'More questions than answers': After Maduro's removal, some Venezuelans in Utah ponder future

Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Venezuelans in Utah are unsure about the country's future after President Nicolás Maduro's removal, which prompted initial elation among many.
José Morales and Hector Hernández worry about the continued socialist influence in Venezuela of Maduro and Hugo Chávez, his predecessor.
Norely López says Venezuelans in Utah and beyond need to continue their calls for change in Venezuela.

MIDVALE — Many Venezuelans in Utah felt some hope after U.S. forces removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power; still, some in the community are wondering what comes next.

"There are more questions than answers about what's happening," said José Humberto Morales, who now lives in Salt Lake City but held a local municipal council post in the Venezuelan state of Miranda before leaving the country due to political persecution. Political prisoners in the country should now be freed, he said, and he also called for a "clear path toward the start of the transition process."

While noting the removal of Maduro, decried by many Venezuelans in Utah and elsewhere around the world as an authoritarian strongman who suppressed dissenters, Hector Hernández said his departure alone won't lead to change. Hernández fled Venezuela in 2021, also worried about persecution from the Maduro government due to his involvement with the nation's Democratic Action Party.

Maduro is gone, Hernández said, "but we can't be irresponsible in saying we've made it, because Chavismo is still alive and Chavismo still has control in the country," he said, referencing the socialist ideology named for Hugo Chávez, Maduro's predecessor.

Delcy Rodríguez, the vice president under Maduro and a supporter of the socialist strongman, has assumed the presidency since Maduro's departure, he said with chagrin, "and we have to negotiate the transition with her."

A group of Utah Venezuelans gathered Sunday at Arempas in Midvale to celebrate the removal of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces. Some say questions remain about what comes next for Venezuela. (Photo: Tim Vandenack, KSL)

U.S. forces invaded Venezuela early Saturday, removing Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, so that they can be tried on federal charges in the United States tied to drug trafficking. At the same time, Trump announced that officials in his administration would take a hand in leading the nation in conjunction with Rodríguez and other Venezuelan leaders in a bid to reform the government, viewed by the U.S. president and many others as repressive and illegitimate.

Nearly 8 million Venezuelans have fled the nation under the leadership of Maduro and Chávez, who took power in 1999 and died in 2013, when Maduro took over, around 770,000 of them in the United States as of 2023, according to the Migration Policy Institute. In Utah, the Venezuelan population has surged from 1,801 in 2013 to 10,657 as of 2023, the largest numeric jump in Utah of any foreign-born group, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

Accordingly, many Venezuelans in Utah and around the country — some prodded from Venezuela by the socialist regime and economic stagnation in the country — welcomed the news of Maduro's departure. Morales, Hernández and others from Utah's Venezuelan community gathered Sunday at a Venezuelan restaurant in Midvale, Arempa's, to celebrate. The tone was upbeat, with those on hand singing the Venezuelan national anthem, "Gloria al Pueblo Bravo," among other things.

Notably, though, some on hand also offered cautionary words about what comes next.

That remnants of Maduro's government, including Rodríguez, remain in power is of particular concern. Many observers say the Maduro regime stole Venezuela's presidential vote in 2024, actually won, many believe, by opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia.

While many Venezuelans in the United States have publicly celebrated Maduro's ouster, "everything is quiet in Venezuela because the repressive structure is still in place," said Morales, a social worker in Venezuela. Local leaders and clandestine paramilitary groups that support Maduro have since launched "a campaign of fear" in Venezuela against critics of the socialist government.

Norely López, originally from Venezuela but now living in South Jordan, noted lingering "intrigue" about what comes next in Venezuela. She leads the Utah branch of Comando ConVzla. That's a loose coalition of Venezuelans inside the country and around the world that backs González and opposition leader María Corina Machado and has pushed for their installation as the nation's new leaders.

At the same time, López said there isn't much active opposition inside Venezuela given the repression of the Maduro government, thus it makes sense that U.S. officials have a hand in leading the country, at least for now. She also referenced, with concern, the increasing influence in Venezuela under Chávez and Maduro of China, Russia and Iran.

Many may criticize the role of the U.S. government under Trump's plan in leading Venezuela, she said, "but we have been subject of an invasion for 26 years by the Chinese, Russians, Iranians." A handful of protesters demonstrated against the U.S. invasion of Venezuela on Saturday outside the state Capitol in Salt Lake City and another protest was set for Monday downtown by critics who charge Trump with failing to secure proper congressional authority ahead of Saturday's military action.

At any rate, there wasn't much discussion at Sunday's gathering about the legality of Saturday's move, which was also a focus of concern for many Democratic U.S. lawmakers and others. Rather, López said one of the focuses of Comando ConVzla reps around the United States going forward will be meeting with U.S. lawmakers to promote continued efforts to transition away from Venezuela's socialist government.

U.S. Rep. Burgess Owens, a Republican lawmaker who represents Utah's 4th District, has been particularly open to Comando ConVzla reps, she said.

"What we need to do now is to keep speaking out," she said, because removing Maduro is just one step in the process of changing Venezuela's government. She thinks the transition to a new government will take at least three months.

Hernández, meanwhile, is waiting to see what developments unfold in the coming days, given the continued grip on power of the remnants of Maduro's government.

"We'll have to wait and see what happens in the next few days and what sort of relationship Trump's government can reach with the transition and Delcy Rodríguez," he said. "The cancer is still there, the 21st Century version of socialism."

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.