Venezuelan New Yorkers Protest Election Results in Homeland—Decry President Maduro’s “Fraud” & “Oppression”

Hundreds of impassioned Venezuelan New Yorkers converged on Union Square Saturday Aug. 3 to protest the fiercely disputed results of the recent Presidential election in their native country. This gathering was the second such protest in as many days, with a smaller, albeit similarly outraged, rally occurring outside the United Nations early Friday evening.

The object of the protesters’ fury has a name: President Nicolás Maduro, who has been the nation’s Socialist dictator since 2013 and claims to have won reelection on July 28, with 51.2 percent of the vote. Maduro’s leading opponent, Edmundo González, is said to have received 44.2 percent of the ballots.

These figures are widely considered fraudulent, and the election process has been questioned both in Venezuela and by most of that nation’s regional neighbors.

One Venezuelan opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado—who herself had been banned from running in the election after picayune allegations that she didn’t include some food vouchers on her asset declaration—claimed the real vote count was 70 percent González, 30 percent Maduro.

“We won and everybody knows it,” declared Machado. “We haven’t just defeated them politically and morally, today we defeated them with votes.”

Chile President Gabriel Boric proclaimed the results “hard to believe” and Peru, citing a “violation of popular will,” withdrew its ambassador from Caracas.

The United States too is critical, with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken expressing “serious concerns that the result does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people.”

What all this has to do with New York should be obvious: Venezuela, under the dictatorial socialism of Mudaro has become both an economic disaster, and a human rights disgrace, thus the huge waves of Venezuelan immigrants coming to the capitalist wonderland of America. Some reports peg the number of Venezuelan immigrants this year to date as nearly a quarter of the total number.

Hugely popular, Maria Corina Machado is herself an avowed capitalist who wants to privatize numerous industries controlled by the state since the rise of Venezuela’s prior Socialist dictator, Hugo Chávez. In the topsy-turvy world of anti-strongarm politics, she, ever as a center-right figure, is considered among the nation’s true progressives.

Meanwhile, as President Mudaro tries to legitimize his contested “victory” by crushing dissent, the highly agitated Venezuelan diaspora, which still loves its beleaguered homeland, hopes that public protests can bring increased attention to the plight of their nation and its people.

“Since I was little I have grown up with a dictatorship, how can I not want change?” one Venezuelan New Yorker, María Sánchez, told Univision during Friday’s U.N. protest.

“This is the beginning of the end,” said another demonstrator, Oscar Sanchez.

While newspaper headlines have lately been filled with stories about young Venezuelan migrants in trouble with the law, Saturday afternoon’s rally on the southern end of Union Square Park showed an entirely different side to this proud, and resilient people.

The first thing one noticed is how diverse the crowd was: old and young, men, women and children, most wearing some form of Venezuelan themed clothing (baseball caps and baseball and soccer jerseys), carrying a Venezuelan flag or protest sign, most in Spanish but many in English also.

The signs weren’t pre-made either, they were handcrafted in a variety of sizes and styles. Among them: “Venezueala Quiere Libertad y Paz”; “Maduro Out Democracy in Until the End!”; “Venezuela Needs Help Now!”; “We are being killed, kidnapped, tortured and deprived of our human rights. Where is the International Support? S.O.S. Venezuela”; and “Venezuela Screams Fraud!”.

Perhaps the best summation of a day bursting with love for the yellow, blue and red is “Estoy Aqui Por Todos Las Jovenes Que Hoy Ya No Estan! Venezuela Libre”—“I am here for all the young people not here today! Free Venezuela.”