If in the 2016 electoral campaign Donald Trump stigmatized Mexicans as “criminals and rapists” who crossed the border, this 2024 he did it with Venezuela. The police reports that prove the presence of the Tren de Aragua, the gang of Venezuelan origin, in several cities in the United States, were enough to refocus their anti-immigrant narrative with a new objective: recently arrived Venezuelans. The Republican candidate has reiterated time and time again the hoax that insecurity in Caracas has decreased by more than 70% because local criminals were sent to North America. The official data does not matter to the candidate: insecurity in American cities has decreased in the last year.
“Venezuela has become an issue in the electoral campaign and the characterization of the immigration problem in the United States, according to Trump’s rhetoric. He mentions Venezuela every other day, and he does so in a very derogatory and dangerous way,” says Carmen Beatriz Fernández, consultant and expert in political marketing, and adds, “despite this, a significant portion of Venezuelans who are naturalized and can vote, concentrated mainly in Miami, Orlando and Tampa, support him. They are called the magazolanswho cover themselves under their famous slogan Make America Great Again(Let’s make America great again).”
In the 20th century, Venezuela lived forty years of a consolidated democracy that began to crack with the arrival to power of Hugo Chávez in 1999. In this sense, the parallels between Trump and the late former Venezuelan president are obvious: both share an authoritarian mood. , the virulence of the language, the aggressiveness with which they treat the adversary; But Venezuelans who fled Chavismo (and now Madurismo) see the Republican as a leader exactly opposite to the one they left behind: a politician with a right-wing ideology and a billionaire generator of wealth.
The phenomenon never ceases to surprise, given that Venezuela is a country with a long social democratic tradition in which there has never been a right like the European or North American one. “It happens in the United States and even in Madrid, where Venezuelans have approached Vox,” says Fernández, who maintains that the trend is reproduced among other communities that have suffered socialist regimes.
When it comes to American politics, Venezuelans behave similarly to Cubans, especially in Florida, but the conviction of voting as a tool of political power is an unmistakable trait of exile. According to census data, these represent the most registered Latinos to vote in the United States with respect to the size of its population, around 120,000 nationally, although it is likely that with recent naturalizations and the children of immigrants who reached the majority of age, the number has grown. Latinos in total represent 14.7% of all voters eligible to vote on November 5, some 36,200,000 of the more than 65 million who live in the country.
The impact of the Venezuelan vote within the pie is small (led by Mexicans and Puerto Ricans), but it is a community with increasing notoriety. The 2023 United States Census Bureau (ACS) Community Survey finds that Venezuelans in the United States exceed 900,000 people and rank tenth among the ten most populated Latino communities in the United States. country.
Republicans or Democrats?
Venezuelans from the first wave of migration (those who arrived in the United States between 2005 and 2015) belong to the highest sectors of society. The census classified them as the immigrants with the highest educational level among all immigrants in the country, but once settled they began to identify with Trump and his movement. “The crisis in Venezuela worsened in 2017 and many more people began to arrive. Trump proclaimed himself ‘the greatest anti-communist in history’. Senator Marco Rubio also played a key role in the relationship of the Venezuelan exile with the Republicans because the former president delegated to him the management of the relationship with Latin America. Sanctions were imposed on Venezuelan oil and they sold the idea that they were accompanied by military action. In Venezuela the news of the arrival of the marines spread and here too. They began to become fanatical, just like the Cubans,” explains Eduardo Gamarra, director of the Latino Public Opinion Forum Program at Florida International University.
In the 2020 elections, Biden won Miami-Dade County by only 7.4 points (Clinton did so with a 29.4 point advantage and Obama by 23.7 points), and the vote of Venezuelan Americans in favor of Trump It had a lot to do with it. Toward the end of his term, the Republican issued an executive order that protected Venezuelans from deportation and Trumpism grew among the newcomers.
However, the family album of exile is not complete with just the thousands who live in Florida. A significant portion has settled in Texas, Georgia, and New York, and they have a different political position than their peers in Miami and its surroundings. “In 2016, Venezuelans voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton. I remember we did focus groups in which they saw Trump as a catire (blond) Chávez, but that has changed. Now there is a fairly large movement that leans towards the Republican party, but it does not reach 50% of those registered to vote. That is, the Venezuelan vote is more Democratic, particularly outside of Florida,” Gamarra reveals.
In this sense, the Biden Administration granted the diaspora the Special Protection Treaty (TPS) and the Parole humanitarian, but Trump now threatens to eliminate him from returning to the White House. “If you compare Venezuelans today with Cubans, Colombians, Nicaraguans, the first are those who still maintain a Democratic identity despite the leadership that remains aligned with Trump. Not only has he attacked Venezuela over the issue of the Aragua Train throughout the campaign, to date he has not mentioned July 28,” says Gamarra.
The relationship with Venezuela
The Venezuelan vote in the United States is divided in these elections, but the fracture comes from behind. When in 2020 the famous presenter and podcaster Venezuelan Érika de la Vega declared in an interview that she would vote for Joe Biden, she was harshly branded online as a “communist” and “Chavista” by an extremist sector of the diaspora in Miami. Right in that corner is the daughter of José Luis Rodríguez El Puma, Liliana Rodríguez, a woman from Caracas who supports the democratic forces led by María Corina Machado in Venezuela, but fervently follows Trump. This is also the case of popular singer Nacho, who was seen at a recent Trump rally in Florida.
In contrast to showbiz figures, a large group of Venezuelan writers, academics and intellectuals are aligned with the Democrats, and others are even active in the party. Venezuelan Carla Bustillos is one of the spokespersons for Kamala Harris’ campaign, and a member of the group “Venezolanos con Kamala”; while Luisana Pérez Fernández is the director of Hispanic Media at the White House.
“Our diaspora is absolutely polarized. I notice this every time I post a cartoon about American politics. If I make one that leans more to one side than the other, a comment war starts. “Armageddon”says Rayma Suprani, cartoonist and prominent voice of the Venezuelan exile, who will vote for the first time in this election. “I don’t have any emotion, I’m going to have to vote for the least bad one again. It is a disappointment and has to do with the parameters with which the candidates have been measured. This country has had leaders with great vision and a sense of national unity that I do not see in these elections. Kamala has said practically nothing about Venezuela and it is obvious that she is not interested, and Trump threatens with his rhetoric the immigrants who live here with TPS or asylum. “Several friends have told me that they will not vote for him precisely because of the risk he represents to their families with some of these programs,” he added.
Trump’s threatening tone against the press also represents for Suprani an affront against democracy, and he knows this from his own experience. For a cartoon against Hugo Chávez she was fired from the newspaper The Universal from Venezuela, and had to leave the country shortly after to avoid further reprisals.
From Boston, Ricardo Hausmann, former Venezuelan minister and professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, says he will vote without hesitation for Harris. “The alliance between the Biden Government and the Venezuelan opposition has been very useful: it allowed the elections on July 28. Democrats have also been very good about not recognizing Maduro as president. For his part, Trump now says that Venezuelans are ‘criminals’, and I perceive that enthusiasm towards him has decreased within the community,” he says.
In an interview with Telemundo, Kamala Harris spoke for the first and only time about Venezuela during the campaign, and denied any type of military intervention if she were to become president of the country. “We are not going to use our military forces there. “The United States must remain firm in respecting the will of Venezuelans in that election, and that is why we have issued sanctions,” he said.
Everything indicates that there will not be major differences in the White House’s policy towards Venezuela, whoever wins. “Venezuela is one of the few issues within polarized North American politics on which there is a bipartisan consensus. Another thing is what Maduro believes, who has said that Trump is better for him. He knows what to expect from the Democrats, but he sees an opportunity to get closer with the Republicans,” says Carmen Beatriz Fernández. A former advisor to the Republican revealed that the former president even praised Maduro in private for being “strong” against his enemies. Despite this, the divorce between Venezuelans and the Republicans still seems to be a pending issue.
