A tense calm held in Venezuela on Sunday, one day after President Nicolás Maduro was deposed and captured in an American military operation.
Venezuela’s capital Caracas was unusually quiet Sunday with few vehicles moving around. Convenience stores, gas stations and other businesses were mostly closed.
A day before, lines wound through stores and outside gas stations as uncertain Venezuelans stocked up on goods in case turmoil broke out. Roads typically filled with runners and cyclists sat largely empty and Venezuela’s presidential palace was guarded by armed civilians and members of the military.
Outside the capital, in La Guaira state, families with houses damaged in blasts during the operation that captured Maduro and his wife were still cleaning up debris. Some buildings were left with walls gaping open.
After the seismic shift in Venezuela and promises by President Donald Trump that the United States would “run” Venezuela with the help of Maduro’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, no one in the country seemed to know where things stood or what lay ahead.
In a low-income neighborhood in eastern Caracas, construction worker Daniel Medalla sat on the steps outside a Catholic church and told a few parishioners that again there would be no morning Mass.
Medalla theorized the streets remained mostly empty not because people are worried about another strike but because they are fearful of government repression if they dare celebrate, coming after a fierce government crackdown during last year’s fraught elections.
“We were longing for it,” Medalla, 66, said of Maduro’s exit.
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