(Trinidad Guardian) The messages from Venezuela started drying up at around noon yesterday, but Venezuelans living in T&T who support Juan Guaido are hopeful their country is heading back to democracy.
“The communication break down at about 11 o’clock this morning and before that, all the videos were coming. Univision is the only means of us really knowing what is really going on,” said Yamine Trotman, a Venezuelan national of Trinidad descent who gathered at the Queen’s Park Savannah, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.
Trotman said since then it has been a struggle to get real information from the South American state concerning the latest standoff in the country.
“Before that, we heard that ABA CANTV, which is like TSTT, (they) say that they were limiting all the Whatsapp, all the Instagram and the Facebook posts. It is not completely perfect but they are blocking and I was told by friends across there that what is coming out in the news, they are informing the population that they have regained power. (They say) the government and everything is under control and that is a lie.”
Trotman was among a group of 50 Venezuelans who gathered to show solidarity with Guaido yesterday. Like many other pro-Guaido supporters, Trotman does not believe he is overthrowing the government but attempting to restore proper governance to the country.
“It is definitely not a coup, what is happening is as you know, Guaido is the president of Assembly so he took on the power because Maduro doing it illegally and now he is just trying to get him out because after a month he needed to call election, but we know the whole system of elections, it is what you say, is not working. It is rigged,” said Trotman.
“He calls everybody to come out that he now has the support of the military. They could throw (Maduro) out now and call elections so we can restore democracy.”
Trotman, however, said it was unclear as yet if the actions would impact Venezuela positively.
“It is too soon to say. So far everybody is looking forward to returning to a better Venezuela.”
One person looking forward to seeing a better Venezuela’s was Anglican priest Jesus Latam. The Venezuelan priest, who has lived in this country for 21 years, said he was praying that the beautiful country that was Venezuela before the unrest would emerge after this debacle.
“My prayer is for peace, my prayer is for harmony and communication between the population where people can find out the way how to just continue the kind of country Venezuela is,” Father Latam said.