As a 14-year-old, my grandfather Jorge cared for his six younger siblings after their dad’s passing. He sold empanadas on the streets of Maracaibo. Instead of cake, he indulged in iguana meat on his birthdays. But by his 30s, he’d earned multiple degrees and authored calculus textbooks, becoming president of Venezuela’s largest university. His children inherited his work ethic: The first Jorge became a surgeon, the second Jorge an accountant and Georgina (luckily spared the name Jorge by Grandma) a professor. Their Venezuela offered safety, quality schools and the chance to rise from nothing to success.
My Venezuela was radically different. By first grade, I’d been forced out of three schools, one whose roof collapsed and another which burned down. From second through eighth grade, I saw more fights and blackouts than I’d ever watched on television. A classmate flung me into a concrete pillar, splitting my head wide open. Surgeon Jorge reconstructed it for me, but not everyone has a doctor in their family. While my friend rested on our soccer bleachers, a boy jumped from the highest row, smashing a wooden bat down on his skull.
The same streets that allowed Grandpa to support his family by selling fried breakfast became the bedrock of this violence. One afternoon hunting for ice cream with Grandma, a group of armed men rushed our car and yanked her from the driver’s seat onto the pavement. Like Grandma, Mom was carjacked three times. Because these crimes are so routine, drivers skip red lights altogether. Predictably, this culture contributed to a 42% increase in the incidence of traffic fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, now double South America’s average. At night, it was common to hear the heavy thuds of colliding vehicles coming from right outside my bedroom window.
Although some officers can be bribed with cash, cigarettes, alcohol or sexual favors, police stops are usually deadlier than armed robberies. One evening, my godfather — not named Jorge — picked me up for dinner. At an intersection, two vehicles barreled toward us sequentially. He accelerated hard while I ducked under the seat. As we swerved around the curve, gunfire erupted behind, killing the woman in the trailing car. Her name was Karen Berendique, the 19-year-old daughter of a Chilean consul. Women like her bear the brunt of a justice system where police serve as judge and executioner, where female homicides increase 50% annually, and only 0.7% of gender violence complaints reach trial.
As violence consumed the streets, we learned to go without. Mom, a single parent on a fixed teacher salary, sent us to school with 20 bolívars — about $3 then. With that, I’d buy empanadas, tequeños and sweet mandocas. By year’s end, the same meal cost 50 bolívars. Her salary hadn’t changed; I just ate less. That year, we filed into the school’s chapel for weekly Mass. I enjoyed services, but I’d skipped last night’s dinner, breakfast and lunch. At 100°F, I felt faint as I bowed my head to recite the next line in the Missal, collapsing onto the kneeler. These moments of hunger foreshadowed larger crises for the rest of the population.
Since Nicolás Maduro took power in 2013, Venezuela’s economy has declined by 88%, roughly three times more than the United States’ economy fell during the Great Depression. Relative to Colombia, Venezuela’s neighboring country, price-adjusted income fell from 2.4x in 1990 to 0.39x in 2024. While U.S. inflation peaked at 9.1% in 2022, Venezuela’s reached 1,000,000% by 2018. To curb hyperinflation, the Central Bank has simply scratched zeros off our currency repeatedly. The result is the same: Once 12 times richer than China, nine out of every 10 residents today live in poverty. Instead of filling grocery bags, families scavenge food scraps from garbage bins.
Yet, Venezuela sits atop 303 billion barrels of oil, 3.7 times more than the U.S., despite having fewer residents than Texas. These reserves constitute $18 trillion in current prices, enough to feed everyone indefinitely. However, the government-owned industry drove production from 3.5 million barrels a day in 1997 to 0.9 million in 2024, an annualized output lower than what individual American companies pump in months. As corrupt executives tied to Maduro steal much of what little remains, the regime frequently expropriates commercial buildings, apartments, businesses, farms, factories, media outlets, medicines, even Granny’s cane. These instances are so routine that, during movie nights, I’d snatch blankets and popcorn from friends yelling “Nationalized!” mimicking officials who roamed neighborhoods taking whatever they wanted.
To enforce this iron-fisted rule, Maduro oversaw the kidnapping, imprisonment and murder of countless Venezuelans, forcing eight million people — a third of the population — to leave the country, a larger exodus than both Syria and Ukraine. In 2024, those who remained voted overwhelmingly to remove him, but he refused to cede power. He was captured on Jan. 3 through a swift military operation, an action that’s drawn criticism from prominent public officials and academics who argue the measure violated international law or that “Maduro wasn’t all bad.” But I ask: If none of these crimes justify his removal, what would? Every Venezuelan understands his capture doesn’t guarantee our freedom, but leaving him in power guarantees we’ll never be free.
A Polish family who’d fled Europe during World War II found refuge in Venezuela. Decades later, they watched history repeat itself, so they fled again. In 2016, they adopted me in Houston. As we make up our minds about Maduro’s capture, I pray we heed their warning, so the next generation inherits Grandfather’s Venezuela, not mine.
Samuel Enrique Camacho is a native of Maracaibo, Venezuela, and an environmental/energy engineering graduate student at Stanford.