Voices in Miami support the transition in Venezuela after the capture of Maduro and send signals about Cuba.
MIAMI, United States. – Political figures of Cuban origin in South Florida and representatives linked to the Venezuelan opposition agreed that the immediate priority after the capture of Nicolás Maduro must be a rapid transition that leads to elections and the release of political prisoners.
Congressman Carlos Giménez said to CubaNet that, given the scenario opened after Maduro’s forced departure from power, there is no manual to guide the process, but he insisted that the transition should be measured in months and not years. “There is no plan, there is no book for this, what happens when you eliminate a dictator,” he said. In his opinion, “everyone is learning,” but the objective must be “to reach a transition, of months, not years,” because, he explained, you cannot “continue negotiating with these people (…) the same people who were there with Nicolás Maduro, the same regime, is illegitimate.”
Giménez added that the process must preserve stability while organizing institutional change: “We have to maintain peace, and they have the infrastructure to do that, but that will only last a while.” In this framework, he proposed as the next step “a transition for elections, so that the Venezuelan people can choose their own leader, and to establish democracy in Venezuela.”
Addressing specifically the Cuban audience, Giménez asserted: “When the president of the United States mentions it more than once [al régimen cubano]in 24 hours, I take note. “I don’t know what he has in mind, because I haven’t spoken to him, but when he says ‘Cuba doesn’t have much time’, ok, let’s see what he’s saying…”, he expressed.
Along the same lines of urgency regarding the schedule, María Teresa Morín, coordinator of the Vente Party in the United States, pointed out that the “most important moment now” for Venezuelans is the transition and that “it should not last long.” Morín proposed two political routes: “Either the result of the elections of July 28, 2024 is recognized, or new elections are called.”
In this scenario, he assured that Venezuelans have “not the slightest doubt that Maria Corina Machado I would win an election in Venezuela.” For Morín, the immediate sequence must begin with guarantees of rights: “I believe that step number one is going to be the release of all political prisoners, and then begin this great work of national reconstruction.”
Omar González Moreno, a Venezuelan deputy, framed Maduro’s capture as the realization of a political and moral demand that, he said, Machado herself had formulated. “We had a dream, which María Corina Machado described with crystal clarity, we did not want Maduro dead, we wanted him in front of justice,” he stated. And he added: “Today we can point out that the Venezuelan people see that dream come true, of seeing this subject who caused so much damage, so much suffering to the people, facing justice, and that justice is applied so that the impunity of these tyrants who destroy and plunder the people of the world is definitively put to an end.”
consulted by CubaNet Regarding the “interference of Cuba within Venezuela”, González Moreno described it as “disastrous” and linked it to the security framework built since the arrival of Hugo Chávez to power. “Unfortunately, the Cubans, since Chávez came to power, have become the fundamental advisors in the security area,” he said.
This advice, he added, led to the adoption of a political control apparatus that he compared to the political police of the former East Germany: “They transformed what was the German Stasi into a tropical Stasi and they applied it completely to us in Venezuela, with torture, imprisonment, persecutions, human rights violations, murders.”
Cuban-American Dariel Fernández, county tax collector, also offered statements to CubaNet: “What we are seeing in the last hours, in the last days, is already the light at the end of the tunnel,” he stated. “The freedom of the people of Cuba is close. We are seeing it, President Trump has said it in the last few hours, that the freedom of Cuba is close. He has said it in his own way of saying it.”
Fernández attributed a determining role to the Cuban political system in recent Venezuelan history and described it as the origin of the authoritarian drift of the South American country. “The Castro-communist dictatorship is the cause of what has happened in Venezuela for 27 years. It was the one that trained Hugo Chávez,” he said. “Today, more than ever, the freedom of Venezuela is there and the freedom of Cuba is also closer than ever,” he concluded.
Alina García, Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor, also connected Maduro’s fall with expectations about Cuba: “I hope in God that just as Venezuela has been freed from the clutches of the dictator, that Cuba will also be freed from the clutches of the dictator,” she said.
García maintained that “the Cuban people need to speak, and say that they want freedom,” and called for support of individual efforts: “Each one of us has to continue fighting, do our little bit.”
