How Cuba Propped Up Maduro

29:48They find even this assessment so disconnected from what we're going through. You know, it's an assessment I understand, right? Because, you know, it's logical and people want to try to find and make sense of everything that is happening. But when you're in Venezuela, when you're oppressed every day, God, at 8 a.m. after they took Maduro out, I was talking, you know, we have a WhatsApp group with people in Venezuela, my journalists, and they were so concerned because when they saw the Azal Cabello still in power, when Trump spoke and said that he was going to stay in Venezuela, that the U.S., you guys were not leaving everyone on that chat.

30:35started like screaming, right? And people were like, I'm like crying of joy. The impact that this has in millions of people around the world, nobody cares. If oil is a factor from our perspective.

30:56Coleman Hughes:Yeah, I'm with you there. I mean, so here's the reason I asked the question. personally it I don't mind if Trump went in for oil and that that leads to all these other good benefits I think it's okay if U.S. oil companies also benefit from a regime change that brings human rights and economic prosperity to Venezuelans I see that as a win-win right and I understand that in foreign policy heads of state have to think about things and frame things from the perspective of their own country first. So there's this part of the American public that thinks if America benefits, the other country must be losing.

31:41Coleman Hughes:Everything has to be zero sum, but that's actually not how the world works. It's possible for the American energy sector to benefit and for Venezuelans to win by decapitating a brutal dictator that's destroyed what was a really lovely country. However, here's my concern. My concern is that if it's true that oil is top of mind for Trump, is he going to accept a status quo where he makes a deal with the remnants of the Maduro regime? The Maduro regime makes a deal with him on oil that's very favorable to U.S. oil interests and allows reinvestment in Venezuelan oil. And basically, the oil relationship goes back to how it was, say, in the 90s.

32:32Coleman Hughes:But Trump allows them to continue the regime of repression of the Venezuelan people because he's basically gotten what he wanted and he claims a win. That's the scenario I'm worried about. And that's why I think it actually does matter whether Trump is motivated primarily by oil or primarily by all the things you mentioned, by the fact that Hezbollah is in Venezuela, by the fact that they're exporting drugs all over the world, creating instability in the region. If he's motivated by those other things, then he's going to want to actually make sure that this regime change ends up in a regime that is actually better, that's actually committed to democracy, not stealing elections, getting terrorists out of Venezuela, getting the drugs under control and so forth.

33:28Coleman Hughes:So from that perspective, do you agree that it matters what's in Trump's mind here? No, I definitely think it matters what is in Trump's mind. And of course, we're speculating, right? Because I don't know what is in his mind. I don't think anyone knows. Maybe not even Trump's, right? Maybe he's also assessing the situation, right, as we speak. I do know that that is not all what is in the mind of the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. That is not consistent with his legacy and with his values. And to be honest, I don't think that is on the mind of President Trump. And I'm going to tell you why. Because that is what Grinnell was trying to do.

34:19Trump didn't, there was no need to remove Maduro to make a beneficial deal with Venezuela about oil. Because that's what Venezuela's offer was. Okay? That was Grinnell and the people in the oil lobby in this country, that's what they were pushing for. And that's why I want to go back to what happened at the beginning of the year and what happened in the meeting and the backlash with that meeting. And there is actually an article when you see Representative Salazar, Representative Jimenez, Mario Diaz-Ballar. Okay, there was an article how they went to the White House after that meeting with Grinnell.

34:56because also let's understand the backlash in domestic politics. Any administration that makes that kind of deal with Venezuela regime, with the Maduro regime, okay, is going to lose the Cuban-American vote, is going to lose the Latino vote that supports Republicans. Let's understand also, if we want to talk about being transactional in domestic politics, maybe they don't care, right? But you cannot have the Cuban-American vote if you make a deal and if you continue on that path with the Maduro regime, okay? It's not going to happen. Cuban-Americans are not isolationists. And it's a big important—it's a very small part of the electorate, but it's very significant to win Florida, which is very important also for Republicans, correct?

35:51So I think there is also domestic implications when you assess how Republicans and the decisions that Republicans also make, because big part of their voters are not isolationists. OK, big part of their voting bloc would repudiate something like that. OK, you have a very isolationist base who is very skeptical of what Trump is doing. And Trump has to deal with this base. So he has to be very transactional and careful about how he justifies this. But the other part of his base is not that. OK, the other part of his base is not going to vote for anyone who makes a deal with the Maduro regime, just like Obama.

36:41I mean, look what happened with Cuba when they did the Cuban engagement. It was a time that the Cuban vote was changing. It was younger. People were voting more Democratic. The moment they made a deal, they thought, oh, the demographic changed and that, you know, it was not going to matter. The Cuban-American vote, even among young people, generations I came recently, increased towards Republicans. Why? Because of the backlash of making these concessions with these dictatorships. So this has an impact on domestic policies. I can assure you that. Because I'm embedded in the community because I speak with people.

37:21I listen to people. You know, the millions of Latinos that follow us and that read our site. And it is an important and significant block that the amount of people were disappointed when we saw that they were trying to make that deal with Maduro. So I don't think that was this was necessary to make that deal. Right. I think Trump what Trump reverter was the Grinnell side. And even inside his administration, you have the Rubio's goals, his moral standing, his moral clarity. And you have this, you know, the push of people like Grinnell and other people inside the administration that were trying to move Trump in a different direction.

38:00And what in my assessment is that they failed. Right. I'm not saying they don't exist. I'm not saying they're not going to try to push. I also want to clarify there's a lot of money going, influencing through this country from lovists that are even appearing in media shows, influencers, and they're trying to push this. I mean, you probably remember how they tried to even portray it a few months ago. The Maduro regime is conservative. I don't know if you remember that story.

38:31Coleman Hughes:Yeah, no, Tucker Carlson is still trying to do that. He's going around saying— Because he's insane. because someone should like remove the microphone from this guy. Unless, you know, when he tries to discuss Latin America, please. I mean, they obviously doesn't know anything. He's actually, he's saying that Trump wants to go in there in order to bring social liberalism to the country, like gay marriage. And it's so disconnected from reality. It's become a mockery. The far right in this country has become a mockery of itself. A mockery. I don't waste my time watching any of that. Because it's like going into a mental institution and listen to people who are like, you know, have no sense of what's happening.

39:14OK, let's talk about disconnected from reality. If I criticize that sometimes the media is disconnected from reality when they make these assessments. Right. When you go into that side, it's the same thing or worse in that in his case is worse. But let's not even waste our time with that. But what I'm trying to, the point I'm trying to convey is that dealing with our internal, with the base, with the media, with the backlash, with the numerous assessment, with the internal dynamics of the United States, right, makes this political operation very complicated. OK, I can assure you, I mean, it just makes sense that the United States has no, it's in a position of power to negotiate, even negotiate with the regime that is in place because the regime is still in place in Caracas, right?

40:08They have a lot of leverage. What complicates this political negotiation is the internal forces inside this country and everything that they have to also deal politically. It's a very risky move because, like we said, you have a base that is, in the case of Trump, you have a base that is divided. So it took a lot of courage. It is a very risky political move that I think they know that they need this to succeed. And I also think it's going to be a big part of his legacy. I think he sees himself, and he has expressed this, as a person that has fixed problems that nobody thought he could fix. I think that is a bigger motivator than oil for transpersonality, right?

40:59To be seen as this person who did the unthinkable, make the longest dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere collapse, if it's in the case of Cuba, destroy the Maduro regime. I mean, I think that is a big motivator for him also. He's going to pass in the pages of history if this succeeds. It's going to change. And it's also we're seeing a geopolitical alignment, which is fascinating to watch, right? Because what you have here, forget about it, it's not just Venezuela. You have right now a hybrid war where the U.S. is battling through this satellite in South America. the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians.

41:41And if we succeed in this and the United States is able to do a transition, they're dealing with this regime, remove this regime, and actually allow the opposition to take power and move through a democratic future, rebuild Venezuela, the energy, you're going to see an entire realignment on the Western Hemisphere. You're going to take out from the Western Hemisphere, these foreign adversaries that for 20 years, okay, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States completely forgot about Latin America. And our foreign policy towards Latin America has been completely misguided. People don't have knowledge about Latin America.

42:23There's no interest about Latin America. We don't invest the resources on the region from an intelligent point of view also, they have forgotten completely on the region. And this is something I discuss this with people, the State Department, with many people in the government, because it's frustrating for us, right? Because we were seeing everything that was happening. It was like, we are allowing to build a Middle East in sense of instability and, you know, all the violence that has been developing, escalating in Latin America. What the United States, I want to convey to the American people and your audience, we need this to succeed.

43:04It's not just about the Venezuelan people. It's about the stability of the region, of the United States, because we are going to face, if this doesn't get fixed in South America, we are really going to be facing a crisis in terms of national security, because we have all of these terrorist groups who have been slowly and gradually moving into this region, exploiting the richness to finance these groups. And Iran is there. And Iran's mentality is not just transactional, right? So I think this is very important to open our eyes and realize that we are really trying to prevent a crisis in the making.

43:50I mean, we, I mean the United States, the administration.

43:53Coleman Hughes:Let's talk a little bit about the Cuba-Venezuela relationship. I think a lot of Americans were surprised to learn that something like 30 of the soldiers, police officers, whatever you want to call them, that were killed in the operation were Cuban, not Venezuelan. Why were Cubans the ones in Maduro's inner circle defending him? How did that relationship come to pass? And what does this operation mean for the possibility of regime change in Cuba? Correct. Well, Cuba, the Cuban regime, has embedded itself in Venezuela for decades. Since Chavez traveled in 1994 and met with Castro, Castro and Chavez develop a very close relationship.

44:43We have said it and has been documented, books have been reading about it, about the Cubans' takeover of Venezuela. If you listen to some of the testimonies of Venezuelans who have been tortured in prison, they tell you many times there were Cubans, the ones who tortured me. I could hear Cubans' access. So the Cubans embedded themselves. In every sector of Venezuela, at the military, in the intelligence community, they have completely taken over. Why? Well, the Cubans have a lot of, the Cuban regime has a lot of expertise in intelligence. It was trained by the Soviet Union. It was more sophisticated.

45:26I was listening as before we began this interview, I was listening to former chief of land America for the CIA, chief of operation, and he was making an assessment about the role that Cuba has been playing in Venezuela for years. So Cuba needed this relationship. OK, let me briefly explain what happened. In 1994, Cuba was about to collapse. We had El Maleconazo, big protests. Their economy was completely in ruins. It was the special period. It could not have survived, right? Because they had lost all of the funding and the subsidies from the Soviet Union, correct? So Chávez travels. Castro tells Chávez to come to Havana, and they begin to develop.

46:19Castro hadn't even paid attention to Chávez before that. That's what some accounts. They begin to develop this very close relationship. And Castro designed the entire manual for Chavez, how to remain in power, transform the Constitution, everything they did in Cuba and said, and we are going to provide you. OK, the intelligence that you need to control that country, because if we know how to do something, it's to control a population. Right. They have been doing it for over 60 years. So in exchange for all of the intelligence, all of this military support, et cetera, Chavez began to give Cuba their subsidies in the form of oils.

46:58And then Cuba and better intelligence and better military gave them doctors. I think we discussed this in the past. doctors, Cuban health workers are subject to a modern form of slavery that has been recognized by the United Nations because countries pay the Cuban regime for the doctors X amount and the Cuban regime confiscate 90 percent of the salary of health workers. Okay. So right now, what we saw is that for years, the Cuban regime has been denying that they had troops in Venezuela. Everybody knew it was documented, but they denied the U.S. is lying. We have no troops or no troops of Cuban troops in Venezuela.

47:37Now what we realize and what they had to acknowledge on Sunday, the Cuban regime, is that they lost 32 soldiers. And they were members so far of the armed forces, okay? They were not police officers. They were members of Cuba's armed forces. And they were members also of the Ministry of Interior. Some people think there were some black, but red. This is a unit that was trained by China back in the early 2000s. And so you have all of the inner circle protecting Maduro was Cuban. And also some parts of the outer circle, it's Cubans. Cubans have embedded themselves at all levels also to monitor any dissent and to control the population because they know how to do that.

48:23So they're the ones who have guaranteed the regime to stay in power by allowing them to lease all of their structure, their repressive system, their mechanism, everything they have learned for over half a century in exchange for oil, in exchange for all of this money that the Cuban regime has stole from Venezuela to finance the repression, obviously, at home. And as we discussed, and then what they do, the Cubans do sometimes, is that Venezuela sends Cubans the oil, and Cubans resell the oil to China, okay, and they profit from this. So the Cuban regime needs this, and Venezuela needs this, because it is because the Cuban repressed system that Venezuela did not have a sophisticated repressed system like Cuba had, like it was modeled from the KGV, that the Venezuelan regime was able to stay in power.

49:15So if we go back to the indictment in 2020, there were also some comments there about the role that Cuba plays in this drug trafficking, right? Because they're providing the defense, they're providing the ships also sometimes. The Cuban military owns a lot of ships. I mentioned the other day that Cuban military owns 80, 85 percent of the countries of Cuba, like in hotels, industries, et cetera. They belong to the Cuban military. Again, very complicated system because we're talking about two cartels, correct? So this military, the Cuban military, has companies abroad. Obviously, they're not military companies.

50:11They have them in the hands of figureheads around the world, pretending they're civilian, but they are controlled by Cuban intelligence and by the Cuban regime in order to launder this money, right? Because the money, the drugs come to the U.S., but the money has to go down to Latin America, right? So you need all of this financial structure to clean the money, right? So you have a lot of companies in the United States to belong to figureheads that are allowing all of this structure to continue and to finance all of this, and they're laundering the money for all of these enterprises. And definitely, I have to assume that this is a big concern of the United States also.

51:00Coleman Hughes:So why hasn't America done regime change in Cuba? I mean, obviously, like, this operation in Venezuela from a military perspective was incredibly impressive. It was precise. It was highly organized. It went off without a hitch. It involved an enormous number of resources that all came down on the same mission without any mistakes that have been reported thus far. it showed a level of competence that is, you know, obviously the U.S. has the best military in the world. We know that. But even accounting for that, it showed a level of competence that was surprising to people. And it begs the question, why hasn't America done something like this with Cuba?

51:49Coleman Hughes:The Cuban regime has been in place since 1959, right? Yes, correct. A very long time, many, I mean, in principle, many opportunities. What are the variables that are different in Cuba that make it so that we haven't done that? There haven't been political will to do that. We, during the Reagan administration, if you ask many people in our community, they, I hear this so often, they say, we thought every day that today was our day, right? We were told every day it is happening. And Reagan, that is widely admired by Cuban Americans, but Reagan never did it. Bush never did it. I think after 9-11, a lot of the priorities for the United States shifted towards the Middle East.

52:46I also think, to go back to what I mentioned, I think since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was this perception in Washington that communism was no longer a threat. Cuba had lost its benefactor. Cuba was going to fall by its own weight. A lot of people did not anticipate what Castro was going to do in Venezuela and the level of success that he was going to have in Venezuela in taking over Venezuela the way that they did. There was a lot of skepticism inside Washington. And like I said, I think it's for, unfortunately, for the past 20, even 30 years, there has been a lack of interest in general and a constant uphill battle from the Latino community, Venezuelans, Cubans, especially Cubans, et cetera, Nicaraguans, to try to make people in Washington policymakers to understand.

53:42Other factors that are in place that we sometimes think might have played a role is that when you look at the past 20 years, the amount of Cuban regime intelligence agents that have been captured in the U.S., Anavela Montes that we discussed, wrote an entire assessment to our intelligence community telling them Cuba is no longer a threat. And that assessment was even cited by people in the Obama administration, even after Ana Belén had already been captured. The assessment was never even debunked. So you have spies at State Department that were captured. You have just recently Rocha, the ambassador, that is facing charges for being a Cuban spy, 40 years.

54:32Rocha was an advisor in the National Security Council at some point, even at Vice South Com. So I do think the Cuban regime exaggerates sometimes when they try to, they pretend, and they did this with Chavez, that they have more inside and they have more presence inside the U.S. that they actually have. I think this is the assessment of some people. I know a lot of people in my community are going to disagree with me. I do think the Cubans lied and exaggerate a lot, but it is undeniable that the Cuban regime has a lot of presence in the United States because the pattern is that they have constantly recruited people since they're in university, at the university level, young people who are today occupying positions of power.

55:23And we have, in my community, we have consistently dealt with many people inside the U.S. government, in the Democratic Party, and also some Republicans who are more isolationists, who never wanted to change the policy towards Cuba in terms of being more assertive towards helping us with regime change and freedom. Regime change has become a taboo, okay? Nobody wanted to talk about regime change. This was actually part of the strategy of the Cuban regime. There's a phrase that people say, well, Cuban problem has to be solved by Cubans. I am convinced this is part of the propaganda that the Cuban regime has tried to expand because Cubans, the problem of Cuba.

56:10First of all, you have millions of Cubans living outside, right? And we're also par and we also want to solve the problem. But the reality is that you have an entire population who is hungry, who has no water, no electricity, and has no weapons, okay? And you are dealing with a criminal enterprise that is very well funded, that all of its resources are directed at controlling the population and remaining in power, okay? Okay, the CIA, David Fitzgerald from the CIA was making these assessments. And one of the reasons the Cubans are so good is because they have one target, the United States. So when you deploy off your resources, all of your capabilities on only one target, unlike the CIA and other intelligence agencies who have many targets, all of the Cuban regime resources are to target the U.S.

57:03So the level of success is disproportionate because they only have one target. They only have one thing to preoccupy themselves with, right? And the same thing happens. They don't care about public opinion. They don't care about the people of Cuba dying. We ended 2025 with like five subtropical disease in Cuba. Like millions of people getting sick because of all these diseases that are, you know, taking over the country. They completely collapse the whole system. They do not care about fixing that. All they care is about their political survival and their financial survival because they have a lot of money that they're making, right, with all of these dealings that they have with these cartels in South America and also with the oil industry that they were reselling the oil from Venezuela.

57:56So it's a very complicated, disheartening landscape because for many years, even when I was in Washington talking to people or people at State Department, you know, last time when I came, I told you I want regime change. I mean, that's what everyone wants. Imagine if I would say, I don't want the regime to change. What kind of person would I be? Correct? I mean, of course I want the regime to change. But there was like, they tried to sanitize this like, oh, no, it's going to be a peaceful transition to democracy. Look, I wish, I wish, but I don't think it's possible. That's not realistic. The people, every time the people of Cuba, who, by the way, have been resisting communism for decades, it's not that we're not doing anything because protests are happening in the island in many different localities and communities, by their crush immediately.

58:56But with what, Coleman? Every time they go on the streets, they arrest them. They send them to 10 years in prison. People don't even have food to put on their table. You think they're going to be able to... It's a very difficult situation. It is a population control that is very effective. And that's how they were able to export this to Venezuela and also control the population in Venezuela with the difference that Venezuela had other institutions that in Cuba, everything was destroyed. Venezuela kept some institutions, have a history, a democratic history, had even organizations that didn't press freedom were organized that in Cuba.

59:36So the context was different.

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1:00:41Coleman Hughes:So I just have two questions before we close this round. And there's a lot of talk. I mean, the main conversation in the American press right now around Venezuela is why Trump has chosen to partner with Delce Rodriguez as opposed to Maria Machado, who recently won the Nobel Prize, won something like two-thirds of the Venezuelan vote in the last election via her stand-in candidate. Is it, what do you think the thinking is here? Why partner with Rodriguez as opposed to Machado? And what are the implications of that choice for the Venezuelan people? Yes. I think that the answer that Secretary Rubio gave the other day in Fox really explains the reality and the constraints for the U.S.

1:01:38government. And he was mentioning, you know, look at the backlash that the administration received only for taking one drug dealer, right? Maduro. And look at everything that happened. Imagine if the U.S. has stayed in the country, right, for a week, taking the Ocabello, taking the Rodrigo brothers, taking Padrino. Imagine if that would have happened. It was not viable, right? It was not possible, not from a military perspective, but from a political standpoint. It was not possible to remove the head, the other heads, and key figures of this cartel, right? That's what we've seen, that the regime is intact.

1:02:19And there are two differences. There is symbolic power and there is concrete power, right? Maria Corina Machado did not rise through the traditional party machinery of Venezuelan politics. So this is very important to understand because what is happening, to understand what is happening, because a big part of her brand is that she never accepted deals with the regime. And people respected her for that. Never. Unlike other Venezuelan politicians or opposition leaders, Maria Corina was fearless in her stand for freedom and her convictions. and she won the hearts and minds of the Venezuelan people.

1:02:53That doesn't mean she can control the military immediately. That doesn't mean she has concrete power to go in and control the police and control the roads, you know. So there's an imminent period, a very small window from when you take that, you take, you extract this dictator who is a drug dealer. I know he's facing charges, but the evidence is very overwhelming. I mean, you took this drug dealing from power and you have to keep the order inside the country, right? And the United States is trying to minimize the bloodbath that can occur, right? They're trying to prevent from a second wave, from having to go back in, which, no, I think it might be something really plausible.

1:03:45You know, the United States might have to go in a second time. But they're trying to prevent that from happening. So this is a game, like a chess game, right? They removed Maduro. They put the Venezuelan regime in a position of weakness. They showed the U.S. strength, right? So now they forced them into a different level in the negotiation table because before they were not negotiating, not to the standards that the U.S. wanted, right? So now they're in a weaker position. But still, there are things that the United States have to deal with. I did not like the way Trump answered those questions about Maria Corina.

1:04:19I felt like he was undermining her standing when he said, oh, she has no respect, no support. I think that is true when we discuss she does not have the support of the military because the military is the cartel. Obviously, she has no support. That doesn't mean she has no support of the people. That is not an accurate assessment. I think Rubio, Secretary Rubio, made that distinction. Right. So they're not really dealing with Delcy Rodriguez. Correct. They're dealing with Vladimir, they're dealing with Delgado Cabello, with Padrino Lopez. They're dealing with the entire structure that is in place and they're trying to force them to leave so they can have a transition and rebuild that country.

1:05:07And that is where we right now we're looking here. and we're, you know, there's a lot that is unfolding as we speak and everything can change very dramatically and very fast. From a strategic perspective, I also think if my moral standing, okay, if my position of power, my ethos with the people of Venezuela is that I never deal, I never may deal concessions with the regime. I never did what other opposition leaders did. I think it's also strategic to Maria Corina Machado not being the one making deals with this corrupt criminal enterprise because she represents also this moral standing, this aspirations of the Venezuelan people who are fed up of all those deals.

1:05:57So I also think, although the comments have been unfortunate, although the flawlessness of the military operation is not this, I haven't seen the same flawlessness in the political operation. I do think from a communications perspective, it's also interesting to watch how Maria Corina Machado is not destroying her moral standing, but being the one that is sitting on the table making concessions with the people who sold the life of millions of Venezuelans and sent them into exile and tortured them. Yeah.

1:06:35Coleman Hughes:Okay, final question for you. What is the situation like in Venezuela right now? Because we've seen videos of Venezuelans all over the world celebrating for good reason. People in tears, people dancing, people singing, and so forth. But if you're still in Venezuela right now, the truth is America is not running the country, right? The regime, the remnants of the regime are still there, as you just mentioned. So what is life like for them right now? What are their hopes and aspirations and what are the challenges that they're facing? Definitely, they have hopes and aspirations that they didn't have last week.

1:07:14And that is something I hear from everyone. So what the journalists that we have on the ground in Venezuela are telling me and the stories we're covering There are checkpoints in many different areas of Caracas by colectivos Colectivos are chavista paramilitary groups that the regime has deployed in many different areas in Caracas So when you go out in Caracas, they're stopping everyone at those checkpoints They're going over your phone to see what your communications are people are relying in this neighborhood WhatsApp groups. WhatsApp is very big in Latin America, so they're different. Every building and communities have WhatsApp groups of the neighbors, and people are constantly sharing information through these WhatsApp groups where the checkpoints are.

1:08:00So we heard some mothers on these groups that were concerned because at night, on Sunday night, The colectivos came on cars and took some of the younger Venezuelans, some young Venezuelan men from their houses. They don't know where their kids are. They don't know what they took them. They said that they were not members of the military or anything. So there's a lot of confusion, a lot of fear. Also rumors, right? Because people are afraid that they're going to be taking their kids and recruit their kids to support the regime. yet last night there were some videos of like some shootings on the streets so all of that scenario creates a lot of confusion because they don't have enough information the regime obviously is controlling the information you saw that yesterday and the they were already arresting journalists journalists are having a lot of struggle right to to move from one place to the other because they could be arrested at any moment.

1:09:03In fact, before this happened, the journalists we had on the ground were detained, I believe it was like two weeks ago. So everyone that is on the ground right now, it's being extremely careful. And Caracas is, for the most part, people are avoiding the streets as much as they can. early after the adoption, the U.S. took Maduro out, there were a lot of lines forming because people went into a sort of a lot of panic trying to buy goods. But for the most part, they're being very careful of leaving, of going on the streets. And what I heard from many different people is relief and hope, especially after Trump said that the U.S.

1:09:51was not leaving, But of course, they're also not present in the country. So it's like we're not leaving, but they know that they're not present. So they have to deal with the repression that is definitely taking place right now in Venezuela. So let's see what happens in the next few weeks, because it's going to be very interesting to watch. Because I also don't think it's sustainable that if the U.S. is going to stay, I think that something is going to have to happen if the regime continues to oppress people. Remember, they haven't released the political prisoners. So that is a big concern of the Venezuelan people right now, because if Maduro was removed, but obviously the structure continues in place, right?

1:10:34It's weakened, but it's still there. And they're trying to see how they survive. And a big part of that is proven by the fact that they haven't released political prisoners. The other thing I wanted to tell you is not so much about what the Venezuelans are happening, but what we know of, like, apparently is going to happen right now is that the counterintelligence, especially Cuban counterintelligence, is going to begin most likely an entire investigation. And who were the people who informed the CIA or this person or some people believe it's more than one that informed the CIA, right, where Maduro was?

1:11:14And so there's going to be a lot of Cuban intelligence activity in the country trying to, at those levels, at the inner circle, inside the government, let's see what also the CIA or the U.S. government does to protect this person if it's still on the country.

1:11:30Coleman Hughes:Right. Okay, Helette, thanks so much. You're a fount of wisdom and information on all these issues. I'm sure we'll have another occasion to have you on, but thanks so much. And before you go, tell my listeners where they can follow your journalism. Okay, so you can follow us in ADN Cuba. We are on X on Instagram, adncuba.com. Also, it's our webpage. And if you want to see what our coverage is from Venezuela, you can follow us also at ADN America. And my handle in X is Helet Martinez. All right, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Jackson Hewitt has a great tax prep deal $149 or less Missing out is like ignoring the check engine light in your car, you regret it Seriously, the price is only$149 or less no matter how complicated, so don't wait Like when you get a password expires today alert or you're shopping online and there's only one item left it's like your taxes are in the cart just complete the purchase Hurry, this deal for$149 or less is like your phone at 1 % It's about to power down Limited time offer for new clients on federal returns Participating locations only.

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