Trinidad-based Venezuelans say no coup back home

(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.