From Lima to Madrid, a digital shockwave marked the night Maduro fell |
The night Nicolás Maduro was captured did not unfold first on television screens or official press briefings. It erupted instead through vibrating phones, glowing WhatsApp notifications, and frantic voice notes sent across continents. From Caracas apartment blocks plunged into darkness to migrant neighborhoods in Lima, Buenos Aires, and Madrid, Venezuelans experienced the end of an era not as a single moment, but as a cascade of messages-confused, emotional, and often terrifying.
Just after 2 a.m. in Caracas, as many residents were still asleep after New Year’s celebrations, a short message appeared in a WhatsApp group linking Venezuelans inside the country with family members abroad. “Friends. Urgent. They are attacking. Planes are flying over.” Within seconds came another reply: “Explosions.”
What followed was not merely the beginning of a military operation, but the start of a real-time, crowd-sourced chronicle of a historic event. For hours, Venezuela’s future was narrated through text messages, voice recordings, and shaky videos passed from phone to phone, faster than any official confirmation could keep up.
Residents across parts of Caracas reported sudden power outages, punctuated by flashes of light that briefly illuminated the skyline. The low rumble of aircraft echoed over neighborhoods unaccustomed to such sounds. Venezuela, despite decades of political turmoil, had never experienced sustained aerial bombardment in its capital. The unfamiliarity heightened the fear.
Phones buzzed without pause. Messages split into dozens of parallel threads, relayed along the same digital pathways that for years had carried news of arrests, food shortages, currency collapses, and departures. This time, the information moved even faster, jumping borders........