Venezuelans who come to the US tend to be wealthier, in order to be able to get here, and have enough issues with their country in order to leave, issues that they will usually blame on the leadership.
None of this is to say Maduro has majority support, he doesn’t by most accounts, or that they don’t represent a sizable chunk of Venezuelans who don’t like Maduro, but that his support isn’t as non-existent over there as it is here.
It’d be like if Trump took over the US and you only got your views on what Americans think from expat communities in Canada. They would probably cheer his death, even if it was by a foreign empire, but that wouldn’t be representative of average Americans who probably wouldn’t like the foreign intervention, even if they don’t like Trump.
So its like American Cubans?
Exactly like American Cubans
You spelled Gusano wrong
At this point more like their kids.
Please, Mr. Gusano is my father. Call me class traitor
And most groups really. The dynamics are often the same. We see the folks who were wealthy and discontent enough to leave. It can’t be overstated how expensive it can be to move to the US from some places. People have to save for years just for the airfare.
Wealthy? They literally were asking for food on the streets and sleeping in the parks
We’re taking about on the scale of their home country. Most Venezuelans couldn’t even manage to get themselves here to be beggars.
Which is more tragic. Imagine starving to death in your own country and o ly the ones who have $20 with luck can go out. How this is a justification for maduros regime?
What? It’s not. The point stands that mostly in the US you meet a very select group of people from other countries, usually of more means, usually with some reason why they left. You are working very hard to not understand something pretty basic. It’s like you’ve never known an immigrant.
I don’t care about US dude, I am talking about the street of Peru, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador so full of beggar homeless Venezuelan people
And Turkish people in Europe.
People who expatriate from their home country typically dont have nice things to say about it. Its scary to me that so many people uncritically accept their opinions as fact.
Uncritically accepting anything is always a problem. In this case, American Venezuelans are not representative of their entire home country, as OP says. But on the other hand they likely know more about Venezuela than the average American, so I wouldn’t reject what they have to say categorically either.
Its been years since I left my country (not Venezuela) and I love it.
Still, I like to joke that people that leave a country (like myself) are weird or phrased slightly differently they’re statistically not representative. I’ve noticed that I have a habit of meeting a small number of people from a country and overgeneralising and that’s particularly error prone when they’re traveler’s I’ve met somewhere or expats
In this case though, as much as I’d argue the US is violating the law and international balance in a way that I think could lead to some futures I don’t like, I still think its reasonable for a lot of individuals to want a leader that causes harm to no longer be the leader. It’s also pretty human to no longer care how that happens.
I’m ignorant on the ground but I’m not sure that focusing on the possible overgeneralisation is that productive. It kind of reminds me of early issues with ICE in the US: the right to defend yourself being removed is a problem regardless of if they’re a good or bad guy since the same logic can be applied to anyone. The good guy bad guy thing is very effective at motivating mobs though
It’s scary that so many people uncritically accept any opinions as fact
it’s also likely they know the formula: “show support not protest because protest will get you ICE’d.”
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I’ll say yes… Yes they do.
Trump has made it crystal clear that any non-white South American is subject to deportation on the whim of Steven Miller.
There’s 100 million Americans of latin/african/asian ancestry to deport, after all.
Lilywhite America is gonna want to stay the dominant group, any way - legal, moral or not - it can.
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So… they’re olive-skinned southern Europeans.
Unless they can pass as northern WASPS, and they do not have “ethnic” sounding names, they can try and act as white as they want. However, it will only be a matter of time.
President Drumpf is angling for the 4th Reich and self-loathing acolytes like Steven Miller will happily oblige.
elbarto777 my friend, I know MY people as well.
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Uh-huh. And you’re being blind to how the people in this administration are thinking. Your white-passing Venezuelans are on borrowed time.
Let me add that Trump has only groused about the lack of Scandinavian and Germanic - that is, minty-green white northern europeans - coming to America.
Decades ago, people were mocking this kind of thinking. (Can’t find the videos aywhere, but scroll the page and take note of the BUSH ads that were spliced into that particular episode. The third one in particular. I remember seeing it the night it aired.)
We laughed our asses off at the absurdity of it all, now it’s become political reality and I am not laughing anymore.
Take care.
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. . . Do you think ICE cares about papers?
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where did i mention papers? ICE is detaining CITIZENS for crying out loud. Support for trump is support for fascism and genocide.
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amd neither do you. doesn’t change the facts about trump lol.
You guys are arguing different points.
ICE will deport anyone it wants, papers or not.
Venezuelians with papers apparently don’t give a shit if they get deported.
These aren’t mutually exclusive facts.
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i’m saying thanks to the power dynamic here (think: “exploitation or stuff HR would frown at…”) - the dynamic existing means the folks cheering in the street cannot be considered truly cheering. it can only be considered, at best, an example of consent being manufactured thanks to that ICE enforced power dynamic. 😬
edit: also, appreciate your reply
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it’s a thread on the internet.
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Sample size of 3: my naturalized citizen (from Venezuela as an infant) D&D buddy is concerned AF. His (also naturalized) parents are more blithe about the current political climate.
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“only 33% of naturalized citizens from Venezuela have a go bag packed” is not the support you think it is.
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A “go bag” is a bag you have for when you need to leave (“go”) in a hurry. For example, you might have a change of clothes, cash, hygiene items, your passport(s), snacks, a week’s worth of prescription meds, first aid kit.
My friend has one because he’s an immigrant and doesn’t feel secure in the current political environment. I have one because I’m trans and I don’t feel secure in the current political environment.
I downvoted you because it felt skeevy to be told I was providing backup to you, when I didn’t feel my data was particularly supportive. It felt like you putting words in my mouth.
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Nobody cares if you know what you’re talking about. Support the narrative or shut your mouth.
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It happens with almost any latin american community in the USA. It happens with almost latin american community on internet.
For example, r/Colombia or r/Bogota are huge echo chambers of daddys’s boys, neoliberals and even cardboard-colored neonazis who don’t have a grasp about the complexities of the country and seem to live in a bubble. i.e. they make fun of people who don’t have Netflix… on a Country where less than 50% of people have internet access, not everyone has a TV and there are places where you only can tune a couple of AM radio stations.
Pretty sure something similar happens with almost every latin american country community on the internet or in a so-called “first world” country.
That being said, some Venezuelans deny criminal organizations like “Tren de Aragua” are real or that venezuelans are running them, be Maduro supporters or not. But they’re real and are extorting and killing people in other countries in Latin America. This is not to say every venezuelan is a criminal, but not every venezuelan is a saint.
Our countries’ reality is way, way more complex than people in the USA realize.
isnt that an issue with social media as a whole, most people using social media are idle rich or otherwise low-skilled/desk job types with loads of free time on their hands to be on social media.
the proper working class tends to use social media minimally, generally just using it to keep in contact/up-to-date with extended family
What Venezuelans do with Venezuela is their own business.
For many Venezuelans seeing Maduro go is a good thing. At the same time kidnapping a foreign leader is just wrong and will have long term negative repercussions. Both being true doesn’t invalidate each other.
It’s amazing how many people cannot grasp that you can dislike Maduro but not support illegal US Warhawk imperialism.
One I would have no problem with would be putin. trump can illegally prance putin in girl clothes for a month if he wants. But maybe we know more about Ukraine than Venezuela. Although we can see Venezuela and how most of their houses are not blown up to pieces.
So putin? Anybody?
Somebody needs to remind Trump and his donors of Russian oil
Russia has tons of oil!
In other words
If a mob boss murders a drug dealer in order to help expand their “territory”: they’re still both evil criminals and the mob boss should still be charged
It’s always interesting to watch these things unfold. I feel like unfortunately the right and MAGA always seem more informed about this stuff. The left leaning spaces had a weird lag where they didn’t realize Venezuelans didn’t like Maduro. The left seems like it just reacts whereas the right are proactive lately
You gotta be on something if your think MAGA are ‘nore informed’
I don’t know. It depends on how you classify informed. I’d bet they, on average, spend more time glued to a “news” source, so they’re being informed, 24/7, just not with truth.
Exactly this.
In my experience the left are resting on they laurels. But in my day to day, people on the right are just now obsessive with current events. People i met on the left are just way more disengaged. They’ll react to things but they’re not doing deep dives like they did in the past. People who want to argue against this should go to any public site where those lines are clear and check out the left leaning conversations vs the right. It’s almost always the right leaning places have much more details and points and opinions whereas the left leaning places are all just insults and saying how upset a commenter.
The left is exhausted. Democratic leadership is uninterested in fighting, and the electorate is angry, but has been angry for so long they’re disconnecting to stay sane.
I don’t think MAGA is more informed on this, they just have a different myopic view. They’re only listening to the Venezuelan diaspora in the US who are almost entirely happy about Maduros ousting.
The reality is Maduro is a controversial figure in Venezuela, just like trump is here. A majority don’t like him, a smaller percentage hate him and some people like him. Ignoring any of these factions and flattening all Venezuelans down to one opinion is why we got here. Trump was buying everything the diaspora was telling him about how everyone over there hates Maduro and we just need to take him out and his whole regime will fall down like a house of cards. Maduros regime wasn’t a house of cards like they were told though and it does have some base that will require a lot more than I think trump is willing to do to topple it.
Just an example of what I mean. This is now already at disseminated in multiple right leaning channels and news sources. How many reading this even had this on their radar. Sure there’s misinformation. But also think what information is here and what needs to be researched. Is this mentioned anywhere here in lemmy? Because on the right this is already locked in.
This is the cost of not wrestling with pigs. If the left wants to get anything back they need to stay ahead of this stuff instead of reacting.
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I don’t doubt you, but where are you getting that figure?
YSK Maduro was fully impeached by the Venezuelan version of Congress and he used his military power to just stay in office and further silence dissent. Your post is either ill informed at best or at worst propaganda. The US does a lot of terrible things and this likely not the way or time to do this. 20-25% of Venezuelans have left and those were the ones with the will or luck to do so. Imagine how many others want to leave. Of the 75-80% of the population maybe support has grown just using math of the opposers leaving. Those people probably want to go back to their country if it were in a state to return to.
Point to me which statement I made was ill informed or propagandistic. I never said Maduro has majority support, I said the opposite in fact, or that everyone over there loves Maduro. Just that they don’t to a person hate him like the Venezuelans do over here and warning people not to take their opinions as representative of Venezuelans as a whole.
Many news outlets are showing cheering crowds in south Florida as a sign Venezuelans are happy for this. Like I said in the original post, yes they do represent a large chunk of Venezuelans who hate Maduro and left. The opinions of Venezuelans who like Maduro and stayed are noticeably absent though and they represent another large chunk of the population.
I never said to outright dismiss there opinions, just to know that it’s biased and to be aware that there are differing opinions, how is that propaganda?
That’s not what the ACTUAL Venezuelans are saying though
This is true for almost every expat/immigrant community I’ve interacted with, including my own. It’s pretty obvious in voting pattern differences between the expat community and the native country. The far right gets 30-40% among Bulgarians in Canada compared to 10-20% back home. The left gets 1-2% here compared to 7-10% back home.
The Dutch immigrant groups I’ve been part of have also been scarily right wing. I don’t bother anymore.
The biggest far right group in Germany are the Turkish grey wolves.
YSK that 20% of the population left under Chavez and Maduro. But those were of course all filthy counter-revolutionaries who just weren’t ready for the socialist paradise they built.
Most Venezuelan refugees cite crime, access to food and healthcare as reasons for leaving. Guess what US sanctions were causing. If you guessed lack of food and supplies for healthcare which caused an increase in crime, you’d be correct.
If socialism doesn’t work, why do they spend so many resources making sure it fails?
Of course, of course. Nothing to do with corruption and incompetence of an authoritarian regime.
Would have been nice if you’d engaged.
What sanctions do you mean, specifically? The US had barely any sanctions against Venezuela. Most sanctions were against members of the regime, not the country. The US remained the biggest customer for Venezuelan oil long after Chavez gained power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_during_the_Venezuelan_crisis
Early sanctions came in response to repression during the 2014 and the 2017 Venezuelan protests, and activities both during the 2017 Constituent Assembly election and the 2018 presidential election. Sanctions were placed on current and former government officials, including members of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice(TSJ) and the 2017 Constituent National Assembly (ANC), members of the military and security forces, and private individuals accused of being involved in human rights abuses, degradation in the rule of law, repression of democracy, and corruption. Canada and the E.U. began applying sanctions in 2017.
Chavez took power in 1999. More than a decade before these sanctions started.
The utter mismanagement by the Chavistas in power are the main reason Venezuela has been doing badly for years leading to a fucked economy, rising crime, lacking healthcare and food.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Chávez
The high oil profits coinciding with the start of Chavez’s presidency[15]resulted in temporary improvements in areas such as poverty, literacy, income equality and quality of life between primarily 2003 and 2007,[16][15][17] though extensive changes in structural inequalities did not occur.[18] On 2 June 2010, Chávez declared an “economic war” on Venezuela’s upper classes due to shortages, arguably beginning the crisis in Venezuela.[19] By Chávez’s death in 2013, economic actions performed by his government during the preceding decade, such as deficit spending[20][21][22] and price controls,[23][24] proved to be unsustainable, with Venezuela’s economy faltering. At the same time, poverty,[15][25] inflation[26] and shortages increased.
From your source: ‘Beginning in January 2019, during the Venezuelan presidential crisis, the U.S. applied additional economic sanctions to individuals or companies in the petroleum, gold, mining, and banking industries’
If you check the GDP per capita of Venezuela it was increasing at positive rate immediately after Chavez took power.
Life expectancy was also increasing after Chavez had taken over. https://data.who.int/countries/862
2019. Venezuela already had a decade of severe decline before that. Things got bad way before sanctions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Venezuela
Economic conditions continued to deteriorate in 2016 when consumer prices rose 800% and the gross domestic product contracted by 18.6%,[39] causing hunger to escalate to the point that the “Venezuela’s Living Conditions Survey” (ENCOVI) found nearly 75 percent of the population had lost an average of at least 19 pounds in 2016 due to a lack of proper nutrition.[40] Luis Almagro, secretary general of the Organization of American States(OAS) stated, “I have never seen a country going down so fast, at every level: politically, economically, socially”.
On 1 May 2017 following a month of protests that resulted in at least 29 dead, Maduro called for a Constituent Assembly that would draft a new constitution that would replace the 1999 Venezuela Constitution.[42] He invoked Article 347, and stated that his call for a new constitution was necessary to counter the actions of the opposition. The members of the Constituent Assembly were not to be elected in open elections, but selected from social organizations loyal to Maduro.[42] It would also allow him to stay in power during the interregnum and skip the 2018 presidential elections, as the process would take at least two years
Oh yes, the 7.9 million wealthy millionaires that…walked through a deadly jungle… to get to the US.
Please, Lemmy, stop trying to talk about Venezuelans as if you know shit. You don’t know jack.
Also, this post is extremely xenophobic, racist and classicist, the fact that mods let it stand is a shame.
Never said they were all millionaires, only that they tend to be wealthier. In general immigrants from developing countries are on the higher end of income from the country they emigrate from.
Also 7.9 million Venezuelans did not cross the Darien gap, most Venezuelan migrants stayed in South America in neighboring countries like Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador. Those that could afford it did make their way to the US but not all of them crossed the Darien gap and could’ve taken alternate safer and more expensive routes, if not legal routes including hopping on a plane.
I fail to see how it’s any of those things you just mentioned, I didn’t say don’t listen to Venezuelans or even don’t listen to the Venezuelans in the US, I’m pointing out the biases that that group possess and telling people not to overgeneralize and think “all the Venezuelans here are cheering, so every Venezuelan must love this” . Saying that emigre Venezuelans are representative of Venezuelans as a whole would be racist, classist, xenophobic etc.
Still xenophobic. And your source is very open that it has selection bias and aggregation methodological issues. Essentially, it describes how migration as an aggregate, all across the world seems to function, disregarding individual peculiarities, within the people they managed to access. Migration from India to the UK doesn’t function the same as migration from Lybia to France, or Mexico to the USA and most definitely not from Venezuela to the myriad of counties the diaspora has found themselves in.
Poor immigrants do not account in this data, as they weren’t interviewed, are the most likely to be undocumented, and thus avoid attention and refuse interviews the most. It also most definitely ignores the peculiarities of Venezuelan migration. It might inform some political decision makers on a very broad and vague way. But it is an extraordinarily narrow, incomplete and impractical understanding of the issue.
Also a bit of hypocrisy decrying Maduro’s illegitimate government and then cheering on your own.
Dear Europe,
It seems it’s now ok to depose a criminal leader by force. Just sayin. Hint.
-Americans
I like this, since their country can’t seem to prosecute them it is up to other countries!
Can we start kidnapping every criminal leader and putting them on trial? Also, can we do previous leaders as well. There should be a cell ready for every previous POTUS.
This can also be said of the Cuban diaspora. So many people that I know (including those in my family) will shit talk “communism” and praise Trump as if he was their own personal savior. They don’t even have a rudimentary understanding of Marxism let alone leftist political thought as a whole. Yes, Soviet-style Marxism-Leninism led to authoritarianism and the Castro regime wasn’t great. But do you really someone like Flugencio or (for a modern reference) Bukele serving US capitalist interests?
I feel like I’m a rare breed of anti-communist that also isn’t anti-leftist.
I was born in PRC, I hate the CCP for both it’s politics and on a personal level (2nd child born under One Child Policy, which they tried to “terminate” me)
That said, I, as an immigrant to the US, I also despise the far-right. I never supported the republican party I always supported Democrats, despite me being pro-gun (cuz I’m not a single-issue voter), and more specifically, I support progressivism, like I liked Bernie the moment I heard about the Medicare 4 All and that sort of stuff (but wasn’t old enough to vote at the time). Like why the fuck would I support an ideology that wants to deport me? Lmfao. I know my history, I know of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Don’t want that shit to happen again.
I like Mamdani (I’m not a New Yorker anymore, used to live in NYC), cuz I know he ain’t a communist (as in the authoritarian stuff). A Democratic Socialist is not a communist.
I have nuance, normie don’t understand shit and instantly defaults to campism.
It doesn’t matter what style of Marxist ideology is attempted, they will all lead down to the same path of authoritarianism, mismanagement, and corruption. The ideologies and underlying framework are fundamentally flawed.
That being said, I don’t appreciate the false dichotomy. There’s clearly more, and way better options than a corrupt tyrannical leftist state or a corrupt tyrannical right wing state put in by the US. There’s no reason anyone should support either because they’re lesser of evils when there are paths to pick something that’s not evil at all.
Average American here … Please can we get some of that Foreign Intervention you speak of?
Pretty please?
Unfortunately it might come in the form of a nuke.
Here’s where to shoot pls https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/most-conservative-states
You DO know that nukes are WMDs right ?
Maduro and Trump are friends
Maduro gets to escape his country and save face instead of being assassinated or executed.
Trump gets to manufacture a conflict so he can start martial law and become a dictator, and to distract from us learning he came inside little girls.
The only thing this is about is Trump getting PERSONAL control of the oil, so he can be as wealthy as his friends the Saudis.
I don’t know about this. He’s gotta know that it’s incredibly unlikely that he’ll live to see any profits from Venezuelan oil. It’ll take way longer than he’s got left to actually make a sizable amount of money from it.
I don’t know why anyone is buying that propaganda. They’ve been stopping huge oil tankers filled with Venezuelan oil. They’re producing enough oil that we wanted it, and plenty of other countries are pissed that we’re taking it from them.
Of course Trump only cares about the oil. Has everyone been asleep for the last decade?
Jesus this is a bad take
80 people were killed, cities were bombed, and we’ve got shits on here doing “it was an inside job, aktuly”
Fucking vile.
Trump doesn’t have any friends, and by that I mean his severe narcissism prevents his brain from ever being able to form healthy two-way personal relationships with anyone. In his mind, everyone else exists solely to service or benefit him, even those in his own family. He desperately wants to impress those he sees as powerful, like Kim, Erdoğan, and Putin, so he does things that he thinks will make them like him.
Him and Maduro have sucked each other’s dicks in speeches plenty.
He’s a dictator Trump is close with. That’s who Trump’s friends are
I asked my father for his thoughts on the situation, and he talked about how the Venezuelans could go back home to visit their families and that they were very excited. I sent him the Lemmy post from the Venezuelan that we all probably saw, and explained that there is a lot that is still unclear and how the US’s actions are very similar to the ones he’s seen throughout his life, especially post 9/11.
You make a great point, I do think we can see communities as a monoculture sometimes, or that they are at least portrayed like that in the media (undocumented=illegal criminal/gang member) which is just blatantly false.
