DORAL, Florida — After hearing the news, it didn’t take long for Venezuelans across south Florida to gather outside El Arepazo, a popular restaurant for the diaspora community here. The revelry started in the wee hours on Saturday, shortly after reports of early morning explosions across the Venezuelan capital spread through WhatsApp group chats and broadcast television outlets: President Donald Trump had captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
People draped in Venezuelan flags danced, sang and chanted “¡Venezuela libre!” for hours. Cars along the street outside El Arepazo honked continuously as more and more people came trickling in to contribute to the chorus. Some even brought dogs wearing the colors of Venezuela’s national soccer team and small Venezuelan flags tied around their collars.
Doral City Councilman Rafael Pineyro, the only Venezuelan on the council, was over 200 miles away in Orlando when he got a call at 1:30. By 5 a.m., he was in his car, heading for El Arepazo.
“We know that certainly what the [Trump] administration was looking to do and promised to do, they made it happen,” Pineyro, a native of Caracas, said in an interview. “I'm happy that now that Nicolás Maduro is on his way over here to not only to pay for everything that he has done, not only to our Venezuelan people over there, [but] across different nations.”
Doral, commonly referred to as “Doralzuela,” is widely considered to be the epicenter for Venezuelans in the U.S., with the largest population concentration — more than 30 percent — in the country. Venezuelans have been migrating to the city in droves since its incorporation in 2003, as their home country spiraled into a decades-long political and economic crisis, bringing with them fear, anger, tears, sardonic humor and a lingering hope that the crisis would end — eventually.
Maduro’s descent from power was the goal many of south Florida’s MAGA-zolanos staked their votes on. While on the campaign trail, Trump stopped by Doral several times, deriding socialism and dubbing then presidential candidate Kamala Harris “Comrade Kamala.” It echoed a tactic he pulled against Joe Biden in 2020, tying the then-Democratic presidential candidate to Maduro.
And, for some voters, the messaging stuck. During the 2024 presidential election, Trump won Doral in a 23-point victory that surpassed his 4-point edge over Biden in the city in 2020. The surge contributed to Trump becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to win Miami- Dade County since 1988. Though Trump’s pressure campaign failed to drive Maduro away during his first term, supporters still held on to the belief that if anyone could effectively weaken Maduro’s regime, it would be Trump.
Luis Velasquez, who works as a courier, was frantically looking for a phone charger so he could send a photo of the festive scene to his boss. He said he never could have imagined he’d see the day when Maduro would be ousted. After years of repression and contested elections, he had nearly lost hope. When Velasquez first heard the news at 3 a.m., he said in Spanish, “I couldn’t even believe it, I had to hear the news at least 20 times because I couldn’t believe what was going on.”
Velasquez said he was grateful the U.S. had welcomed him when he left Venezuela 10 years ago and granted him political asylum — his wife, he said, was persecuted there for being a relative of an opposition member, so they had no choice but to leave. But Venezuela is his home and that’s where he hopes to return. Even though he’s not a U.S. citizen, he self-identifies as a Democrat and doesn’t agree with Trump’s crackdown on immigrants. (Doral was hit particularly hard after Trump revoked Venezuelans’ “temporary protected status,” a designation that allowed hundreds of thousands to stay in the U.S. because of the tumultuous conditions in their home country.) But this time, Velasquez said, Trump delivered.
“I thank God for President Trump who did the job — a good job — with Venezuela,” he continued. “He promised it and he is doing it, taking out the dictator Maduro so we Venezuelans can go back to our home and rebuild our lives.”
Pablo Medina, a former Venezuelan senator who founded the political party Fatherland for All back home — which initially sided with Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chávez before becoming a part of the Venezuelan opposition — said he had some knowledge that there would be action happening in Venezuela early this year, though he was vague about what he knew and how he knew it. So early in the morning, Medina started monitoring what was going on back home. As he sees it, Trump had to step in and support the opposition to usher in what he called Venezuela’s “second independence,” following in the footsteps of Britain and Ireland who backed Simón Bolívar when he wrested Venezuela from Spanish colonial rule.
For some in south Florida, Maduro’s capture marks a watershed moment for not just Venezuelans, but Cubans too. Several people carrying and waving Cuban flags joined in the celebration, clapping to the rhythm of a drum nearby. “Congratulations!” they shouted. One woman said, “I’m Cuban, but I’m with you all!” Another person said, “It’s Cuba’s turn.”
That’s a view that south Florida’s Cuban lawmakers share, bonded in opposition to Cuba’s and Venezuela’s socialist governments and troubled histories. Speaking at a press conference Saturday evening, Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-Fla.) said that he and his fellow Republican members, Mario Díaz-Balart and María Elvira Salazar, were “all Venezuelans” at this moment.
They are not only focused on what will happen next in Venezuela; Giménez added they are hoping the momentum will trigger a “domino effect” that will ultimately squash socialism and revive democracy in the petrostate and across the hemisphere.
Orlando Grimany, a Cuban who was visiting Miami from Kentucky, said in Spanish he felt “immense joy, even though it’s not Cuba, but it’s as if it were Cuba.”
“Maybe their freedom will lead to our freedom soon,” he added. “Because I always say the economic head is Venezuela and the political head is Cuba,” citing how Cuba offered an alliance rooted in socialism, while Venezuela gave Cuba petroleum in return. And indeed, in a press conference Saturday, Trump said, “I think Cuba is going to be something we’ll end up talking about… Cuba is a failing nation.”
Amidst all the joy, a sense of uncertainty hovered over the crowd at El Arepazo, with many fretting over what comes next. One man who came to visit his family and would be returning to Venezuela on Sunday said he didn’t want to be named out of fear of political retaliation, a reality that Venezuelan citizens face.
“We live in Venezuela, in a country [where], unfortunately, we can’t talk,” he said. One WhatsApp message against the Maduro regime, he said, is all it takes to land in prison.
Pineyro acknowledged that there’s more that needs to be done to restore Venezuela’s democracy. Diosado Cabello, who runs Venezuela’s military, is still in the country and so is Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino López.
“We're just in the first phase of a transition that we knew was going to happen eventually in Venezuela,” Pineyro said. “So we're very happy that this is taking place, but at the same time, we also have a lot of work to do, because this is just the beginning.”
Medina echoed Pineyro’s words, speculating that Cabello and López will either be “captured or they surrender and get ousted from power like Maduro or they get out, as we say it, feet first in a black body bag.”
“That’s their fate.”
By mid-afternoon, Doral Mayor Christi Fraga, a Cuban American Republican, stood before the crowd to applaud them and say: “We never lost hope.”
After Pineyro and Fraga delivered brief remarks to the crowd that encircled them, they urged everyone to disperse. Police officers gathered around and in the parking lot sweating under the Miami sun, urging people to go home.
But the crowd simply moved the circle and started to dance around a man stationed with a drum set and a radio. And when another man started playing the notes of the Venezuelan national anthem on the trumpet, the crowd sang its words in unison: “Glory to the brave people who shook off the yoke, the law respecting virtue and honor.”
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