I stayed up until 3 a.m. on January 2nd, watching the land of my childhood be bombed.

The notification came through our family text thread first- my brother’s link to a shaky video showing streaks of light over Caracas, the unmistakable sound of military aircraft, explosions illuminating the night sky. Then came footage from Maracay, practically next door to Valencia, the city where I spent my childhood in the 1980s and 90s, where I learned to dance merengue, where the air still smells like arepas being made in our kitchen in my memory.

I knew immediately what I was witnessing: US military intervention in Venezuela.

After weeks of watching American forces bomb vessels off Venezuela’s coast, officially targeting drug and oil trafficking, this escalation felt inevitable. However, nothing prepared me for the sickening vertigo of watching bombs fall on streets I once walked.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Venezuela’s Wealth

Let’s talk about what’s really at stake here.

Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves, larger than Saudi Arabia’s, larger than any nation on Earth. OPEC itself was founded by Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo, Venezuela's Minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons, who was the key figure and driving force behind the creation of OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) in 1960. Beyond petroleum, the country sits on massive deposits of gold, diamonds, and rare minerals that power the very Silicon Valley where I now live and work.

President Trump, a man convicted on 34 felony counts, who has bragged about sexual assault and has had his assault of children detailed in the Epstein files, has made no secret of his transactional worldview. There’s nothing he won’t try to grab for personal gain. When he announced this intervention surrounded by identical blue-suited men at Mar-a-Lago (not a single woman present), his excitement about “getting all that money” revealed everything you need to know about American motives.

This isn’t about liberating Venezuela. It’s about exploitation.

My Impossible Contradiction

Here’s what makes this moment so excruciating: I and the majority of my Venezuelan friends and loved ones have wanted Nicolás Maduro removed from power for years.

After Hugo Chávez died of cancer and anointed Maduro as his successor, elections became increasingly fraudulent. His regime has been harsh, cruel, and absolutely corrupt, causing incalculable suffering for the Venezuelan people. The mass exodus to Colombia, Peru, Chile and throughout South America, into the United States, and Spain tells the story of a nation in crisis.

Venezuelans have been forced to make impossible choices. Families have walked through the dangerous Darién Gap, where most don’t survive and over 90% of men and women report sexual assault, simply for the hope of rebuilding their lives. Venezuelans have tried everything: voting, street protests banging pots and pans, coup attempts, organized resistance. They are completely, utterly exhausted.

When María Corina Machado received the Nobel Peace Prize this year, it felt like the world was finally noticing the decades-long plight of Venezuelans. Though Machado remains in hiding, her life constantly at risk, that recognition was huge for those who have fought tirelessly for years, holding on to the last glimmer of hope.

So yes, I am dancing and I’m elated that Maduro has been removed. We have longed for this, and my friends who have stayed in Venezuela have born the brunt of this regime in ways I will never fully understand. Many, especially those in exile, are celebrating with immense hope, and that matters and deserves it’s own moment all by itself. The bully has been brought down. When you are drowning, you will welcome whatever hand comes to rescue you, and you will be so so grateful that someone finally came.

Simultaneously, though, I am also trembling in fear at what comes next. This hand that came to rescue has transformed into a hand that is grabbing what doesn’t belong to him.

Regime change is more than just a snatch in the night. It is the long, arduous work of nation building, revamping collapsed systems, and co-creating in an environment where trust takes time and cultural intelligence to build. This is where my fear lies. I have no hope in a US that pulled funding for USAID to be the savior of anyone, no matter how difficult the military feat of the nighttime raid to capture Maduro was.

How You Break International Law in One Night

The operation was textbook military execution with months of CIA infiltration and yet was executed in an ways no one expected. The U.S. capture of Nicolás Maduro, codenamed "Operation Absolute Resolve," primarily involved the Army's Delta Force and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Night Stalkers), with support from other branches like the Marines, Air Force, and Navy for air support and logistics, but Delta Force executed the ground raid, not Navy SEALs. Reports indicate Delta Force, America's premier counterterrorism unit, used advanced tactics and equipment to breach Maduro's compound and extract him and his wife, Cilia Flores, under heavy opposition. It was perfect coordination, in ways only the US military with all it’s funding can pull off. Maduro and his wife were captured just after they fled from their bed as they tried to close the door to their safe room in a scene that feels straight out of Homeland with precision, efficiency and overwhelming force. This wasn’t Hollywood. It was real life. Real lives hung in the balance, and real lives were lost.

It was also a clear violation of international law.

Congress wasn’t consulted. The UN Security Council wasn’t informed. The Geneva Convention was broken. This was a unilateral decision, Trump announcing it like the finale of a reality TV show, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth praising “all the brave men” (notably, not “men and women”).

All the planning went into perfect military execution. Zero planning went into the actual hard work: cultivating an environment where Venezuelans can self-govern, rebuild their economy, restore healthcare and food supply, meet basic human needs.

Instead, Trump announced the US will run Venezuela’s government. The irony is not lost on me. We have hungry children in our own nation. Pointing fingers elsewhere has long been our specialty here.

It was notable that Trump didn’t mention Maria Corina Machado, the recent Nobel Peace Prize winner, in his press conference until asked by a reporter. She was barred from running for President previously, but was instrumental in helping get Edmundo González elected, and although Edmundo won by a landslide, Maduro never stepped down. The US had recognized Edmundo as the legitimate President previously, but now Trump is indicating that the US is “running” Venezuela. Trump stated that Machado didn’t have enough support, which is also ironic, considering Trump’s own approval rating was recently only 36% and has been as low as 29%.

The Venezuela I Carry in My Bones

Let me tell you about the country being “liberated.”

Venezuela is a place of impossible beauty. When I close my eyes and imagine my happy place, I’m at Playuelita beach on my favorite side Playuela island off the coast near Puerto Cabello, where my family would drive to from Valencia during my childhood and well into adulthood, until safety made it impossible.

This is a land of extremes: Morrocoy national park of islands in the Caribbean, desert dunes and high Andes mountains, the world’s longest cable car ride (where I got altitude sickness as a child in the snow on the peak of Pico Bolívar), and Angel Falls, the world’s tallest waterfall, plunging through the Amazon rainforest.

What I carry deepest in my fond memories are the people: the culture, the food, the laughter, the dancing, the shared responsibility for one another, the bone-deep sense that we belong to each other. Living in Venezuela remains the greatest privilege of my life, and the place where my values were formed.

Which is why watching this unfold breaks something fundamental inside me.

When the Devil Removes the Devil

Here’s what terrifies me most: When a narcissistic leader is forcefully removed by another narcissist from within the same corrupt system, the next leader can be even worse. It’s often worse because you never see it coming. You believe that you are being saved because narcissistic leaders excel at making you think they are the hero as they prey on vulnerable people.

Trump’s timing seems suspiciously connected to the recent Citgo case. He has consistently shown he only lines his own pockets, making deals that benefit his associates in crypto, AI, and other ventures. The man has no history of acting in others’ best interests. Why would Venezuela be different?

Although I know many who do, I don’t believe the ends justify the means. When people make deals with the devil, everyone gets burned. The devil makes the “art of the deal” with strings attached, and in the end, it is not art anyone would hang in the Louvre. It’s not pretty. Some say “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.” The problem is, we know how Maduro operates, and we know how Trump operates. Neither are fit to lead.

If this were really about drug trafficking, if that were the genuine concern, we wouldn’t be targeting Venezuela. The biggest drug threat to the US isn’t coming from Caracas. Notably, Maduro wasn’t even charged with fentanyl trafficking. It’s cocaine. The official story doesn’t hold water. The spin is part of the game, and we are all being played.

What Venezuela Actually Needs

The Venezuelan people deserve aid, counsel, and leadership that serves their interests. They need:

• Self-governance support, not American occupation

• Economic reconstruction that benefits Venezuelans, not foreign corporations

• Healthcare system rebuilding from the ground up

• Food security and infrastructure repair

• International cooperation, not unilateral intervention

• Freedom to speak, and release of political prisoners

The world needs to get involved properly, legally, collaboratively. The UN, the Organization of American States, Latin American partners who understand the region’s complexity, humanitarian organizations with decades of crisis response experience. The US has no business “running” Venezuela when our own leadership is failing.

What Venezuela doesn’t need is what it’s getting: another strongman who sees the country as a resource to extract rather than a people to serve.

Venezuelans taught me to hold space for celebration, for dancing for hope in the midst of the most inhumane, vile moments humans could ever experience. In the midst of hunger, my friends have fed their neighbors, stood in the long 15-hour lines at the supermarket for the older ones who couldn’t, and made pots of soup every week for the whole neighborhood. They taught me to laugh, to dance, to share. They taught me that even though there is every reason to fear and worry, that sometimes, you take a moment to dance in the rain.

Venezuelans are resilient, yes, but that resilience has come with exhaustion and unspeakable trauma. Their bodies keep the score. I’m so happy to see them dance, and shake off some of what has resided deep inside them for decades of watching family members and loved ones die without medicine, be apprehended for speaking out, and have their souls and bodies crushed by a regime that profited off their resources while sharing none of them with the people they were intended to govern.

My Hope for Venezuela

I hope, with everything I have, that my beloved childhood home receives the future it deserves.

I hope the international community steps up where US leadership has failed. I hope Venezuelan voices lead Venezuela’s recovery. I hope the oil wealth that has been both blessing and curse finally serves the people who live with it.

I hope that when my children ask me about this moment years from now, I can tell them that despite everything, despite the violations and the violence and the rampant greed, Venezuela found its way to genuine freedom and flourishing for all Venezuelans.

Because the Venezuela I carry in my bones, the one that taught me to dance, to laugh, to believe we belong to each other, deserves nothing less.

What are your thoughts on intervention versus self-determination? How do we support nations in crisis without exploitation? I’d love to hear your perspective in the comments below.

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Related Reading:

• The UN Charter on Use of Force

• Understanding Venezuela’s Oil Reserves

• The Humanitarian Crisis in the Darién Gap

• Angel Falls and Venezuela’s Natural Wonders

Lori hosts “A World of Difference,” a podcast exploring authentic leadership across cultures. She works with leaders and organizations navigating complexity, building cross-cultural competence, and creating more human-centered workplaces across industries and across the world.