At 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, January 3, I’m shaken awake. It’s my brother-in-law. He says something that I don’t quite understand until he flashes his phone in my face.
It’s a headline from the “New York Times”: “Trump Shares an Image of Maduro Blindfolded and Handcuffed.”
I tell myself it’s a dream. It has to be. This thing we’ve prayed for on every birthday, every Christmas, every New Year, has come true. I leap out of bed and shake my mom, Janet, with whom I share a bedroom.
“They got Maduro,” I say in a whisper.
My mom sits up, grabs her rose-pink phone, and texts all of her contacts. One after another, they confirm the story – Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro has been captured by American troops and spirited out of the country. Pictures of the sunrise in Caracas are plastered on every WhatsApp status, every Instagram story.
My sister has left to buy celebratory cachitos and Malta. When she comes back, we huddle by the dining table and wait for Trump’s press conference. My mom dances around the kitchen as “Alma Llanera,” an anthem of national identity, plays on a white speaker connected to her phone. The same knees that sustained her during hours of prayer for a free homeland hold her upright today. Both she and I are ready to step into a new Venezuela.
I was born 22 years ago in Chacao, a wealthy sector of Caracas. My dad was an electrical engineer and my mom took care of my older sister, my brother and me. I am the youngest, and so I received special protection from my parents.
My first years were unremarkable. I attended private school and studied hard. I took swimming classes, played with my best friend, Mariana, and took language lessons at Wall Street English while listening to Meghan Trainor’s “All About the Bass” and watching “Victorious” or “iCarly.”
When I was 5, my sister Fatima, who was then 21, moved to Miami to pursue a career in journalism. When I was 9, my parents separated. The next year, my mom took me to see Fatima, and I took an entrance exam at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic School in the Roads neighborhood. I was so nervous that I failed most of the math section. I don’t remember much else except that I passed.
In July 2015, we boarded an airplane with seven suitcases and flew to MIA. After leaving the jet bridge, I spotted my sister, ran up, and tapped her on the shoulder. She just smiled and took us home. My dad stayed with us in Fatima’s apartment for a week and went back to Venezuela. I got my first iPhone that year, and one of the first things I did was save his number in it. We’ve spoken nearly every day since.
In the years that followed, I felt more American and less Venezuelan. My mom, an insurance agent, got her green card in 2018, and I received mine two years later. Then came a trip to Caracas in November 2022. We planned to stay until May, so all of my college classes were online. During the five months I spent there, I shared warm coffee with my dad on cold mornings, went out for tequeños and beers with people I had never met, and watched my mom hug my brother with tear-stained cheeks after not seeing him for four years.
Then I returned home briefly before heading back to Venezuela for Christmas. We stayed for four months. I did schoolwork most days, but nights and weekends were spent connecting with my homeland – I hit softballs at the batting cages with my dad, drove to white-sand Caribbean beaches an hour from Caracas with friends, and met my first–ever–boyfriend, an auto mechanic who speaks little English and is venezolano de pura cepa (as Venezuelan as it gets). I also learned about the country’s poverty and the struggle of the millions who have left. I remember my grandmother feeding two homeless children who came to the door and bidding farewell to Nathalia, my closest friend there, who moved to Spain for a better life.
There were daily power outages that forced me to find a bakery a mile away just to do my homework. Maduro’s basso boomed from the television several times a week as he boasted about everything he was doing to improve the country – even as 11-year-olds cleaned our windshield at intersections and then begged for a couple of Bolivares.
In June 2025, I took the summer off from classes and made my first visit of the year. My brother’s Toyota broke down while driving us back home, and left us stranded for hours. We didn’t have running water for a month. And yet, I don’t regret any of my time there because I got to have both of my parents with me for my 22nd birthday. We told family stories like the time my sister crashed her car and my brother teased her. Or the time everyone bought Tio Martin clothes for a trip – then discovered him sleeping in his room. He had never left.
My mom and I returned to Miami in October. My dad and boyfriend, Sebastian, saw us off. I remember the Simon Bolivar Airport was filled with Christmas decorations that morning. I cried from the moment we checked in our bags until we got off the plane. My stomach hurt and I had barely eaten the entire day. I had no idea when I would return.
A couple of months went by before that morning when my brother-in-law showed me the NYT headline about Maduro being seized. Later that day, when Maduro landed on American territory, all of my family gathered in my bedroom in Miami Shores to watch him step out of the plane. I saw Fatima and her friends clink their glasses and toast to freedom. I have never seen anyone experience the kind of hope they felt that day. All 8 million Venezuelan exiles, for a moment, were optimistic in a way we hadn’t been for decades.
While I know that Maduro’s detainment brings a glimmer of hope for my country, I am wary of what comes next. The people of Caracas have fallen back into their routines. Local businesses welcome their regular clientele and go on about their day. Even though everything seems “normal,” I feel a tense calm that has the country fearing the next airstrike could come at any moment. We are moving forward towards the future we want, but I’m not sure how long it’ll take us to get there.
Venezuela to me means having mandocas and queso rallado for breakfast on a Sunday morning. It means playing caída on my grandma’s worn wooden table with my cousins, with our uncles placing bets on who will and who will lose. I have been a U.S. resident for four years now. I am preparing to take my citizenship test this year. Around the same time, I will also graduate from FIU. If all goes as planned, I will throw my cap into the air as an American. Will I stay here? Will I go back home? Only time will tell.
Carla Carvallo wrote the story. Valentina Gaspari produced the video story.
