SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Tomorrow, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado will be in Oslo to collect the Nobel Peace Prize. Machado has spent the past year in hiding inside the country she hopes to one day lead. The Nobel committee noted, quote, "serious threats against her life" in their announcement that she had won the prize. And all of this has played out as the U.S. military has ramped up its presence near Venezuela to pressure the government and also attacked roughly two dozen alleged drug vessels. So the rest of the world is putting a lot of focus on Venezuela right now, and we wanted to get a sense of what the past year has been like inside the country. To do that, we are joined from Caracas by Venezuelan journalist Tony Frangie. He heads the newsletter Venezuela Weekly. Welcome to the program.
TONY FRANGIE: Hi, thank you so much. It's an honor for me to be here.
DETROW: Let me just start with the Nobel Prize. How much do you think people in Caracas will be following the presentation tomorrow, will be talking and thinking about that?
FRANGIE: I think it's a very important topic of conversation here, even though it's not a very public one because of the state of affairs in the country. But many Venezuelans are expected to see if Maria Corina actually managed to leave Venezuela for Oslo, as she said. I think that's one of the main reasons people are watching and following the news of the prize, but also the fact that these are very big news for us, and many people see them as the result of the struggle and the democratic fight that many Venezuelans have been enduring for the last year in the country after the July 28 elections of 2024.
DETROW: When you talk about a lot of conversation but not too public about it, give me a sense of what that looks like. Is that just a side conversation? Is that just on your phone but not in public, on social media? Like, what's the best way to understand that and why?
FRANGIE: So after the elections happened, and the opposition managed to prove that their official results were not the ones shown by the polling station machines, the government proceeded with a bigger crackdown on civil society. And since then, politics have been mostly off the table for many Venezuelans in public places, in social media, in places they can be heard and seen. So it has become more or less a conversation within family or within private circles. In fact, there's reports of journalists, of radio journalists who were fired from their jobs because they reported of the Nobel Peace Prize.
DETROW: Really?
FRANGIE: So in a way, there's a lot of sense of fear due to repression and a lot of self-censorship in Venezuelans that has forced many of these conversations and topics to more private and intimate spaces.
DETROW: I want to talk about the election in a moment, but on this topic of what conversation is like, and censorship and self-censorship, what is being said or thought and talked about when it comes to all of this U.S. military pressure? Is that front and center, or is that also an on-the-margins conversation?
FRANGIE: It's especially on the margins because the government also has a heightened sense of paranoia due to the constant U.S. air incursions and, of course, the warships in the coast. So what we've seen is a mix between people whispering their opinions or what they think and more or less a generalized sense of denial with the situation. For many Venezuelans, the only solution is to keep forward with their lives as it is, especially with rising inflation, especially with a increasingly worse economic situation during the holiday seasons. So sometimes people wouldn't think that a country that is supposedly on the brink of war, you can find, I don't know, Christmas fairs or...
DETROW: Yeah.
FRANGIE: ...Halloween parties or new stores opening up and people just going to buy stuff there for Christmas. But it's what's happening because for many, the only solution is to just keep on with their daily lives and and try to act as if nothing is happening because I feel that many Venezuelans won't really consider this to be a bluff until something actually happens. It's been 25 years of constant political upheaval. So for many, it's just, you know, another check in the long list.
DETROW: Yeah. Do you see any physical signs of preparations for any sort of military conflict?
FRANGIE: Not as much. The government has moved certain assets to the coast. They have moved machinery to take down planes to military bases. There has been a mobilization of the militia. But beyond that, the city more or less remains perhaps more militarized, perhaps with more policemen, but more or less, life remains the same in Venezuela at this point. We're having practically weekly incursions of F-18 or B-2 planes from the U.S., and it's just become like another normal thing. We actually had one today, and people are just going on with their lives 'cause it's - it has already become a weekly thing for more than a few months.
DETROW: You know, NPR has been trying to report from Venezuela but has not been granted permission to enter the country. What is one thing about life in Venezuela today that you feel like people listening to this should know, that you wish you could tell more people about?
FRANGIE: Well, I would say, firstly, that if you see a country with baseball stadiums full of people and people doing Christmas shopping, it doesn't mean that that country is not in crisis or that that country is not following politics. But rather, that countries with crises, with political conflicts, even with war, people there, they try to continue their lives as it is. And it's two things that can co-exist despite how bizarre it can look.
And on the other hand, I would say that people should sometimes give more voice to Venezuelans and listen to Venezuelans. I feel U.S. media has focused itself mostly on foreign analysts on the country, and there hasn't been much space for voices of Venezuelans. And I think that's important, especially because, as I said, many Venezuelans are self-silencing themselves or doing self-censorship, and that is definitely generating a bias in the reporting. So I would say that they should consider that Venezuelans' opinions are more varied and diverse than they think, and definitely many times they will clash with what many in the U.S. think should happen or think is happening in Venezuela.
DETROW: Well, we were really happy to talk to you about it. Thank you for taking the time.
FRANGIE: Thank you so much.
DETROW: That is Venezuelan journalist Tony Frangie joining us from Caracas. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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