On New Year’s Eve Vanessa Sanchez ate 12 grapes, as is customary in Latin America, making a wish for each one. Her first wish was for God to save Venezuela from Nicolás Maduro, the socialist president whose brutal rule drove her to flee the country nine years ago.
When her phone began to buzz on Saturday with news that the U.S. had captured Maduro, she could hardly believe it.
“This is what all Venezuelans wished for,” said Sanchez, who lives in Port Washington, Long Island. “We were waiting 25 years for this.”
Despite her brush with socialism, Sanchez, 32, told me she wasn’t opposed to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who was sworn in just last week. “He’s young—I feel like he knows what the people need,” she said. Then she saw Mamdani’s post on X criticizing Trump’s capture of the Venezuelan dictator.
