Blocked from voting, Venezuela’s diaspora finds new ways to oppose Maduro

When María de los Ángeles León Núñez thinks back to Venezuela’s opposition primary election last fall, organized to select a candidate to challenge iron-fisted President Nicolás Maduro, she remembers it as a party for democracy. Participants were singing, waving the Venezuelan flag, and digging into plates of food, she says, describing the October day as “divine.”

She helped organize the vote – not in Venezuela, but over 2,000 miles north in Mexico. More than 100,000 Venezuelans have sought refuge from their crises-hit nation in Mexico in recent years.

On July 28, Venezuelans are set to choose their next leader. It’s inspiring whispers of hope following more than two decades of chavismo, a political project that has become increasingly repressive under Mr. Maduro’s 11 years in office and as the economy tailspins.

To be sure, few expect the vote to be free and fair. But the election presents the biggest challenge to chavismo since Hugo Chávez took office in 1999. Some 80% of Venezuelans say they want Mr. Maduro out of office.

For Venezuelans abroad, who have access to more information than those back home and who can enjoy the freedom to politically organize and express themselves, this election has become a moment for action. From organizing opposition primary votes and debates, to encouraging loved ones back home to cast a ballot later this month, the diaspora is playing a key role in the democratic battle for the future of their homeland.

“The government has tried to curtail the diaspora vote,” says Eduardo Repilloza Fernández, director of Transparencia Electoral, a nongovernmental organization that promotes free and fair elections in the Americas. “So, what has become important is making the elections visible.”

Fighting from afar

Mr. Maduro has few incentives to give up power, and his government has taken steps to keep opponents from casting ballots. The government blocked from the race the initial candidate posed by the opposition last fall, and although there are nearly 8 million Venezuelans living abroad, less than 0.01% successfully registered to vote this year. That was in large part due to the myriad hoops the government made the diaspora jump through to register.  

The streets of Caracas brim with posters showcasing the faces of Mr. Maduro and Mr. Chávez, who died in 2013. But it’s nearly impossible to find campaign posters for any opposition leader, including the last-minute candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, a little-known diplomat in his 70s polling well over 25 points ahead of Mr. Maduro.

On social media, on the other hand, the opposition is everywhere. On WhatsApp, Facebook, and X, posts about the opposition easily go viral.

“It is not that there is less information inside Venezuela than outside. The format is different,” says José Morales-Arilla, research professor at Tecnologico de Monterrey’s Graduate School of Government and Public Transformation. Inside Venezuela, propaganda and fake news to discredit the opposition overwhelm traditional media, Dr. Morales-Arilla says.

Even though Ms. León can’t cast a ballot in next weekend’s election, she’s bending over backward to ensure family and friends inside Venezuela do.

That’s come down to information sharing. Ms. León says her parents are susceptible to fake news, like many older adults in Venezuela. The media is almost entirely state controlled and the few independent sites here are frequently blocked from posting anything deemed critical of the government. Most independent sources of information require access to a virtual private network or money for cable news subscriptions.

Ms. León has taken to passing on information about important news events or voting instructions to her father back home, “then he shares the information with his community in Guatire,” outside of Caracas, she says.

To Ms. León, every vote counts. Over a decade ago, when she was studying history at the Central University of Venezuela, she narrowly won a seat as an opposition candidate on the pro-chavismo student council by 131 votes. She fled Venezuela in 2017 after watching her peers imprisoned for the same kind of student organizing work she was doing at the time.

José Coelho, who left Venezuela for Washington, D.C., via Bogotá, in 2022, is also trying to stay politically active from afar.

The government “robbed our primary means of participating” in the election by blocking the ability to vote abroad, says the project manager in his late 20s. He’s decided he can be of most use by “accompanying” people still in Venezuela, he says – from training and supporting activists online to raising awareness about voting rights.

He co-organized a debate in Caracas for the opposition’s primary elections from afar, and works at the Mercedes Pulido School of Government, a mostly online program to train and support Venezuelan activists, politicians, and civil society leaders. Mr. Coelho says this work is necessary because activists in Venezuela can get tired and depressed, and lose motivation.

Migration over the past decade – especially by young people – has dramatically changed Venezuela’s demographics and drained it of human capital. The Inter-American Development Bank estimates that between 2015 and 2021, the share of working-age people with college degrees more than halved from 17.9% to 8.4%.

Bridging old divides

Last fall, María Corina Machado won the opposition’s primary elections by an overwhelming 92.5% – and was barred by the government from running. Although her disqualification was a blow to the opposition, the move has had the unintended consequence of uniting the party coalition.

For decades, political tensions between Venezuela’s diaspora and those back home have been a point of contention. Venezuelans inside the country would say the diaspora abandoned them or was out of touch, while the diaspora accused those inside the country of normalizing the status quo, quietly submitting to a repressive government. All the while, the opposition struggled to get enough backing to unequivocally challenge the ruling party.

“I think that divide has diminished” since Ms. Machado won the primaries, says Mr. Coelho in Washington.

Surrounded by photos and paintings of family members, N.S., who asked to use only her initials for fear of government reprisals, is one of the few members of her family left in Venezuela. She’s taken responsibility for caring for relatives’ empty homes, and now walks dogs to supplement her modest income as a university professor. Her extended family is spread across Chile, Argentina, Spain, and the U.S.

“Information goes both ways in the family,” she says from her humble apartment in the heart of Chacao, a Caracas neighborhood flanked by the iconic Ávila mountain range. Those abroad crave insight into the atmosphere in Venezuela leading up to the vote. She looks to them for family connection and information that’s not readily available here. And in recent months, she feels that despite the distance, everyone seems to be getting on the same page.

“What matters is achieving change,” she says.

Lessons for the region?

Other regional diasporas are taking note. Yunova Acosta Vargas, president of the Latin American Youth Network for Democracy, describes how members of her network learn from each other’s experiences with repressive governments from Nicaragua to Venezuela to Cuba. What is happening in Venezuela “is like a dictator’s handbook,” she says. 

But Venezuelan migrants may have a bigger impact influencing their host governments than trying to sway votes or encourage suffrage back home, adds Dr. Morales-Arilla, the researcher.

Take Colombia and Chile, two of the countries hosting large numbers of Venezuelan migrants. In Colombia, some of the nearly 3 million Venezuelan migrants living there are urging the left-wing leader, who has otherwise been friendly with Mr. Maduro, to advocate for free and fair elections. And in Chile, where over half a million Venezuelans have sought refuge, the left-leaning government, influenced by its own history of dictatorship, has taken a critical stance against Mr. Maduro at the urging of the diaspora.

“International pressure for free and fair elections, and compliance with the results” will be key next weekend, he says.

The diaspora offers “tools for the ones who are [still] inside,” says Ms. Acosta, who fled political repression in Nicaragua in 2022. At the end of the day, “change needs to happen from within.”