View from Venezuela

0:00For months now, much of the world's attention has been on Venezuela. In September, the Trump administration began a series of strikes targeting what U.S. officials call narco-terrorists in small vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. Venezuela has been very bad both in terms of drugs and sending some of the worst criminals anywhere in the world into our country. Those strikes are ongoing. They've killed more than 80 people so far. Then in October, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Carina Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The committee called her a courageous defender of freedom who refused to stay silent.

0:35She has been in hiding since last year, when Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, claimed victory in an election widely seen by the international community as fraudulent. Despite the risk of harassment, arrest and torture, citizens across the country held watch over the polling stations. They made sure the final tallies were documented before the regime could destroy ballots and lie about the outcome. That is the Nobel Committee chair, Jürgen Vatna Friednes, when announcing the prize. Machado is expected to receive her award in person on Wednesday in Oslo. And if she does, she might not be let back into her country.

1:17Machado, who supports the Trump administration's campaign in the region, says the end of the Maduro regime is imminent. Here she is speaking to NPR in October. You cannot have peace without freedom, and you cannot have freedom without strength when you are facing a criminal structure. Consider this. While the world is focused on Oslo and Maria Karina Machado's Nobel Peace Prize, we wanted to get the view from inside her country. Coming up, we speak with a journalist in Venezuela about what daily life is like there.

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2:38It's Consider This from NPR. More than 31 million people live in Venezuela. And right now, with so much of the world focused on the country, we want to get a better sense of what life is like from the millions of Venezuelans living in it in the midst of all of this upheaval. To do that, I spoke with Venezuelan journalist Tony Franchi. He heads the newsletter, Venezuela Weekly. Let me just start with the Nobel Prize. How much do you think people in Caracas will be following the presentation tomorrow? We'll be talking and thinking about that. I think it's a very important topic of conversation here, even though it's not a very public one because of the state of affairs in the country.

3:14But many Venezuelans are expected to see if Maria Corina actually managed to leave Venezuela for Oslo, as she said. I think that's one of the main reasons people are watching and following the news of the prize, but also the fact that these are very big news for us and many people see them as the result of the struggle and the democratic fight that many Venezuelans have been enduring for the last year in the country after the July 28 elections of 2024. When you talk about a lot of conversation, but not too public about it, give me a sense of what that looks like. Is that just a side conversation?

3:46Is that just on your phone, but not in public on social media? Like, what's the best way to understand that and why? So after the elections happened and the opposition managed to prove that their official results were not the ones shown by the polling station machines, the government proceeded with a bigger crackdown on civil society. And since then, politics have been mostly off the table for many Venezuelans in public places, in social media, in places that can be heard and seen. So it has become more or less a conversation within family or within private circles. In fact, there's reports of journalists, of radio journalists who were fired from their jobs because they reported of the Nobel Peace Prize.

4:23So in a way, there's a lot of sense of fear due to repression and a lot of self-censorship in Venezuelans that has forced many of these conversations and topics to more private and intimate spaces. I want to talk about the election in a moment, but on this topic of what conversation is like and censorship and self-censorship, what is being said or thought and talked about when it comes to all of this U.S. military pressure. Is that front and center or is that also an on the margins conversation? It's especially on the margins because the government also has a heightened sense of paranoia due to the constant U.S.

4:56airing questions and of course the warships in the coast. So what we've seen is a mix between people whispering their opinions or what they think and more or less a generalized sense of denial with the situation. For many Venezuelans, The only solution is to keep forward with their lives as it is, especially with rising inflation, especially with an increasingly worse economic situation during the holiday seasons. So sometimes people wouldn't think that a country that is supposedly in the brink of water, you can find, I don't know, Christmas fairs or Halloween parties or new stores opening up and people just going to buy stuff there for Christmas.

5:35But it's what's happening because for many, the only solution is to just keep on with their daily lives and try to act as nothing is happening. Because I feel that many Venezuelans won't really consider this to be a bluff until something actually happens. It's been 25 years of constant political upheaval. So for many, it's just, you know, another check in the long list. Yeah. Do you see any physical signs of preparations for any sort of military conflict? Not as much. The government has moved certain assets to the cause. They have moved machinery to take down planes to military bases. There has been a mobilization of the militia.

6:15But beyond that, the city more or less remains perhaps more militarized, perhaps with more policemen, but more or less life remains the same in Venezuela. At this point, we're having practically weekly incursions of F-18 or B-2 planes from the U.S., and it's just become like another normal thing. We actually had one today and people are just going on with their lives because it has already become a weekly thing for more than a few months. You know, NPR has been trying to report from Venezuela, but has not been granted permission to enter the country. What is one thing about life in Venezuela today that you feel like people listening to this should know that you wish you could tell more people about?

6:54Well, I would say, firstly, that if you see a country with baseball stadiums full of people and people doing Christmas shopping, it doesn't mean that that country is not in crisis or that that country is not following politics. But rather that countries with crisis, with political conflicts, even with war, people there, they try to continue their lives as it is. And it's two things that can coexist despite how bizarre it can look. And on the other hand, I would say that people should sometimes give more voice to Venezuelans and listen to Venezuelans. I feel U.S. media has focused itself mostly on foreign analysts in the country, and there hasn't been much space for voices of Venezuelans.

7:34And I think that's important, especially because, as I said, many Venezuelans are self-silencing themselves or doing self-censorship. And that is definitely generating a bias in their reporting. So I would say that they should consider that Venezuelans' opinions are more varied and diverse than they think. And definitely many times it will clash with what many in the U.S. think should happen or think is happening in Venezuela. Well, we were really happy to talk to you about it. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you so much. That is Venezuelan journalist Tony Frangie joining us from Caracas.

8:02Thank you. This episode was produced by Karen Zamora and Matt Ozog with audio engineering by Ted Meebane. It was edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan.

8:18It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.