Fabiola Campbell has seen first-hand the hardship brought by the regime of ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
Patients dying in hospitals, unable to access medication and treatment. Basic goods like eggs, soap and toilet paper becoming luxuries. Daily blackouts causing the scarce food available to rot in the fridge. Multi-day queues to buy fuel to run a generator.
Her brother, an engineer and university lecturer, survives on the equivalent of $4.50 a month. At the age of 47, he lives with his father and brother, both doctors, unable to afford accommodation of his own.
When Campbell, who lives in Melbourne’s north-east, travelled to Venezuela a few years ago and ran out of asthma medication, she couldn’t find a puffer – “even though my dad is a doctor, and he has lots of contacts, even though one of my best friends manages a pharmacy”.
That’s why when news of Maduro’s capture by US troops in a high-stakes operation in Caracas pinged on Campbell’s phone at the weekend, she was overcome by a wave of relief.
After decades of rampant corruption, hyperinflation, violence and poverty, the man who embodied everything that was wrong with her native Venezuela would finally pay for the pain he had caused.
“I feel that we were robbed of the life that we deserved,” she said.
Campbell grew up in Venezuela before moving to Australia two decades ago. While some of her relatives still live in her home country, others are scattered around the world.
She did not want a foreign power to intervene, but as the situation in Venezuela worsened and attempts at diplomacy failed, it became apparent to her that an operation like the one carried out by the US at the weekend was the only way out.
“The means were not ideal,” she said. “But they were absolutely necessary.”
This is a sentiment shared by other members of the Venezuelan diaspora, who feel that the joy of Maduro’s capture and a potential end to years of misery, insecurity and mismanagement outweigh the negatives of US intervention.
Around the world, Venezuelan migrants kissed the US flag, hugged, and cried at snap rallies called upon news that Maduro had fallen. Some wore T-shirts with images of the president in handcuffs, others of Jesus hugging the outline of their country. In Colombia, they danced under the light of phone torches in the street, national flags tied around their waists.
The celebrations contrasted with concerns raised by some nations, including Uruguay, Colombia, Brazil and Spain, about the legality of the military intervention and the potential it could set a precedent that could destabilise the region.
But for Venezuelans such as Campbell, it is a chance to dig the country out of an entrenched state of crisis, one which has caused almost 8 million of its citizens to leave since 2014 – the largest exodus in recent Latin American history and one of the largest displacement crises in the world.
“You can’t ask someone who has lived through a dictatorship, known misery, seen their family fragment, and migrated or fled their country not to feel joy about the capture of one of those most responsible for the disaster,” one member of the diaspora wrote on social media.
Campbell is cautious about predictingthe future.
She is supportive of Trump’s plan to rebuild the country’s oil industry and hopes Venezuelans can eventually elect their own government in an open and transparent process. She concedes rebuilding trust in public institutions will take a long time, but for the first time in years, she is experiencing a new feeling.
