For most Mexico-based Venezuelans, however, the situation is far more complex than images of demonstrations and debates on social media suggest.

On Saturday morning, U.S. military forces entered Venezuelan territory, killing at least 80 people, including 32 Cuban members of the president’s security detail, before capturing Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in the capital of Caracas. The pair was transported to New York, where they now face trial on charges including cocaine trafficking, to which both have pleaded not guilty. 

Hours after the operation, U.S. President Donald Trump announced at a press conference that his administration would oversee Venezuela “until we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” adding that U.S. companies would start operating in Venezuela’s oil reserves.

Many Venezuelans living in Mexico, far away from most of their family members, experienced a mix of emotions as information trickled in.

Jessica Valero, who arrived in Mexico in August 2024 after a long and arduous overland journey that took her through the Darién Gap, woke up to a message from her father saying that Caracas had been bombed. “I was really scared, really, really scared. I have some relatives in the military, and I’m very concerned for their safety.” 

Valero immediately called her dad, who confirmed all her family members were safe, and told her that Maduro had been captured. “And I swear you won’t believe me, but I couldn’t feel my legs. I mean, I had to kneel down and lean on something because I couldn’t believe it.”

‘A necessary evil’

Many Venezuelans in exile shared a similar experience: initial confusion, followed by excitement after hearing the news of Maduro’s arrest. However, their perspectives on what is to come differ. 

“Certainly, the situation in my country is very complex, and everything that has happened has generated a lot of controversy, but in my opinion, I think that this surgical intervention by the United States is a step that was necessary to restore democracy and stability to the country,” Valero said, adding that, “deep down, Venezuelans know that the United States’ involvement right now is a necessary evil.”

Bárbara Guevara, who has owned a Venezuelan restaurant in Mexico City for 12 years, echoed a similar sentiment. “I think that if it hadn’t happened this way, we would be like Cuba, and that scares me much more,” she said. However, her fear still outweighs hope. “I want Venezuela to become a new Panama. But based on Trump’s own statements, it’s going to become an Iraq.”

Manuel Chacón, a Chief Operating Officer of a technology company in Mexico City, who left Venezuela in 2017 after being at the forefront of many anti-government protests, is also hesitant to celebrate. “I’m not truly content. Obviously, one feels joy at seeing Maduro imprisoned, but matters are far from being properly resolved.” Worse, he fears the situation could deteriorate. “If the U.S. oversimplifies the problem and only changes the middleman, replacing Maduro with Delcy Rodríguez [Maduro’s vice-president], the situation could become much more complex than it was with Maduro.”    

Chacón had brought a special bottle of rum from Venezuela to celebrate the eventual fall of the Chavista regime, but it remains in his cupboard. “I didn’t want to open it even though I saw the photo of Maduro’s arrest. No, there is still some way to go.”

Mariela Hernández, who has lived in Mexico City for 10 years and currently runs an art workshop business, has a more positive outlook. “A country like the United States is not going to invest millions of dollars for another actor of the same Chavista government to remain in power; that is not going to happen.” She noted that “the transition will certainly be difficult, but there will be a path to democracy for Venezuela that has undoubtedly already begun.”

A Mexican lens

Hernández voiced that some Mexicans have expressed to her that they oppose the United States’ military actions in her country because they violate the sovereignty of the people. To this, she responded, “The sovereignty of my people was violated 26 years ago; there is no longer any sovereignty, there is nothing left to protect.” She added, “Yes, it’s an invasion, but it’s an invasion that will bring freedom to a country that has been oppressed for 26 years.” 

Silvia Lopez, a market analyst with a bachelor’s degree in political science from Monterrey, agrees that, as a Mexican who has not lived in Venezuela during Maduro’s regime, she does not have the knowledge to comment on what the end of Maduro’s presidency means for the country. At the same time, she fears that the foreign invasion of Venezuela sets a precedent for other countries, especially Mexico, as immediate neighbors of the United States: “Today it’s them, and tomorrow it could be us.” 

“I see it as a double-edged sword,” Lopez commented. “On the one hand, you want to celebrate the good news for all the people who have lived in precarious conditions because of Maduro’s regime. But at the same time, it is also worrying to see how easily the U.S. government was able to intervene and kidnap the current president of a country, although not a legitimate or democratic president, and drop bombs and attack the civilian population.” 

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has also condemned the U.S. military operation. “We categorically reject intervention in the internal affairs of other countries,” she said during her daily press conference on Monday, after Trump suggested over the weekend that “something has to be done about Mexico.”

Sheinbaum: ‘Intervention does not bring democracy to the people’

Mariana Pinto, a communication sciences graduate from Mexico City, takes a different stance. “I am in favor of the intervention. Whether it was Russia, China or the United States, someone had to intervene because the country was under a dictatorship that had plunged it into extreme poverty.” 

Pinto prefers to trust the opinion of the Venezuelans she has spoken to, who seem happy, instead of casting her own judgment as an outsider. “You shouldn’t talk about a country’s government and give your opinion, because they are the only ones who know what is happening.”

Two communities, contrasting responses

Many Mexican protestors who joined demonstrations on Saturday and Sunday would disagree with Pinto.

In Oaxaca city, for example, members of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) and other social organizations took the stage on the main square’s kiosk after marching through the city center on Jan. 3 to voice their disapproval of Maduro’s capture.

“The aggression against Venezuela is an aggression against all peoples who fight for their sovereignty, self-determination and control of their natural resources. It is a message of war to any nation that dares to break away from imperialist logic,” one of the spokespeople exclaimed. 

“That is why from Oaxaca, a territory of struggle, resistance and dignity, we call for immediate and permanent mobilization, reaffirming that peace can only be built with social justice and popular sovereignty,” she added. Meanwhile, the public chanted “Stop the imperialist war,” “Yankees out of Venezuela” and “Yankees out of Latin America.”

The same day, a group of protestors in Mexico City gathered at the U.S. and Venezuelan embassies to “express the total rejection of any kind of U.S. intervention,” as Jorge Rivas, a political activist and an active member of the Communist Party of Mexico, put it. 

“This is a clear message to Mexico and the entire continent that any country that does not bow to U.S. interests will be invaded or intervened in,” Rivas said. “Always with an excuse supported by a narrative, such as the weapons of mass destruction of Asian countries, and today, the word terrorism is replaced by drug trafficking, and the same approach is taken.”

Some Venezuelans in Mexico City struggled to understand Mexican protestors’ motives and felt that by using Venezuelan flags, they were posing as Venezuelans while defending Maduro’s government. 

Valero shares this opinion: “It would be very inconsistent of me, coming from a country where freedom of expression is not currently possible, to say these protests [by Mexicans] are wrong.” But she argued, “As a Venezuelan, I reject the fact that there are people of other nationalities who pretend to be Venezuelan, supporting something they don’t really know because they haven’t experienced it themselves.”

Hernández agreed. “We don’t understand why the Mexicans not only spoke, but also pretended to know more about the situation in Venezuela than we ourselves, who have suffered all these years.”

Contrary to these protests, following the capture of Maduro, some Venezuelans took to Mexico’s state capitals to celebrate.

Hernández herself was one of dozens of Venezuelans who gathered at Polanco’s Parque Lincoln in Mexico City. “What motivated me to join this gathering was to celebrate the beginning of the end of the dictatorship in Venezuela,” she explained.

Valero, on the other hand, noted that celebrations feel premature. “There are many families in Venezuela that are crying for their relatives,” she said, “and others cannot celebrate or raise their voices because they are not allowed to.” As the situation develops, for most people, joy and fear continue to exist side by side.

Vera Sistermans is a freelance journalist and security analyst based in Mexico City. Her work mostly focuses on Indigenous culture, violence and resilience.

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“Stunned, we watched as the building directly across from our house crumbled,” recalls Cristina Silvana Torres Pompa, a resident of the Tlatelolco neighborhood. “All we could do was cry, hug each other, and pray while everything creaked and we heard glass breaking. The earth shook so violently that it shook us to our core.” 

Survivors share memories of the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City

At 7:19 a.m. on September 19, 1985, an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.1 collapsed hundreds of buildings and killed an estimated 10,000 people (although some death toll estimates are as high as 45,000). 

Cristina Silvana, along with 29 other survivors, shared her story at an event titled “Living Books — After the earthquake: Voices that rebuild,” which the Ministry for Comprehensive Risk Management and Civil Protection organized on September 17 and 20 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the disaster. 

Living Books was designed to be “an exercise of memory,” Johan Antonio Toro Marín, the Ministry’s Resilience Policy Coordinator and organizer of the event, explained, highlighting the importance of such a platform. “We realized that memory, and memory of risk and disaster, is very short,” he said, “and all the people who lived through 1985 are now over 50.”

As Toro Marín noted, younger generations and those who have migrated to Mexico’s capital might be oblivious to what was lost in the rubble. Nevertheless, the stories shared at the “Living Books” event demonstrated that the 1985 earthquake continues to affect countless lives, prompting many to reassess their perspectives and priorities. 

A chance to say ‘thank you’

16-year-old Carolina Rojas Ávila was still asleep in her family’s apartment in La Roma’s Benito Juárez housing complex when the earthquake hit. Woken by a strong movement, she watched in horror as the building collapsed around her.

“My mother and I looked at each other, and I knew she was saying goodbye to me. The roof collapsed on top of my mother and brother; they disappeared right before my eyes,” Carolina tells the audience, reading from her story. “The floor began to rise, causing me to slide until my legs were covered in debris. I just closed my eyes because I knew it was the end.” 

Hours later, three strangers pulled her and her family members from the rubble of their home with their bare hands,  but many of her friends from the building did not survive.

She never found out who her rescuers were. “I could not thank them, and that feeling stayed with me forever. Now people look at me a little strangely because I am grateful for everything. I never miss the chance to say thank you.”

A calling to become a rescuer

While people like Carolina had to adapt to a life without their home and loved ones, others became rescue workers almost overnight. 

“I wanted to be a veterinarian; that was my dream. However, the earthquake of September 19, 1985, changed the course of my life,” said Rafael López López, who shared his story titled “The Volunteer Experience That Changed My Life.”

The day after the earthquake, Rafael was walking through the disaster-stricken city center when a dump truck drove by, looking for volunteers for rescue efforts: in the Tlatelolco neighborhood, the enormous Nuevo León residential building had collapsed entirely. In response, the 20-year-old grabbed a metal helmet from his collection of military memorabilia and joined the improvised brigade. Over the following weeks, Rafael and other mostly inexperienced volunteers working in Tlatelolco pulled hundreds of bodies from the rubble. Against all odds, they managed to save a few survivors. 

“We did everything empirically. Thank God it worked,” Rafael’s fellow volunteer Benjamín Izunza González points out.

“The press dubbed us Los Topos (The Moles) because we resembled the little animals, entering through holes, digging tunnels,” Rafael says. 

40 years later, the Topos de Tlatelolco continue to volunteer as a rescue team, responding to national and international disasters, including the 2023 earthquake in Turkey and the 2015 earthquake in Nepal.

How the 1985 earthquake changed Mexico City 

Rafael currently serves as the president of Los Topos. He also reconsidered his career aspirations as a veterinarian and is now applying the lessons he learned as a rescue worker in his position as Outreach and Training Policy Coordinator at Mexico City’s Department of Comprehensive Risk Management and Civil Protection.

The 1985 earthquake, which remains the strongest Mexico has registered to this date, not only changed the course of the lives of numerous individuals but also transformed the country’s perspective on disaster response and preparedness. 

“In 1985, we had nothing. There were no protocols, mechanisms or government policies,” says Rafael. “Over the past 40 years, we have seen tremendous development in various areas.” 

In May 1986, authorities established the National Civil Protection System, and since 1991, Mexico City has operated a seismic alert system featuring over 4,000 sirens strategically placed throughout the city, as noted by Toro Marín.

Additionally, city officials have adapted building codes to reduce vulnerability. “The 1985 earthquake exceeded expectations of what the seismic demand on a structure would be,” Toro Marín explains. “The lessons learned from the 1985 earthquake became the 1987 regulations.” 

This year, on the 40th anniversary of the disaster that shaped Mexico City, its policies and the lives of many residents, events like Living Books and the annual September 19 disaster drill ensure that the stories and lessons from the 1985 tragedy continue to strengthen the city’s resilience.  

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For the last 11 days, police across the state have been engaged in a general strike, demanding fired colleagues be reinstated, for better pay and healthcare, as well as deploring dangerous security conditions.

On March 26, an off-duty officer of the Metropolitan Police was killed while driving through Fresnillo, Zacatecas. Armed civilians blocked the road and fired more than 20 bullets at his vehicle, after which they lit it on fire.

A few weeks before, another officer had been shot just meters away from the police station, and several others were killed in private or public vehicles earlier in the year.

According to the register of police killings by Causa en Común, Zacatecas is the state with the highest number of such killings in 2022 so far, having risen steadily from third position in 2021, and 13th in 2020.

Zacatecas’ police force was already in dire straits. María de la Luz Domínguez Campos, president of the Human Rights Commission of the state, says that according to the U.N. recommendations on the ratio of police officers to inhabitants, the state has a deficit of over 3,000 officers. In November 2021, there were at least five municipalities that had no police officers at all.

This crisis in policing comes as wider violence in Zacatecas is also on the rise. According to figures released by the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System, homicides in the state increased by 143% between 2020 and 2021, from 789 to 1,134, making Zacatecas the state with the highest homicide rates in Mexico. In response, the government launched Operation Zacatecas II in November 2021, sending 3,848 troops to the state in an effort to keep order.

InSight Crime analysis

This wave of police killings can best be understood in light of the ongoing turf war ravaging Zacatecas and the state’s inability to protect its forces.

Zacatecas is a battleground for the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and smaller groups with whom each have formed alliances. The state is vital to these cartels because of its strategic location along drug trafficking routes to the United States.

Amid the rise in violence resulting from this war, which intensified in 2021, police officers have been unable to adequately protect themselves. According to Mexican gun laws, officers are not allowed to carry arms when off duty. This makes them easy targets once they leave work.

Furthermore, very few arrests have been made in relation to these killings, reflecting the broader issue of impunity afflicting Mexico, and Zacatecas in particular. In 2020, the percentage of crimes that were either not denounced or not investigated was 93% nationally, and 95% in Zacatecas.

Gustavo Aguilar, the mayor of Loreto, one of Zacatecas’ municipalities without a single police officer, explained that he had no force because since the murder of their colleagues the security agents had been too afraid. On March 19, a group of Zacatecas police officers went on strike, accusing senior officers of abuse of power and harassment, and demanding financial support for the families of victims. On the same day, at least 20 officers left their positions because they felt threatened.

Reprinted from InSight Crime. Vera Sistermans is a writer with InSight Crime, a foundation dedicated to the study of organized crime.

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