""A lot of people inside my family, who are still there, were always saying 'we're still waiting for the hit to come', but nobody really knew what it would look like.""
""It definitely affected me, and also a lot of Venezuelans who were planning on going home and who were left stranded in airports all across Europe.""
""He wasn't popular at all, mainly because since he was elected in 2013 after the death of Chavez, the country just went through an insane amount of economic turmoil, and the currency went down, the private sector shrunk. The GDP went down, and with that, people's livelihoods, work and savings and businesses just tanked.""
""These are the ones that are exacting all the arrests, disappearing people, doing all the ugly business,""
Venezuelans in Ireland reacted with shock after news that President Nicolás Maduro was captured by US forces following strikes on the Venezuelan capital. Reinaldo Istanboulie described the attack as a "huge, huge surprise" and said the "lightning strike" quickness left his family in disbelief. Rising tensions with the US had already deterred some from returning home for Christmas and left others stranded in airports across Europe. Maduro was widely unpopular after 2013 amid severe economic turmoil, currency collapse, private sector contraction, falling GDP and damaged livelihoods. Concern remains that key regime figures such as defence minister Vladimir Padrino López and vice-president Delcy Rodriguez still hold power and carry out arrests and disappearances.
Read at Irish Independent
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