Alberto Barrios and Jesús Baldonedo haven’t been able to get a proper night's sleep in years. Both men have a lot in common: they left Venezuela around 2016, fleeing hardship; they both ended up in Sweden five years ago; and they both had their eyes glued to their phones as the images of US aircraft bombing their homeland spread across the world.
“I haven't been able to sleep properly since I left Venezuela. I seldom manage to. Tonight I will," Barrios told The Local. For him, the US attacks that spread across three Venezuelan states and resulted in the capture of Nicolás Maduro were the culmination of a decade-long dream: “I started crying, I was on my knees thanking God”.
For Baldonedo, on the contrary, the same explosions meant only devastation and ransacking of resources: “The United States killed Venezuelans this morning for one thing only, and that’s [our] oil [...]. It was cowardly to drop missiles on our territory while everyone was sleeping”.
Baldonedo even joined demonstrators on Saturday afternoon as they gathered at Odenplan, Stockholm, to protest the US bombings.
The tale of these two men echoes a similar divide in Latin America, where governments and citizens alike are trying to understand the implications of the attacks.
The demonstration, organised with the support, amongst others, of the Swedish independent MP Lorena Delgado Varas, called for people to gather around Odenplan just hours after the US attacks.
"The Swedish government must condemn the kidnapping of Venezuela’s president", Delgado said in a post on Instagram ahead of the event, which was held on the back of a planned protest against the Israeli occupation of Gaza.
The governments of Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, and Chile, all left-leaning despite their differences, have also been quick to condemn the military incursion and express concern about its potential consequences. “[It] recalls the worst moments of interference in Latin American and Caribbean politics”, Brazilian president Inácio Lula da Silva wrote on X.
“Today it is Venezuela, with the excuse of narco-terrorism and the declared intention of controlling its natural resources. Tomorrow it could be any other, with a different excuse”, wrote Gabriel Boric, president of Chile.
In stark contrast, Javier Milei, Argentina’s president, celebrated: “Venezuela celebrates, it is free. The Left cries. Freedom moves forward”. So did Antonio Kast, president-elect of Chile, and María Corina Machado, the best-known figure in Venezuelan political opposition. “We have fought for years, and it’s been worth it. What needed to happen is happening right now”, said Machado in an official statement.
Latin America has not experienced a forced regime change since 1989, when the US ousted Panama’s military dictator Manuel Noriega, who had originally risen to power with its support.
Sandra Borda, who helped shape Colombia’s foreign policy and is a professor of international relations at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, told The Local that it was important not to oversimplify what has happened.
“One should avoid the temptation of choosing between the hope of ousting Maduro and the need to condemn the attacks without considering the possible consequences of the armed intervention," she said.
In Borda’s view, it’s increasingly clear that Maduro being out of power didn’t translate to regime change. “The US has an incentive to keep a puppet government, under threat, instead of going into the complex and highly unpredictable business of democracy-building, especially if violence follows”.
For Tomás Molina, a Colombian philosopher and also a professor at Los Andes, “the new hemispheric doctrine of the US reduces our room to manoeuvre, [...] and claims the right to use force against any group it labels a ‘cartel’. This means that the United States can bomb anyone it perceives as a threat to its interests”.
Molina argued publicly that a return to sovereignty in Venezuela is highly unlikely, insofar as all decisions regarding the country, its resources and institutions, will have to align with the interests of the northern superpower. “Some will be happy about this; those of us who believe in democracy will not”.
“We are free, son”, Barrios recalled hearing on the other side of the phone, as he was polishing the floors of a building in central Stockholm. “They are bombing Caracas as we speak”.
“They were bombing Caracas. People died”, Baldonedo said. “I woke up with this eerie feeling, and then I saw on the phone they were bombing our country”.
For all the distance that today seems to stand between these two similar men, and the hopes and histories that they appear to stand for, there’s a crucial intersection: a mutual recognition of the need for one another.
“There’s a great effort to be made by both sides if we are to reconcile amongst Venezuelans, we have been filled with hatred”, said Baldonedo. “This is my message: peace, dialogue, and reconciliation”.
Comments (2)