Reporting on the invasion of Venezuela

0:00Last Saturday, Americans woke up to the news that U.S. Special forces had swooped into Venezuela and captured the country's leader, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, Celia Flores. Maduro's at a federal detention center in Brooklyn, New York. He arrived in the U.S. by plane, and then he was put on a helicopter, which flew right in front of the Statue of Liberty before landing in Brooklyn. NPR international correspondent Eder Peralta is based in Mexico, and it was just before dawn when he got wind of the story. You're awoken by your editor right in the middle of the night, And you see that number and you like turn around and you're like, the first thing you do is like, you know, what happened?

0:38Right. And so, you know, the first thing you start doing is you start calling every government source you can possibly find in Venezuela, the people you had been talking to. You start calling, you know, even like my Cuban sources to see if they had anything to say. At the same time, he started thinking, where could he go to chase the story? Venezuela is a special case in the Western Hemisphere. right? Because one, the airport was closed because the airspace was closed. And then two, the government of Venezuela requires a journalist visa for you to get in there. And so we don't have one of those.

1:18And so you start thinking like, okay, if we can't go get it straight into Caracas, which is exactly where you want to go. The next best thing is to get as close to it as possible. Which meant right on the border. We've reached NPR's Eder Peralta in the city of Cucuta in Colombia, just on the border with Venezuela. Hi there. So, you know, we've made it within eyesight of Venezuela, but we have not gotten permission to go in as journalists. You know, we've still been talking to people who are coming in and out of Venezuela. Consider this. Sometimes just getting in place to cover a story is the hardest part of reporting.

1:57Coming up, we hear about the obstacles keeping some journalists out of Venezuela.

2:11From NPR, I'm Sarah McCammon.

2:24It's Consider This from NPR. NPR international correspondent Eder Peralta has covered conflicts and crises from East Africa to Latin America. His latest deployment has taken him to Colombia, where he's been covering the fallout from the U.S. intervention in Venezuela. For this week's Reporter's Notebook, I started by asking Eder how he and his team were trying to cross into Venezuela. I always say that, like, you know, 90 percent of journalism is waiting. there's a small consulate venezuelan consulate here and you know there's there's dozens of international journalists here that bridge is just it's full and teeming with journalists trying to do the same exact thing that we're trying to do which is to get into venezuela and so this little venezuelan consulate is just it's mobbed by journalists and we're all asking the same question, which is, can you please give us a journalist visa?

3:23And they just have put us through the ringer. They threw people out who were wearing shorts. Why, is there a dress code? There is a dress code. Yes, yes, there is. And what's more, like, you know, they passed out visa forms. And if you filled it out in bad handwriting, they would throw it out and make you buy a new form, right? Can I ask you about your own security and safety, while you're reporting on a story like this. I mean, how are you thinking about that? I mean, right now we're fine, right? Because we're in another country, right? I think it's always risk versus reward. And I know it sounds wrong to sort of see it that way, right?

4:10But you're thinking about what story can you get and what risk you're going to have to take to get this story. And right now, here in Cucuta, we are watching so many different journalists make that calculation. And let me tell you, it's been dramatic. And I would guess in this day and age, if they have Google, it's not hard to figure out who's a journalist or not as hard. Right. It wouldn't be. It wouldn't be difficult at all. And also, like, you know, I think NPR has a policy of declaring, right? Declaring that you're a journalist. A lot of what we do that never gets on air, it's not part of necessarily of reporting, right, is trying to figure out, even if I do make it past that border crossing, what happens afterwards?

4:57Can I make a 12 hour ride to Caracas without getting sent back or getting thrown in prison? Right. So far, the decision we've made is is we're not going to try and cross in that way. Now, there have been, as I understand it, protests in Colombia. Our colleague Greg Dixon sent some sound through from one of those.

5:24Can you tell me about those protests? I mean, what are the protesters asking for? You know, where we are, it's, this is a kind of right wing city. And so it was just, you know, maybe 100, 200 people chanting anti American slogans, right? No, no, no, we will not be an American colony is what they were chanting. And so we heard a lot of anger about what the United States had just done. And, you know, these 200 or so people moved through the streets. They waved Colombian flags. They finally made it to a square. And what was interesting, right, is that like, as often happens, like a couple of people came up to me and they were like, hey, hey, hey, like, don't be covering them.

6:09Come here. I'll tell you the truth. Right. And this one lady was just, she was so angry, right? She's like, you know, we know the real suffering of the Venezuelan people. We've received millions of people. She's like, and we don't even like our own president. And President Trump should have started with him first, right? So it's interesting. I think the protest gave us a little view into the many protests that we've seen on state TV from Venezuela. The government has called for in Venezuela as well to denounce what has happened. And so it gave us a peek of how Latin Americans are feeling about, you know, what is a significant historic event on the continent.

7:03I mean, I think it's worth pausing on the fact that the United States hasn't done something like this since 1989, when President George H.W. Bush sent troops into Panama to extract Manuel Noriega, who was the military ruler at the time. Eder, you've been an international correspondent for many years now. You've been based in a variety of different places. But, you know, each place is different. Each story is different. How much have your past experiences prepared you for this story? I think they just make you patient, honestly. And also, I think this is, in an odd way, I feel like the world is changing.

7:49Governments are changing. and what governments across the world have learned is that they don't have to allow journalists into their country. I think in the very recent past, since I've been a journalist, countries would allow you in when big stuff was happening, right? Either because it was chaotic and they couldn't control it or because they just couldn't be bothered to keep you out, right? And they were just like, you're being a pest, so come in. And I think, you know, I saw this first in Ethiopia where, you know, the Ethiopian Civil War, I covered it for two years. That happened. 400, 500 ,000 people, by some estimates, were killed in that war.

8:32And very few journalists were allowed in to cover it. Right. And then from there, you know, we have Gaza where journalists have not, international journalists have not been allowed in to cover Gaza, to cover what's happening in Gaza. And then, you know, this is another example of how much a government is trying to limit journalists from coming in to cover what is happening. NPR's Eder Peralta speaking to us from Cucuta, Colombia. Eder, thanks so much for your reporting. No, thank you, sir. This episode was produced by Gabriel Sanchez. It was edited by Adam Rainey. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan.

9:21It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Sarah McCammon.