mari of the most recent election, the one in 2024, where international observers say that Maduro falsely claimed victory. Men at checkpoints would stop people and check their phones, their WhatsApp chats.
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C
That's happening again in WhatsApp, where you search for words like Maduro or Trump or invasion, that kind of things. A lot of people are still very, very scared to talk or to celebrate if they want, or just to mention something. Because even if Maduro was captured, was taken out of the country, for many people, the regime are still in place.
- [05:32]
A
Right now, the country is being run by Dulcie Rodriguez, who was Maduro's vice president and ally for decades. And it's not clear what she's going to keep and what she's going to change. Like Mari is saying, there's still checkpoints. People are still afraid. But then on January 8, the government announced it will release some political prisoners. They called it a gesture of peace.
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C
They are currently around 800 political prisoners. These are politicians, journalists, activists, and also normal people. Normal people that were arrested during protest, for example.
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A
One of the prisoners who's been released is Rocio San Miguel. Rocio is a lawyer and human rights activist. She's an expert on the Venezuelan military. She knows how it works and who's who. She was arrested in 2024 and charged with conspiracy. And now she's free. As of January 14, 72 political prisoners have been released, but that still leaves hundreds locked up. And just days after Maduro's arrest, President Trump made reference to the place where a lot of these political prisoners are held.
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E
They have a torture chamber in the middle of Caracas that they're closing up.
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C
He didn't say the name, but he was referring to El Elicoide. And he said this jail, they are going to close it. As we are speaking, every Venezuelan knows.
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A
This person, Elle Ecoide. So I asked Mari to describe it.
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C
Yeah, it is insane, like architectural speaking. It is insane because it looks like a snail. You know, it goes like from the center, like a round, like from inside to the outside.
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D
The size of this thing dwarfs any single piece of building construction ever tackled anywhere.
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Ironically, this giant concrete spiral shaped building was designed to be a shopping mall.
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D
There were to be great stores by the hundred five, cinemas, car parks, walks and gardens, hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, theaters.
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A
But the mall never opened.
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D
The folly to end all follies.
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A
El Helicoide would eventually become the center of operations for the state's security services.
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C
And it's weird that it ended up being a notable prison for political prisoners in the center of the city.
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A
For Venezuelans, this prison is a symbol of the repression that opponents of the regime have had to endure for years. Prisoners have reported being electrocuted and hung by their limbs. Closing it would be a huge deal. But there's been no sign from the Venezuelan government that it's actually going to happen. Only Trump has said this.
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C
We still don't know in which or what extent Venezuela is willing to implement reform. So this could be the beginning of a new political era or just more of the same old regime.
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A
But she's watching just like she has been for years. Mari's a reporter and producer for a podcast called Elilo. She's known she wanted to be a journalist since she was a kid.
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C
When I was around 9 years old, 10 years old, I remember one day I was having breakfast with my parents and we were seeing cnn. And I remember Patricia Janiot was the anchor of CNN at that moment. And I remember telling my parents, I want to do what she's doing.
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A
It's funny that you Mentioned Patricia Jennot, because I remember I didn't even know the English cnn. I thought that CNN en Espanol was the og.
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C
Oh, yeah, me too. I thought it was the only cnn.
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A
Maria and I were both watching CNN en Espanol as kids. But a few years later, the reality of what it means to be a journalist in Venezuela started to shift. This was under President Hugo Chavez. He was the first one to go after the press. And his crackdown came to a head in 2007. That's when he canceled the license of Radio Caracas Television, a beloved radio and TV station. This is where Venezuelans got their news. Watched telenovelas, game shows. It was always on.
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C
I don't know, my grandma in the morning while she was doing her coffee.
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A
People protested to keep the station open. But on May 27, 2007, Erceto went off the air. The final program was short but impactful. Everyone from the network, the newscasters, the actors, the staff, all of them stood in front of the camera singing the Venezuelan national anthem.
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C
So I think it was a very important moment as. Yeah, as a country, as citizens, because we were all doing the same at the same time.
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A
In the almost 20 years since, more than 60 newspapers have gone out of circulation in the country. More than 200 radio stations have been stripped of their licenses and gone off the air. Mari was abroad for much of this, working on a master's degree. But in 2016, she came back home to do some research for her dissertation. It was supposed to be a quick trip, but she kept running into friends, and one of them pointed out how many journalists had left the country and that if she wanted to do meaningful work, she should stay.
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C
And that's why I stayed. I saw and I covered the wave of protests in 2017 and 2019.
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A
What is happening? What have Maduro's forces been doing in.
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D
Response to all of this?
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C
Yes, violent clashes have erupted in the capital and actually throughout the country between protests. Those protests were very violent, very unequal as well, because you saw people going out to the streets with flags and chanting, and they were. They meet tear gas, pellets, sometimes bullets. Hundreds of people die.
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A
And this is all while there's skyrocketing inflation, frequent power outages, and a widespread shortage of basic goods.
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C
I mean, in 2019, we didn't have electricity for five, six, seven days straight. So we have lived through so many things.
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A
Around this time, Mari saw friends and colleagues pack their bags and leave the country. Since 2014, nearly 8 million Venezuelans have left. This is also around the time I left, and I haven't been able to go back since. Now everyone's looking for signs that things could really change. It's not the first time that we've gotten our hopes up. I remember when Hugo Chavez died and we thought, well, that's a wrap. And now we wake up one morning and Maduro's gone. But that's like step one of dozens or maybe hundreds of things that need to change for there to be democracy in Venezuela.
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C
I think many things are at stake right now. For some people, it would be individual freedom and autonomy. For others, it would be the possibility of getting back to the country, having a normal economy again, and even getting back to some normalcy. Because a regime like this not only corrupts those in power, it also corrupts people because corruption penetrated the entire society. So changing that logic for so many will take a lot of time. Transitions are not easy. We have to remind that to ourselves because we are very impatient as well.
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B
That story was reported by Adriana Tapia, a journalist living in New York. One of the reasons Trump says he deposed Maduro was for all that oil.
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F
I was a little bit surprised. It almost feels like maybe I'm not reading this right. Why are they saying the quiet part loud?
- [14:22]
B
That's next on Reveal.
- [14:35]
A
This show is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform. In a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out odoo d o o.com that's o d o o dot com.
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E
I'm Jeffrey Rosen, President and CEO of the National Constitution Center. A few years ago, learning about the forgotten meaning of the pursuit of happiness changed my life.
- [15:16]
D
When the founders wrote that famous phrase in the Declaration of Independence, they meant an ongoing commitment to self improvement and lifelong learning.
- [15:24]
E
This discovery inspired me to write a.
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D
Book and in my new podcast, I.
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E
Explore the founders lives with the historians.
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D
Who know them best. Plus, filmmaker Ken Burns shares his daily.
- [15:34]
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Practice of self reflection. Join me for the Founder's Guide to Happiness.
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B
From the center for Investigative Reporting and prx. This is Reveal. I'm Al Letson. The ouster of Nicolas Maduro was hardly the first time American troops have gone into another country and deposed its Leader. Back in 2003, when the US invaded Iraq and captured Saddam Hussein, one of the biggest criticisms was the motive. This skit from the Chappelle show, where Dave Chappelle plays George W. Bush, summed it up in a way that only comedy can.
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D
What about people who say you're only.
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A
Interested in the Middle east for oil?
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E
What?
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A
Huh? Oil?
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E
Who said something about oil?
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B
Bitch, you cooking. But when it came to Venezuela, President Trump said the quiet part out loud.
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E
The oil companies are going to go in, they're going to spend money, we're going to take back the oil that frankly, we should have taken back a long time ago. A lot of money is coming out of the ground. We're going to get reimbursed for all of that.
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F
There is this moment of, is this actually what he said? And you realize it is what he's saying.
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B
Alejandro Velasco is a professor of Latin American Studies at New York University. He wrote the book Barrio Rising, Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela.
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F
I was a little bit surprised. I'm trained as an historian of Latin America, thinking about questions of US Intervention to always look out for subtext. What happens when the subtext is no longer subtext and it's just text?
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B
Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, and the US ties to that oil go back decades reveals. Najib Amini wanted to get a better understanding of the role oil played in the ouster of Nicolas Maduro. So he sat down with Alejandro to wind back the clock. Here's Najib.
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D
The birth of oil in Venezuela starts in 1914 near Lake Maracaibo, the largest lake in all of South America. The first time Alejandro Velasco visited, he was about 8 years old.
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F
It's like the Texas of Venezuela. It has its own culture, has its own accent. It has its own sense of regional pride. It also has its own music that it plays only in Christmas time.
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D
It's about a 10 hour drive from Caracas, the state capital where Alejandro grew up. And he remembers being in the family car driving across an iconic bridge built in the 1960s, overlooking this very large lake.
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F
This was a bridge not just connecting, you know, the rest of Venezuela to Sulia, but connecting the past to the future. It was very symbolic. And I remember, you know, seeing these, you know, derricks and thinking, wow, that's beautiful.
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D
It's rare that an industrial landscape can evoke this feeling of natural awe, but oil has long been key to the country's identity.
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F
You know, the joke about the fish in the water, an old fish comes to a new fish and says, how's the water today? And the joke is, what's water? Oil is the water in Venezuela. It is the thing that structures our life without having to be said. It is what conditions our identity.
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D
But that identity has been in this perpetual existential crisis over one key who really owns the oil? Foreign companies like Standard Oil and Dutch Shell invested heavily in helping Venezuela extract oil. In return, those companies retained the upper hand when it came to exclusive drilling rights, sales and production. Venezuela received royalties. And for decades, US And European oil companies were in full control of Venezuela's oil.
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E
Venezuela has developed her resources for the benefit of not only the Venezuelan people, but many other nations and peoples.
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D
But there was growing frustration for some in the country. Why are outsiders reaping the full benefit of our one main natural resource? Why are they in control? Venezuela follows in the footsteps of many other oil producing countries at that time and nationalizes its oil.
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F
In 1976, Venezuela had engineered this transition into a national oil company that could stand shoulder to shoulder with multinational oil companies elsewhere in the world. This seemed to be an example of the modernity that was possible with oil.
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D
The nationalized oil company is named Petroleos de Venezuela SAA or PEDEVESA for short. And it would operate under two golden rules.
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F
The first is, yes, we're going to pay off all of the, you know, the foreign companies and we're going to make sure that they're okay.
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D
The second rule was put in place with the hopes of keeping business as usual.
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F
We're going to run the oil company like an oil company, which is to say, the primary interest of people who run Pedda Vesa is Pedebesa, not whatever's happening in the political realm. In fact, we're gonna create a deep firewall between one and the other.
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D
Imagine if the US Postal Service was taken over by the political party in charge and one day decided to only deliver mail to its supporters and exclude everyone else. The firewall put in place under the Peda Veza Charter was meant to avoid that kind of what if, especially in a country that has as much oil as Venezuela, if we can shield it.
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F
From political considerations and run it just as an oil company, we can extract as much oil as we're able to do.
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D
In its first few years of operation, Peda Veza was a success, largely because of high oil prices. Those high prices allowed for a surge in government spending on social services and infrastructure that many Venezuelans remember fondly.
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F
This was what now we see as the apogee of the golden era of Venezuelan oil.
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D
But then came the 80s.
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E
A commodities trader in here in New York today said, put on your hard hat. The sky is falling. That comment came as oil prices tumbled toward their lowest level since the late 1970s.
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D
And there was a massive global glut in oil supply. Too many barrels were on the market and prices tanked. Venezuela had just spent the past few years going on a shopping spree on infrastructure and social services, racking up debt, thinking it would eventually be paid off with oil sales. The country and its people were in for a shock.
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F
And ever since then, the story of Venezuela has been one of the crisis after crisis after crisis. You know, things like massive riots in 1989, after the government imposed a tremendously painful structural adjustment package that brought people out into the streets. They were severely repressed. Hundreds of people died in what the Inter American Court of Human Rights eventually called a state sponsored massacre. And so, you know, I recall being taken out of school in panic by my mom and then being locked inside our AP two weeks wondering what comes next and hearing gunshots out in the streets. I recall in 1992, jets flying overhead as a military coup was underway, and how frightening that was. A president impeached and sent to jail.
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E
Right.
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F
And so a lot of my memories growing up in Venezuela are cut through by moments of really dramatic instability that gave a sense of not knowing what came next.
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D
And what came next was unexpected. That unsuccessful coup in 1992 is important. The person who led it, a former paratrooper who had dreams of becoming a baseball player, would go on to run for president six years later on a populist platform. And he would win. His name is Hugo Chavez.
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F
It was a different sense of hope. And by hope, I'm talking about the people who had been left out. And that's what Chavez was able to tap into. In order to sell the country into the promise of a new nation, A.
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D
New nation would require a new constitution, one introduced not long after his election. It was put to a direct vote by the people and passed, increasing the president's powers. Chavez argued that for too long a small group of wealthy elites had been making decisions on behalf of Venezuelans, benefiting only them as the gap between the rich and poor widened. To close that gap, Chavez wanted to use Venezuela's oil wealth to help ordinary people.
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F
But because, again, there is this firewall, Chavez very quickly came up against the reality that he could not influence oil policy. You know, the first few years of the Chavez government, the primary field of struggle in Venezuela was control over the oil industry. And by control over the oil industry, I mean literally, who will control the oil industry.
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D
In 2002, Chavez breaks one of the golden rules of Pedeva and starts chipping away at that firewall that separates oil and politics.
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F
He summarily fires the board of governors and seeks to appoint loyalists, which results in massive protests and a coup, this time against Chavez.
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E
Gun battles broke out, leaving 17 people killed and more than 100 wounded.
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D
The coup was initially supported by the US but was ultimately unsuccessful. In less than 48 hours, Chavez was removed from office, arrested, and then brought back. When he came back, there was some initial calm until the opposition movement regathered and held even more protests. They called for Chavez's resignation over a shrinking economy, lack of jobs, and the general direction of the country. This included a PDVESA worker led strike.
- [26:27]
F
This paralyzes the oil industry for a month. And the idea, of course, was that no government of an oil country can survive if the oil industry is shuttered.
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D
The striking workers feared that under Chavez, Venezuela's oil industry would collapse because funds would be used for political purposes rather than reinvested into the company, which would ultimately hurt the country in the long run.
- [26:53]
F
But somehow Chavez did it. He survived this oil industry strike. So at the time, the entire oil industry in Venezuela, the national oil company, had somewhere of 40,000 people. So he fired almost half of them, and not just any of them, like most of the executives and many of the professional sort of engineers. And so to rebuild the company took some time. But of course, now Chavez could do it entirely under his image. And so that's the moment when this firewall that had been the. The hallmark of the nationalization of oil in 1976 falls apart.
- [27:30]
D
This point, Chavez is in complete control. The price of oil globally is going up, making it possible for him to deliver on his social contract. That means things like sending doctors into rural areas to offer free health care, providing low income housing, and subsidizing the cost of food, which all help his base and quell his opposition. The higher oil prices got, the more Chavez could provide, and it earned him a lot of domestic support. Despite that, his regime was marked by rising crime, corruption, government overreach, political intimidation, and using oil money to campaign heavily against his opponents. He also took aim at international foes like the US which he suspected was part of the recent coup attempt in 2006 at the United Nations General Assembly. Chavez gives a speech the day after President George W. Bush and opens by saying that the lectern smells of sulfur.
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B
El senor Presidente de los Estados Unido.
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D
Yamo El Diablo bino aqui hablando comodo del mundo. The president of the United States, whom I call the devil, came here speaking as if he were the owner of the world. Chavez said he also had a tense relationship with foreign oil companies. There were still a few that had private joint ventures set up before Chavez's time, notably in a part of the country with some of the wealthiest oil deposits in the world. In 2007, Chavez issued those companies an give up 60% of your operations to Pelevesa and or leave. And that's what companies like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips did in the years that followed. Some were paid for the parts that they left behind. But some companies have since sued the country for billions of dollars over inadequate compensation. And at the time, Venezuela was flush with money. When Chavez stepped into office, the price of a barrel of oil was going for around $7. When he died from cancer in 2013, the price was north of 100. There's a saying for times like this one introduced by the late Venezuelan historian Fernando Coronel.
- [29:53]
F
Oil induces fantasies. And in Venezuela, the major fantasy that it induces is that we are infinitely wealthy at any time. It also induces amnesia, which allows us collectively as Venezuelans to elide and erase all evidence of the collapse of oil and what it leaves behind.
- [30:19]
D
In other words, there is no boom without bust. And it's a lesson the country would relearn under Chavez's successor, Nicolas Maduro. Maduro served as vice president under Chavez and barely won in a tight election in 2013 after Chavez died. And almost immediately, Maduro inherits a new landscape.
- [30:42]
F
So he didn't promise anything different in terms of the oil industry than what Chavez had implemented. What happened is that the oil changed under his feet.
- [30:54]
D
Prices tanked due to an influx of oil from newer technologies like hydraulic fracking. For Maduro, it was bad timing. He didn't have the same charisma or coalition building that Chavez had built up. And he'd inherited an economy that relied on the high price of oil to function. Maduro redirected the oil money from social services to shoring up loyalty. He even went as far as installing members of the military into well paid jobs heading up Pedevesa.
- [31:25]
F
The opposition saw that with Maduro being relatively weak, that they could stage a comeback. And that's exactly what they did. They staged street protests in 2014, which were quelled with significant degree of violence and repression. And what that said to Maduro and to the people around him is that in order to stay in power we're going to have to resort not to electoral victories, but to outright repression on the ground.
- [31:53]
D
The Venezuelan opposition welcomed international pressure to take out Maduro. Venezuelans were experiencing an economic crisis with rising poverty rates and millions leaving the country. The US Placed sanctions on Venezuela and president after president ratcheted up the pressure. During Trump's first term, the US Targeted its entire oil industry. Sanction the oil hurt the economy and the government will eventually collapse. At least that was the strategy. These sanctions came in addition to many other efforts led by Maduro's opposition.
- [32:29]
F
There's an attempt to install an interim government. Juan Guaido declares himself interim president. Then they attempt a military coup with some dissident military factions thinking that if there's a break in the military, the government will collapse. It did not collapse. Then they try to hire some mercenaries to stage a kind of cartoonish version of an invasion on the idea that if they feel like the United States is invading, then the government will collapse. It did not collapse. All of those strengthen further the governing elite in Venezuela rather than fracturing it.
- [33:02]
D
Instead, Maduro, taking after Chavez, leans into his populist messaging and grows more and more defiant of the West. During his second term, President Trump intensifies his stance, leveraging tariffs and launching military strikes against alleged drug boats. Maduro responds in both song and dance. It's reported that these videos of Maduro dancing on stage in front of crowds to music mocking the US Irked key figures in the White House, notably Trump. With all the sanctions, Venezuela was left selling its oil to a few customers like Russia and China, who were buying it at a bargain price. Maduro was in a tough spot. And then came his capture. Now, with Maduro in a New York City jail, it's hard to know how these global dynamics will be impacted.
- [34:21]
F
The question is, is the United States going to just take whatever oil Venezuela is producing, cut off what it would have sent to China, and then just redirect it straight to the United States? And are we going to see some kind of confrontation there? That, of course, is the big question that remains.
- [34:40]
D
A lot of questions remain. Will the drug trafficking charges against Maduro stick? Will Venezuela's new leader, Delsey Rodriguez, thread this near impossible needle, a reopening pdvesa, to the US and other foreign oil companies and keep the support of her people? And will US Companies actually want to invest in Venezuela? Given how contentious the past has been.
- [35:04]
F
Where is that going to leave what already is a supremely deep and painful polarization of Venezuelans in and out of Venezuela? What is going to happen to our sense of self, our psyche, our collective identity. Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum in Venezuela, there is no alternative other than oil. What happens if that thing is no longer even putatively ours? That has to occasion a tremendous redefinition of who we are as Venezuelans. And I don't know what the outcome of that will be.
- [35:52]
B
A week after capturing Nicolas Maduro, President Trump addressed a room full of oil executives. He spoke to them about drilling Venezuela's crude oil. Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, told the president that the country today is, quote, uninvestable. Up next, a conversation with a Venezuelan dissident who watched the coverage of Maduro being taken to the US with mixed emotions.
- [36:19]
E
You speak with Venezuelan now. They're happy, but at the same time they are afraid that this is not really going to happen, that Maduro is going to get released somehow. People are still hopeful, but at the same time scared.
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B
You're listening to REVEAL. From the center for Investigative Reporting and prx. This is reveal.
- [36:43]
E
Al.
- [36:43]
B
I'm Al Letson. One of the biggest questions about the future of Venezuela is who will ultimately run the country and what role will the opposition play. Most of the political opposition to Nicolas Maduro and his regime have been forced into exile, including my next guest. Freddy Guevara has been living in exile for more than four years. Freddie was a student protest leader who became the youngest person along with elected to the Caracas City Council. Eventually he became the Vice president of the Venezuelan national assembly. Then in 2021, the Maduro government arrested Freddie. They accused him of perpetrating terrorism, attacking the constitutional order and conspiring to commit treason. He was eventually exiled and now lives in New York City. Freddie, thanks for coming onto the show.
- [37:34]
E
Thank you very much. And I'm very happy that you're, you know, giving the opportunity to Venezuelan voices.
- [37:39]
B
So you've been protesting and fighting Maduro's government for more than a decade at this point. How does it feel that he's in jail in New york? Like a 15 minute subway ride from where you are.
- [37:52]
E
Weird, Weird. Really weird. It's like, I don't know, I don't think I quite understand it. I think that it will become more clear when I am back in Venezuela, you know, because now it's like kind of a fever dream. In one hand, my intellect understands what's happening, but deep inside is like still it needs to sunk in, you know, and understand what this really means.
- [38:22]
B
So Freddie, can you tell me what was it like growing up In Venezuela under Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez.
- [38:30]
E
When I was young, Venezuela was still a country that was a country that was functioning. So I was born in a Venezuela that was full of contradictions. Like, in one hand, we had a lot of oil. So with that money, it was enough to see a lot of money in the street, but a lot of corruption. You also saw this contradiction between authoritarian measures, closing TV stations, having political persecution, but at the same time, elections, Elections that were not fair, but free enough to say that Chavez won most of them, particularly. I would say it was more about a political awakening for many people from my generation, but understood that if you didn't get involved in politics, politics will get involved in your life. And that's how I grew up. And that's why I decided to change my path and to dedicate my life to the freedom of Venezuela and become a politician and an activist.
- [39:39]
B
So chavez died in 2013. So you were like, late 20s. When Maduro comes into power, what was that change like? Because Maduro was sort of like one of Chavez's lieutenants, right? I mean, like, he was a part of that regime. He's just an extension of Chavez.
- [39:58]
E
Yeah. Maduro was one of the few lieutenants of Chavez that never changed. Chavez was well known for changing ministers, like, every day, like underwear. He changed so many ministers all the time, but very few remained. One of them was Nicolas Maduro, and with the difference that when Maduro got into power, he already came with a problem of legitimacy. He lost popularity. He had a big economic crisis. So he started relying more and more in the repressive machinery that was built by Chavez, but that was fully used by Nicolas Maduro.
- [40:39]
B
Okay, so Maduro's in power, you're in the opposition in local government, and then you get elected to the National assembly. This is around 2015, 2016. Tell me about what happened next.
- [40:52]
E
I was vice president of the Congress, and they tried to put me in jail. Luckily, I flee before the police came and the Chileans gave me asylum in their embassy.
- [41:05]
B
When you were in the Chilean embassy, how many years did you spend there?
- [41:10]
E
Three years.
- [41:11]
B
Three years. So basically, like, you're. You're a prisoner. I mean, I'm sure the embassy was nice, but, like, you couldn't go outside and do what you normally would.
- [41:21]
E
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I tell people that I was in Covid before COVID you know, like, everyone was in their houses. I remember, like, when the quarantine started, and people were like, oh, I don't know, how am I going to survive? I Have two weeks in my house. It was like, hold my beer, you know. So, yeah, it was a complicated situation. However, I was in a better position than my friends that were actually in prison at that moment.
- [41:45]
B
All right, so after three years, you get released from the embassy and you're allowed to go home, but not for long, because then the government arrests you. How long were you in prison?
- [41:58]
E
Way shorter. 38 days in kind of solitary confinement. We were in a cell that didn't have windows or natural air or sun. They only allowed me to see the sun three times. And I have to say that I am one of the few lucky persons that can say that I survived that. I have many friends that been tortured. I say that I'm lucky. Sometimes when I speak with American friends, they ask, oh, how are you? That must be so hard. I said, I am free. I'm alive. I am with all my limbs intact. So I feel that I'm part of the lucky ones.
- [42:38]
B
Yeah. So how did you decide to leave Venezuela after all the things that you've been through there? What was it that finally made you leave?
- [42:48]
E
Well, I didn't decide it. When I was released from prison, it was because a new negotiation process started and the opposition appointed me as one of the negotiators. The negotiations were in Mexico. So I got released from prison. I spent four days in my house and I was in a plane and was taken out to Mexico City. That was the place in which the negotiations were going to happen.
- [43:15]
B
And I should say that these negotiations, they were with Maduro's government to revive the economy.
- [43:23]
E
Yeah. And when I was in Mexico, I was informed that it wasn't allowed to go back again. So I left with a carry on, you know, I wasn't like, Even with, you know, I wasn't planning to stay outside. So it wasn't really a choice. It was more like a imposed thing. I never ever in my life imagined that I was going to live outside Venezuela. Never. It wasn't like giving in my. It's not like it wasn't a wildest dream. It's like I didn't want it that all my life I wanted to be my country. So, yeah, that was kind of the thing. And then I found myself like, okay, so you have to rethink your life again.
- [44:02]
B
And how long have you been in this exile from Venezuela?
- [44:08]
E
Four years already, since 2021.
- [44:11]
B
So what does it feel like watching the news and the United States government is taking out this man who has, you know, done such harm to your country?
- [44:24]
E
It's crazy. Because of course I cried of joy. My partner, she's not Venezuelan, she's from Austria, and she doesn't speak Spanish. And she woke up with me speaking in Spanish, like very frankly. And then I was like, no, que, que paso como? And then she sees me, that I'm happy, but then she sees me crying. I think also we're very traumatized. So we were like, is this really happening? If you speak with Venezuelan now, they're happy, but at the same time, they are afraid that this is not really going to happen, that Maduro is going to get released somehow. People are still afraid that something's going to happen. I've been receiving messages, friends, like, who is this judge? Do you think the jury will free him? And everyone is still hopeful, but at the same time scared.
- [45:12]
B
So what do you think is going to happen when it comes to Maria Karina Machado? What's, what's the future hold for her?
- [45:20]
E
I think. I think she will be the president soon. I think she will be elected. I think she's the most popular figure in Venezuela right now.
- [45:30]
B
Are you concerned that. I'm not sure what to call her, whether the interim president or the former vice president, but Delsey Rodriguez, are you concerned that she will continue doing the exact same thing that Maduro did when he was in power?
- [45:48]
E
I know her. I know her and I know her brother. I was involved, as I said, in negotiation processes, and they were both in there. And I have to tell you that they are not moderate at all. They are super radical and they believe they are smarter than everyone. I am sure that what they're trying to do is to convince Trump or the Trump administration to allow them to have Saudi Arabia or China in Latin America, which means international investments but no political freedom, for example. I think that's their plan A. I think their plan B is to outsmart Trump and figure it out how to survive and buy time, make small concessions enough to not get them out of power and wait and see if, I don't know, the Senate approves a resolution that blocks Trump use of military in Venezuela.
- [46:50]
A
Yeah.
- [46:51]
B
How does it feel that it wasn't the protest that took Maduro down or a Venezuelan opposition, but that the United States government and Special Forces came in.
- [47:00]
E
And I don't know, I have to say that I've been debating with this in my head because somehow me and many Venezuelans, we also feel that we are part of that. I think that this will have never happened. If we wouldn't resist it, we wouldn't documented all the crimes if we wouldn't have done all the investigations that we sent to the United States, the first investigations of Maduro being corrupt and being involved with narco cartels and with terrorism and with China and Russia and Iran and Cuba were made by the opposition in the parliament. But journalists, Venezuelan journalists, NGOs, also. I think Trump would have never done this if Maduro would be elected president, you know, but at the same time, of course, we would have wanted a path different. A different path. I've been reflecting a little bit if it's what was a different outcome. Sometimes people say to me, like, well, yeah, maybe it was better that you should have armed yourselves instead of being waiting for the Americans. And I would have been really bloody. Yeah, I don't know, you know, I don't know what's the price of, like, pride, you know? Yeah, being proud of, like, we did it, but there's a civil war would have been better. Well, maybe for national ego, but I don't know. I think this was cleaner and maybe, maybe this will lead us into a better outcome. And of course, there's people that believe that we could have another path of waiting, more time and be more patience. But I think, like, sometimes there's a little privilege in the people that says, well, just wait. You know, it's easy to see, to say, wait, if you can eat, if you are not in prison, that of course we can wait. But, you know, for people that are in jail or that are hungry or that are dying because they don't find basic medicines, time is consuming, you know.
- [49:17]
B
Yeah. So what is your dream for Venezuela? What would you like to see?
- [49:23]
E
This is a big question, my friend, because I don't know, since I'm outside. I think one of the few things that you gain when you are in exile is that you get to see the world in a different way and you start to get into new ideas and new things. I think that Venezuela can be a good experiment for the rebuild of democracy. I think democracy as we see it now is getting into a dead end that is not necessarily serving people. That's why people are electing autocrats. I think that we can take this opportunity to rebuild a country that can also be an example of progress and development, but also innovation in democracy and participation.
- [50:17]
B
Freddie Guevara, thank you so much for talking to me today.
- [50:20]
E
No, thank you so much.
- [50:21]
B
It's been great.
- [50:22]
E
I really appreciate this.
- [50:25]
B
The lead producer for this week's show is Ashley Kleig. Taki Telenides, Jenny Casas and Bret Myers edited the show thanks to reporters Ramon Campos, Andrea Paola Hernandez, Rona Rizquez and editor Ian Gordon. For help on this hour, shout out to Venezuelan musician Ricardo Aguirre, whose song Lo Mejor del Monumental we played in the story about oil artist cheriscus and Cheyenne McNeil. Fact check today's episode. Victoria Baranetsky is our general counsel. Our production manager is the great Zulema Cobb. Score and sound design by the dynamic duo Jay Breezy, Mr. Jim Briggs and Fernando My Man Yo Arruda. They had help this week from Claire C. Note Mullen. Taki Telenides is our deputy executive producer. Our executive producer is Bret Myers. Our theme music is by Camerado Lightning. Support for reveals provided by the Riva and David Logan foundation, the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson foundation, the park foundation, the Schmidt Family foundation and the Hellman Foundation. Support for reveal is also provided by you our listeners. We are a co production of the center for Investigative Reporting and prx. I'm Al Letson and remember there is always more to the story. From prx.