On the night Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured in Caracas during a U.S. raid, a group of college students in South Florida—unaware of the military operation unfolding—were revisiting a bet made four months earlier. Among them was 23-year-old Venezuelan-born Andrés Ramos Piña, who watched as his friends wagered that Maduro would remain in power for at least 27 years. Two thousand dollars was on the line.
About half an hour later, Piña’s friend, also from Venezuela, announced reports of explosions in Caracas.
“I didn’t believe it,” Piña said. “I was like, yeah, it’s probably an electrical plant blowing up or some kind of malfunction.”
But when Piña returned home and plugged in his phone —which had died earlier— he saw messages pouring in from friends and family in Venezuela.
Piña, a mechanical engineering major who graduated last semester from Florida International University, is one of many Venezuelan college graduates and students grappling with the uncertainty now facing the country.
“It still feels surreal,” said Piña. “It’s been so many years of praying and hoping.”
The U.S. military operation in Venezuela, dubbed “Absolute Resolve,” follows months of militant buildup in the seas around the country, including the deployment of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and other warships. The arrest of Maduro and Flores accompanied missile strikes across the country, targeting its military infrastructure and complexes.
Ten hours after Maduro’s capture, President Donald Trump held a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., announcing the U.S. would temporarily “run” Venezuela “until there can be a transition.”
Almost since Piña left Venezuela nine years ago, he has “grieved” the family he left behind in Venezuela, including a sister he has not seen in years and a nephew he has never met. The U.S. intervention gave him something he had not felt in a long time — hope.
“This is not about political stances anymore,” he said. “This is just retribution for what’s ours.”
FIU journalism student Alejandro Marquina, 22, awoke around 4 a.m. Saturday to news of the bombings in Caracas. He initially thought the reports might be fake, possibly generated by artificial intelligence. Then reality set in. He woke his parents, and together they began calling family members in Venezuela.
“Our family was saying, ‘We heard a sudden explosion,’ and ‘We were hearing planes,’” Marquina said. “I was actually really scared.”
But as the picture of what was happening became clearer over the next couple of hours, he struggled to process the news.
“The first feeling that I got was, ‘I couldn’t believe it,’ but then I was happy,” he said. “It was an emotional moment…I was happy about it…I was like, ‘Justice has been served.’”
Marquina was among many Venezuelans who took to the streets of Doral on Saturday to celebrate Maduro’s capture outside El Arepazo on Northwest 58th Street.
“Even when you know they bombed Venezuela…you just got out the worst person known to the Venezuelans,” he said. “In the mind of a Venezuelan, you just got rid of a cancer – a disease that has been killing your people for years.”
Since 2014, nearly 8 million Venezuelans have fled the ongoing humanitarian crisis, which included food insecurity, deteriorating infrastructure and inadequate healthcare.
While many young Venezuelans celebrated Maduro’s capture, critics of Trump have condemned the U.S. focus on Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, following Trump’s announcement that the U.S. would take over the industry and invite American investors to “spend billions of dollars” developing it.
Many Venezuelans, however, appear to view the Trump administration’s possible motives for intervention as a fair trade-off.
“I don’t care what the ulterior motives of the United States are, plain and simple,” Piña said. “As long as we get our voices and liberties back, and those who left can return or visit their families…there’s a cost to it, and we’re willing to pay for it.”
The sentiment is shared by other Venezuelan students in South Florida.
“Everyone is saying, ‘He just went there for the oil’ or ‘the petroleum reserves,’” said Jose Vargas, a 22-year-old biological sciences student at Miami-Dade College. “But no one else did anything for 26 years.”
Vargas immigrated to the United States from Venezuela at age 11 with his mother and brother. They shared a single suitcase. His family was among many facing violence by the “Colectivos,” an armed far-left paramilitary group loyal to Maduro. In 2016, Vargas’s cousin fled to Argentina after catching the Colectivos’ attention when he organized a student protest.
Vargas said Maduro’s capture was a moment to celebrate, but warned that Venezuela’s struggle is far from over.
“This is not over,” he said. “There are still a lot of corrupt people who haven’t been captured.”
But Vargas says he is encouraged by the progress unfolding in his homeland.
“I feel like, if you just stay stagnant, that brings nothing,” said Vargas. “I don’t know what will end up happening or who will get involved, but I think you’ve got to look forward to whatever comes next.”
For now, Venezuelans abroad mix celebration and caution as the country enters an uncertain transition.
“This is not about left or right,” Piña said. “There’s a cost to it, and we’re willing to pay for it. At the end of the day, the ones that get the right to choose what’s right and what’s wrong are the citizens of Venezuela.”
So far, Piña says, his friend will begin to pay the winner in installments for the $2,000 he owes because he guessed wrong on Maduro’s time in office.
