No food. No electricity. No more? <\/p>\n
The Venezuelan community in Los Angeles is hopeful change is finally on the horizon after the Trump administration captured Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores<\/a> over the weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEverything was bad\u2014food, gas and electricity were all in short supply, and services barely functioned,\u201d Carlos, a Venezuelan Uber driver in Los Angeles, told The Post.<\/p>\n Carlos, a Venezeulan uber driver in Los Angeles, said he\u2019d go days at a time without eating. Barbara Davidson for NY Post<\/p>\n Carlos \u2014 who still has family back home in Venezuela \u2014 asked us not to use his last name out of fear for speaking out. He said he was happy to see the ousted dictator arrested on narco-terrorism charges<\/a>. \u201cThere came a point when I was going three days without eating.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Another Venezuelan, who asked not to be identified because his family is still in the country, said the disgraced despot \u201ctruly deserves to be imprisoned\u201d just as Maduro imprisoned him.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI was imprisoned for protesting in 2017 against the government, I was tortured<\/a>,\u201d he told The Post. \u201cAll Venezuelans are happy with the United States because Maduro has committed many crimes in our country. He has sent drugs to other countries.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n There are an estimated 30,000 Venezuelans living in Los Angeles, and while many of them celebrate what they see as a new opportunity for prosperity and change in their country, elected officials, like Mayor Karen Bass<\/a>, called it a \u201creckless decision.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTo strike Venezuela to remove Nicol\u00e1s Maduro risks chaos, violence, and entrenching the United States in a conflict that the American people did not ask for,\u201d Bass said in a social media post<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n But perhaps Bass has a different perspective on dictatorships, given her history in Cuba as a member of the Venceremos Brigade \u2014 essentially a joint venture between radical leftists activists and the Cuban government.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bass said Castro\u2019s death was a \u201cgreat loss to the people of Cuba.\u201d Facebook\/Karen Bass<\/p>\n Mayor Karen Bass took multiple trips to Cuba in the 1970s. X\/Congresswoman Bass<\/p>\n Bass took multiple trips to Cuba with the Brigade in the 1970s. Bass addressed her relationship with the organization in an article with The Atlantic in 2020, saying she \u201cbuilt houses during the day\u201d and attend \u201ccultural activities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t have any illusions that the people in Cuba had the same freedoms I did,\u201d she told the outlet.\u00a0<\/p>\n When Cuban dictator Fidel Castro died in 2016, Bass raised eyebrows when she referred to the Cuban autocrat as the \u201cComandante en Jefe\u201d<\/a> and said his death \u201cis a great loss to the people of Cuba.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe California Post is coming soon. Sign up for updates.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet in early. Be the first to know about launch and home delivery.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Bass later told Fox News that she has since changed her view<\/a> and realized the Castro government \u201cwas a brutal regime.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The Los Angeles mayor isn\u2019t alone in her criticism<\/a> of the Trump administration. Protests erupted across the country<\/a>, including Los Angeles at rallies dubbed \u201cHands off Venezuela.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Felix, who lives in LA, but grew up in the oil-rich nation, told The Post that politicians and protesters who are upset over the Trump administration\u2019s decision to remove Maduro don\u2019t understand the reality of the situation.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the latest on Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u2019s capture:<\/p>\n \u201cRegular people, like you or me, search through the trash looking for something to eat. People don\u2019t know that in Venezuela you can get incarcerated just for an Instagram story or a WhatsApp story,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Trump administration<\/a> said it will temporarily run Venezuela and tap into its oil reserves, a resource that Felix argued never benefited the people who lived in Venezuela anyway.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat oil belongs to Russia, that oil belongs to Cuba, to Iran, to China, and they [Venezuela] used that oil to buy guns, to kill Venezuelan people,\u201d Felix said. \u201cThat has never been our oil, so if the U.S. wants our oil, perfect, if that\u2019s the price we have to pay\u2014it couldn\u2019t be worse than how we were, 27 years with that regime.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe United States should return to Venezuela and arrest the remaining bad people,\u201d said Ronnier, who fled to the US when he was 18-years-old. Barbara Davidson for NY Post<\/p>\n The sentiment among everyone The Post spoke to was gratitude and optimism for the future \u2014 but there was also concern that more needs to be done.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe truth is that the United States should return to Venezuela and arrest the remaining bad people so that we can return to our country and make it a better place,\u201d Ronnier, who fled to America alone when he was just 18-years-old, told The Post.\u00a0<\/p>\n