Dr. Gabriela Nagy is Venezuelan-American. She spent her early childhood in Venezuela and now lives in Milwaukee, working as a clinical psychologist and UWM assistant professor. She says she has a dual identity of sorts. This past Saturday morning, those identities clashed while she was asleep.
“I was in bed sleeping,” says Nagy, “And all of a sudden my WhatsApp group with my family started beeping in the middle of the night.”
Around 2 a.m. local time, the U.S. bombed Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela, and captured the nation's president, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores.
Nagy was worried about her family in Venezuela. The AP reports that at least 50 people were killed in the attacks.
“Everyone in my family was safe because those attacks were around military areas,” Nagy says. “But they were close enough to hear the explosions.”
Shortly after, she talked with her mom about the attack. Her parents moved the family from the country while it was under then-president Hugo Chavez’s regime. Her mom was triggered by the attacks, saying it brought her back to 1989, when the family was still in Venezuela and the caracazo, which were coordinated protests against austerity measures in the country, was happening. It’s estimated that anywhere between two and five thousand people died.
“It really elicited mass riots and looting through Caracas because of all of this political turmoil,” said Nagy. “But still, no one expected this.”
In Milwaukee, this past Monday night, above the Locust Street freeway overpass, Milwaukee’s Anti-war Committee dropped a banner denouncing the military raid.
“As an organization, we’ve been following Venezuela over the past couple of months already and it felt like something was about to burst,” says member Sara Onitsuka.
They were out protesting the bombing of a sovereign nation, calling it a “deeply unpopular war” in the U.S., just like Iraq and Gaza. The protestors said the U.S. needs to focus on our own country’s problems.
“People are struggling to survive right now,” said Onitsuka. “Healthcare is an issue, housing is an issue, education is an issue. Just affording groceries and being able to live is an issue. We’re seeing evictions all over the place as well. And people are being hit so hard in their daily lives and we’re seeing billions and billions of dollars being invested in the war machine and we’re saying, what gives? There is that money and that money is being used to kill other people.”
The Anti-war Committee has already planned a whole month of action to educate folks on Venezuela and the role the U.S. has played in destabilizing the country.
While Maduro is being charged with narco-terrorism, among other things, President Trump has stated the invasion was to control the country’s oil reserves. Trump has also said the U.S. will play a role in running Venezuela moving forward.
“We see that the road ahead is a bumpy one,” says Maria Fernanda Bozmoski. “There is no roadmap and there are more questions than answers at this point.”
Bozmoski is the director of the Atlantic Council’s Latin American Center. It's a non-partisan think tank deeply entrenched across different countries. In early 2024, the center released a paper reimagining the U.S.’s role in Latin America.
“We believe engagement should support collaboration over coercion,” Bozmoski says. “But of course the Trump administration has a different approach in the way they view the region.”
Basically there is — or was — an opportunity for the U.S. to bridge-build in Latin America. Bozmoski says the attacks this past weekend do not do that, and she believes the action sets a precedent.
“This is an unconventional president with a secretary of state [Marco Rubio] who knows the region, who has personal ties to the region and I would dare say that this is just the first of big U.S. actions in the region,” Bozmoski says.
I talked with a few more Milwaukee-based Venezuelans. One, who didn’t want to be named out of fear for their family still in Caracas, said there’s a duality here: they love both countries, and you’ll always love your home country, even with all of its problems.
And even though they didn’t like ousted President Maduro, they don’t agree with how the U.S. removed him, even if there is a temporary sense of relief. At least now, they say, people are paying attention.
