The Price of a Miracle: Why I’m Celebrating the Unthinkable

If you’re confused by why Venezuelans are cheering today, I’m writing this for you.

The early morning hours of January 3, 2026 erupted with the kind of phone chaos Venezuelans recognize instantly: WhatsApp voice notes stacking up, family group chats exploding, friends posting the same stories, as if repeating it could make it real.

¿Es verdad? ¿Lo agarraron?

For years, being Venezuelan has meant living inside a single verb: waiting. Waiting for news. Waiting for change. Waiting for the world to notice. Waiting for a miracle you don’t fully let yourself believe in, because believing starts to feel like emotional debt.

And then, on that Saturday morning, the unthinkable happened.

The U.S. launched an operation that included strikes on military installations and a raid in which U.S. special forces seized Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, transported them out of the country, and flew them to the United States, where Maduro is now being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn ahead of court proceedings.

Within hours, President Trump didn’t just confirm it. He said the United States would "run the country” until what he called a “safe, proper and judicious transition,” and he openly tied that takeover to Venezuela’s oil, saying the U.S. would be “reimbursed” from the “money coming out of the ground.”

So yes, I understand the question so many non-Venezuelans are asking:
How can anyone celebrate this?

I’m going to answer you honestly.

I don’t usually use my Substack for politics, not because I don’t care and not because I’m afraid of controversy, but because I want this space to hold the human side of things: the emotional truth behind what we watch unfold. But this moment is too seismic to stay quiet. I’m giving myself permission to celebrate.

Yes, I’m celebrating. I’m happy.

Not because I’m blind to history or ignorant of how interventions can go wrong.

I get why many of you heard “we’ll run the country” and your mind snapped to Iraq, Afghanistan, nation-building, civilian suffering, and a superpower crossing a line it can’t uncross.

That reaction is real. It’s informed. It’s not crazy.

But Venezuelans aren’t reacting from theory. We’re reacting from two decades of lived captivity, from watching institutions turn into weapons, from seeing the state become a machine that protects itself while ordinary people shrink their lives down to survival.

From the outside, this looks like a warning. From inside the Venezuelan nervous system, it feels like a lifeboat.

Now let’s address what people are saying out loud.

Let’s not pretend this is subtle. The loudest commentary right now is about oil.

The accusation online has been immediate: this is a resource play dressed up as justice. And the truth is, President Trump’s own words poured fuel on that interpretation. Trump said major U.S. oil companies would move back into Venezuela, refurbish degraded infrastructure, and that an occupation “won’t cost us a penny” because the U.S. would be reimbursed from Venezuela’s oil reserves.

If you’re reading this from the outside, your skepticism spikes right there. It sounds like the oldest story in the world: moral language first, invoice later.

I’m not going to pretend those concerns don’t matter.

I’m also not going to pretend Venezuelans have been living in anything other than a nightmare.

Venezuela sits on the largest proven oil reserves on earth, and yet our oil industry has been gutted into a monument to corruption and decay. Whatever wealth existed didn’t rebuild a functioning country. It bought loyalty. It funded repression. It kept the machinery running.

Meanwhile, millions of Venezuelans did what human beings do when survival is on the line: we left. The UN reported the Venezuelan exodus at roughly 7.7 million people since 2014, one of the largest displacement crises in the world.

For many of us, that number isn’t a statistic. It’s a roll call.

And this is where the María Corina Machado question comes in, because people keep asking it, especially those who support Venezuela’s democratic movement.

“If María Corina is the moral leader of the opposition, why didn’t the U.S. name her the new leader immediately? If her side won the election, why not hand power directly to her?”

Because the regime spent years making sure Machado couldn’t simply step into power on command.

Machado wasn’t “overlooked.” She was barred from running in 2024 despite winning the opposition primary by a landslide.

So the opposition did what Venezuelans have learned to do in a dictatorship: adapt without surrendering. They rallied behind Edmundo González Urrutia, the unity candidate she backed. After the vote, Machado said González won around 70% and the opposition published tallies to support its claim, while the regime declared Maduro the winner.

The United States later recognized González as the winner of the disputed 2024 election, citing “overwhelming evidence,” even as Maduro stayed in power.

Then came the crackdown. González fled. Machado went into hiding. She was in hiding for a year after arrests following the disputed vote.

In Venezuela, “winning” an election has never been the same thing as being allowed to govern.

And yes, María Corina Machado did just win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025, awarded for her struggle to promote democratic rights and a peaceful transition in Venezuela. (I wrote about the significance of it in another Substack post.)

That prize doesn’t solve Venezuela’s crisis, but it matters because it confirms what Venezuelans already know: this has been one of the most courageous democratic movements in the world, and it has been met with systematic repression.

This is also why Maduro’s capture is not a neat movie ending where you remove one man and democracy blossoms overnight. The machine doesn’t evaporate just because the face is gone.

You can see that reality immediately.

On January 4, 2026, Venezuela’s Supreme Court ordered Vice President Delcy Rodríguez to assume the role of interim president in Maduro’s absence.

Delcy Rodríguez is far from a clean break from the system Venezuelans have been fighting. She has been part of the regime’s inner circle for years, and she has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury since 2018.

So yes, this is messy. Power is trying to reorganize itself in real time. We’ll see what happens next.

And still, I’m celebrating.

Because for the first time in over twenty years, Venezuelans are not being asked to pretend that our misery is normal. We are not being told to adapt to the unacceptable. We are not being instructed to keep our grief tidy so the rest of the world can look away comfortably.

My dad passed away in Caracas in 2018 during the Venezuelan humanitarian crisis. He died in a country that had become smaller and darker every year, where hope felt like something you had to ration.

All I can think today is: he should have seen this.

My dad at one the countless rallies where he marched to protest the regime.

I don’t know exactly what tomorrow looks like. I don’t know what deals will be attempted, what violence could erupt, what promises will be made or broken.

But I know what today feels like. It feels like the end of a long, brutal night.

So yes, I’m happy. And I’m grateful to the United States for doing what so many thought would never happen, because today millions of Venezuelans feel something we haven’t felt in years: relief.

If you have a friend watching Venezuelans celebrate and saying, “How can they possibly feel that way?” Share this with them.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for caring. Gracias por estar. If you liked this article, I would be humbled if you shared it with your loved ones.