To the masses, Saturday, January 3rd began as a typical day. Americans likely rolled out of bed and noticed a breaking news headline that the dictator of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, had been captured by a US military operation. For my family, the news was groundbreaking. My parents, both Venezuelan immigrants, opened the door to my room at 4:30 in the morning, and with hopeful eyes and ecstatic jitters, alerted me that the U.S. had captured Maduro. From there, it was a dreamlike blur of happy tears, phone calls with family in Caracas, rapturous cheers, and the rare sensation of hope. What could this mean? The day every Venezuelan had been dreaming of for decades had finally arrived. After the initial euphoria of the moment had settled, the difficult questions crept in. 

That same day at 11:00 a.m., the White House held a press conference to inform Americans about the situation in Venezuela. Figures like President Donald Trump, Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State, Marco Rubio spoke on the successful military operation that resulted in dethroning a dictator and overthrowing a legacy of authoritarian rule in Venezuela since 1999. When questioned by reporters about what this meant for the current vacuum in leadership and the government in Venezuela moving forward, President Trump answered that the U.S. would be “running the country.” Recently, he has elaborated that this will go on for years. Furthermore, reporters asked about what seemed to be the elephant in the room: does the fact that Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world have anything to do with this military operation? President Trump responded in the spirit that the oil exports from Venezuela to the US would be in accordance with his “America first” endeavors. Both of these topics of governance and oil contain nuance and ambiguities, and large-scale media often attempts to simplify issues into bite-sized statements like “oil war,” “puppet regime,” or “hands off Venezuela.” As a Venezuelan-American, I will break down my opinion on this multifaceted issue. 

Oil. As previously stated, Venezuela has the largest oil reserves of any country in the world. The American media has been quick to claim that the U.S. has an ulterior motive of freeing Venezuela from its dictator in order to gain favorable access to the glut of oil in Venezuela, rather than depending on China or Russian adversaries. Here is the resounding truth: Venezuelans know this–and are okay with this. The people of Venezuela understand that a costly and high-stakes military operation is seldom done solely out of the kindness of the U.S.’s heart, and that quid pro quos are prevalent in geopolitics. Venezuelans have not had access to their own oil for over two decades due to mismanagement and corruption in government, which has not allowed Venezuela to make fair deals and profit from its oil. Rather, they see a benefit in selling oil to the U.S. in a renovated way. This has been proven to work, since prior to Maduro’s regime, in the 1920s, Venezuela was selling oil to the U.S. and using the profit to build a nation that became the fourth richest country in the world by the 1950s. Now, they see the US intervention as an opportunity to reinvigorate the oil industry and become a prosperous nation as it once was. 

As for how Venezuela will be governed, more uncertainty arises. On the one hand, “we will run the country” echoes the U.S. imperialism at the turn of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, capturing the head dictator still leaves all of Maduro’s cabinet in power, with narco-trafficking criminals among them, and this situation likely does require help from the U.S. government to completely flush out. So, what is the ideal situation that values the Venezuelan right to fair and free democracy and realistically allows the U.S. the favorable oil terms that they’ve insisted upon? I believe that the U.S. ought to facilitate a fair election in Venezuela, and whatever president is chosen would lead the country, cognizant of oil negotiations that are advantageous to the U.S. This is easier said than done, and requires deeply rooted changes in the governmental makeup of Venezuela that can only be done with the help of the U.S. It is also specially relevant that Venezuela has been holding functioning democratic elections and has chosen leaders, but those leaders have been barred from taking office by the dictatorship. 

This past week has been a turbulent but exciting time for Venezuelans. With so many opinions saturating the media, I implore you to seek knowledge from both sides of the political spectrum, and more importantly, ask Venezuelans in your life how they are feeling. In my experience, it has been jarring how Venezuela went from a country that few people had any interest in while its people were starving, imprisoned, and tortured, to a country that everyone has an opinion on seemingly overnight. If you have no Venezuelan people in your life, pursue Venezuelan media: journalism, videos, etc. Our community, country, and world will flourish with a symposium of ideas gathered from those with different identities, political parties, and places of origin.