When Donald Trump says live from the huge television screen that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro will be tried in the US, the twenty Venezuelans in Gouda spontaneously start clapping. They have come from all over the Netherlands to this new-build home and folded themselves on a corner sofa and a set of stools in the cramped living room to watch the Spanish dub of the American president’s speech together.
Of course, they have reservations about Trump and the actions of the Americans, says hostess Tanya de la Villa. The future is uncertain and “it is far from finished in Venezuela.” She is politically active for the opposition and has lived in the Netherlands for four years. But today the prevailing feeling is that “anything is better than the Maduro regime.”
Outside there is snow and there are bicycles and a fat bike, inside the heating is blaring and yellow-blue-red flags flank the enormous Christmas tree. Here, in De la Villa’s rental home near Gouda Goverwelle station, the Dutch branch of the Venezuelan opposition is gathered to jointly celebrate the ousting of President Maduro. And to listen to the Americans’ plans for their country.
Asylum seeker center
The organizer of the meeting in Gouda is David Cáceres Martínez, spokesperson for the Venezuelan Refugees Foundation in the Netherlands. He himself lives in an asylum seeker center in Harderwijk, where, in addition to his job in a glass factory, he has “plenty of time” to organize the Dutch social media activities of the ‘Comando Con Venezuela’. This command – affiliated with the Venezuelan opposition leader, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Maria Machado – is a loose association of politically conscious Venezuelans, who know each other from demonstrations and actions in the Netherlands against the Maduro regime.
Martínez had contact with opposition leaders in Venezuela an hour before Trump’s speech, he says. He looks tired, he’s been awake since last night watching the news. Today he is the center of attention and, as a fully-fledged revolutionary, he speaks to a NOS camera crew in a mixture of Dutch, Spanish and English.
“We are receiving instructions: we are not supposed to celebrate the victory loudly,” says Martínez in the kitchen, while the hostess’s children, one by one, grab all the cookies from a plate for the opposition members. “Our message: we are in the transition to a democracy. We have a long road ahead of us and we will do everything we can to ensure that this goes smoothly.”
Resistance History College
Because Trump’s speech starts half an hour later than planned, Martínez takes the time for a resistance history lecture, in Spanish. “Compare this with D-Day,” he says to his supporters from a stool next to the television. “That was the beginning of the turnaround. After the invasion of Normandy, it took months and months before the Germans really surrendered. That’s how it will be in our country.”
De la Villa, who has her picture taken on the steps of her house with flags and supporters, is not a fan of steely frames and historical perspectives. She “could cry for joy” that her country has been liberated, she says. She thinks of her old neighbors and friends in Maracay, more than 100 kilometers from the capital Caracas. Everyone has been living in fear for the past few years and the period ahead is equally scary, she says.
Will she soon return to her native country? She fled to the Netherlands four years ago, she wants to, but her life is now here. Her children go to school in Gouda and now speak fluent Dutch. For the time being, she is more interested in doing “everything possible from the Netherlands to make Venezuela a normal country again.”
And so everyone present in Gouda has their own perspective on the events. This is also due to everyone’s personal history, says organizer Martínez. One was imprisoned in Caracas for political activities, the other fled because he did not want to work as a police officer for the Maduro regime.
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Unreal
Attendee Ruth Martinez hovers between hope and fear. On behalf of the liberal party Vente Venezuela, she tries to follow developments in her old hometown of Caracas as best she can, but that is not easy from Zutphen, she says. “We have been waiting for the fall of the regime for so long. It is surreal and very unexpected that this is happening today.”
“We must do everything we can to improve the future,” says Martinez, as a friend shows videos of shootings on the streets of Caracas on her phone to illustrate the lawlessness in Venezuela. “The future of our country is being written from today, we must interfere as much as possible with the new rules of the game from here.”
She calls the fact that that future is now in the hands of Donald Trump “frightening.” But, says Martinez: “It is better that Maduro is gone. 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country in recent years, the diaspora is huge. We must reconquer Venezuela. Now is the time.”
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