By Subodh Mishra
I have personally experienced, firsthand, how cruel and destructive the regimes of Nicolás Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez were. Chávez, after all, went so far as to elevate his personal driver as his political heir—an act that symbolized how a once-proud republic was reduced to a personal fiefdom.
About two years ago, on a freezing midnight at a New York City subway station, I encountered a haunting reminder of that reality. A young man—fair-skinned, well-spoken, in his mid-thirties—was shivering violently in a thin windbreaker, visibly disoriented and close to hallucination. Out of sheer human concern, I asked if he was alright. He candidly told me that he had arrived in the United States only days earlier, having fled Venezuela illegally after security forces opened fire on starving, desperate protesters.
I offered him ten dollars and a cigarette, calling him “son.” He accepted—reluctantly, with dignity intact. During our forty-five-minute subway ride, he shared his story. He came from an educated family: his late father was a professor of physics, and his mother worked in banking. He himself was a mechanical engineer. He even pulled his degree from his backpack to show me. During an anti-government protest on his university campus, he was arrested. He did not return home alive. His family was subsequently harassed, intimidated, and broken by the state’s machinery of repression.
Before we parted ways, he told me he was living with half a dozen compatriots crammed into a single room. Even before this encounter, I had read extensively about Venezuela under decades of corrupt and brutal communist rule—a country sitting atop the largest proven oil reserves in the world, once celebrated for prosperity, culture, and global glamour. And yet, that immense natural wealth became a curse for its own people—roughly 33 million citizens, a population comparable to that of India’s capital, Delhi.
When I later heard the news of the dictator’s capture—along with his equally reviled inner circle—I felt, in some small way, as though I myself had been liberated. Venezuela stands as a brutal lesson in how unchecked corruption and ideological authoritarianism can turn even the richest nation into a prison for its own citizens.
About Writer -:
Subodh Mishra, is a Senior Journalist of India. Spent more than 40 years in Journalism in India. Now Living in USA .
