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Arnaly Arriaga, left, and Juliana Fombona wait at Ms. Fombona’s Halifax home for any information on their families in Venuezula following the U.S. attacks.PAUL DARROW/The Globe and Mail
Juliana Fombona said she felt a surge of hope when she learned that the U.S. military captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from Caracas on Saturday. But that optimism was fleeting as she began to ponder what the future might hold.
The same political forces behind Mr. Maduro are still entrenched in her home country despite his removal, said Ms. Fombona, an architect who has lived in Halifax for 23 years. And it’s still unclear who will run Venezuela, whether democracy will be restored and when the humanitarian crisis may improve.
“Most of Venezuela, including me, is very happy Maduro is in jail. But Maduro in jail doesn’t change anything at all,” she said Sunday. “The truth is Maduro was a marionette. Maduro was just a face of the dictatorship.”
Venezuela’s toppled leader Nicolas Maduro was in a New York detention centre on Sunday after President Donald Trump ordered an audacious raid to capture him, saying the U.S. would take control of the oil-producing nation.
Reuters
At first, U.S. President Donald Trump stated that his country would be running Venezuela, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio signalled Sunday that the U.S. will leave Venezuela’s authoritarian regime in place for now – as long as it complies with Washington’s orders to get tough on drug trafficking and stop using oil to enrich U.S. adversaries.
From her home in Halifax, Ms. Fombona spoke of fear and uncertainty for what’s to come. While she said Venezuela alone has not been able to shed its authoritarian regime, she doesn’t think Mr. Trump is the right person to try to do it. Also, she added, it sets a dangerous precedent for U.S. foreign interventionism.
“We don’t know what will happen. We are afraid and that is the feeling.”
Her hope was that Mr. Trump would support leader of the opposition María Corina Machado and Edmundo González to govern Venezuela, but Mr. Rubio indicated on Sunday that there are no immediate plans for that.
Ms. Fombona’s friend, Arnaly Arriaga, also said she felt joy upon seeing a video of the U.S. air strike in Caracas. But that quickly dissipated after she learned that the Trump government is now saying it’s going to work with the remaining members of Venezuela’s authoritarian government.
“These people are criminals. They have been systematically killing Venezuelans, simply starving them,” said Ms. Arriaga, a musician and Spanish teacher who has watched the income of her family members in Venezuela drop from $3,000 a month to $10 or less and their weight plummet owing to hunger.
“He’s dealing with these kinds of people – the only thing they know how to do is traffic drugs.”
The Sunday Editorial: Venezuela’s fate is a warning for Canada
Last month, a United Nations report found that Venezuela’s Bolivarian National Guard was implicated in a decade-long pattern of killings, arbitrary detentions, torture and sexual violence targeting protesters and opponents of Mr. Maduro.
Venezuelans living across Canada echoed the complicated feelings of Ms. Fombona and Ms. Arriaga as they kept an eye on televisions and social-media feeds for the latest updates on a U.S. attack that has been characterized as both a liberation and a coup.
Monica Liendo of Toronto, 30, said seeing Mr. Maduro in captivity was “a dream come true.”
She left Venezuela 13 years ago, just after finishing high school. The regime, she said, “destroyed an entire nation,” forcing millions like her to flee for safer shores.
Venezuelans in Canada cheer Maduro’s toppling, worry about what comes next
Whether the United States was right to use military force was a “grey area,” she said, but Venezuelans had tried every other means of liberating themselves, including the ballot box, and “nothing worked.”
“If this was the way it had to be, then so be it,” she said.
The 2021 Canadian census recorded 28,395 people in this country with Venezuelan roots. That number has surged in recent years as people have fled the Maduro regime. In 2025, Venezuelan citizens represented the third-largest source of asylum claimants processed at Canada Border Services Agency land border ports, behind the U.S. and Haiti.
“Their health system is broken, you can’t find medicine or food, salaries are no good – they have many reasons for coming,” said Ernesto Gudino, a volunteer with the Venezuelan Canadian Association of Calgary. The organization started in 2000 to promote Venezuelan culture but soon branched into English classes and integration programs to help with the many new arrivals.
Like Mr. Gudino, who immigrated in 2007 during the rule of Hugo Chávez, many were oil and gas workers drawn to Alberta’s familiar job market. He called the U.S. military strike “excellent” and hopes it will return the country to the days of soaring oil, gas and electricity exports paying for world-class universities and decent health care.
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Canadian-Venezuelan activist Rebecca Sarfatti in Toronto on Sunday.Cole Burston/The Globe and Mail
Toronto resident Rebecca Sarfatti, an activist who co-founded the Canada Venezuela Democracy Forum, has worked for years on freeing her homeland from what she considers a corrupt dictatorship. While she said she was overjoyed to see Mr. Maduro in handcuffs, she is confused about what will come next.
The regime that surrounds him is still in place. “They took out the tumour, but the cancer is still there,” she said on Sunday.
She also worries that Mr. Trump isn’t consulting the people of Venezuela.
“I feel that we Venezuelans are not even being considered in the discussion,” said Ms. Sarfatti, who came to Canada in 2001. “President Trump is treating us like kindergarten kids.”
“I’m not saying I’m not grateful,” she said, but “we have suffered for so long and we need to take control of our destiny.”
With reports from Patrick White and Janice Dickson
