Venezuelans living in Argentina are expressing fear and concern about politics back home.
There are more than 200, 000 Venezuelans in Argentina who have maintained their roots to their country.
And majority of them are not friends or supporters of Nicolás Maduro who has been inaugurated for a third term.
Although Maduro takes the mantle, his legitimacy has faced considerable international and domestic scrutiny.
This is because Maduro’s government failed to present credible evidence of his electoral victory in July amid widespread accusations of fraud from political leaders across the ideological spectrum inside and outside of Venezuela.
Over a quarter of the country’s population, nearly 8 million people, has left for economic or political reasons.
For some, Maduro’s inauguration was disheartening, diminishing their hopes of returning home soon. The day before he was sworn in, Venezuelan migrants gathered in Plaza de Mayo, Argentina’s main square, to protest against him — mirroring opposition marches organized in Venezuela and other diaspora cities.
Some right-wing local politicians affiliated with Argentine President Javier Milei’s government endorsed the protests.
Four thousand miles south of Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, Leonardo González, a former teacher in Venezuela who now works as an Uber driver in Argentina, watched the news with despair. But he was not surprised.
“The day of the election was when my heart broke,” he said. “We all thought this could happen.”
A contentious election
In 2024, after the Venezuelan government imposed a series of electoral bans on opposition candidates, most of the opposition coalesced behind Edmundo González Urrutia, a 75-year-old long-time diplomat and politician who claimed to have won the election by a significant margin.
However, the National Electoral Council declared Maduro — a member of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela — the winner just hours after polls closed on Jan. 10.
Led by María Corina Machado — a fierce opposition leader who has sought support internationally and found alliances among right-wing leaders like Milei — the opposition released unofficial tallies suggesting that González Urrutia had secured at least two-thirds of the vote. The day after Maduro’s claim of victory, it set up websites to make the tallies official for people to see.