Thomas Breen photo
One of the many Venezuelan flags on display outside City Hall on Wednesday.
Venezuelan transplants rally outside City Hall in support of their new president.
With tri-colored flags clutched in their fists and emblazoned on their hats, dozens of Venezuelan émigrés rallied downtown in support of their native country’s new self-declared president.
That was the scene on Wednesday night outside of City Hall’s Amistad Memorial, where Venezuelan transplants from throughout Connecticut gathered to sing, cheer, and voice their support for Juan Guaidó, the 35-year-old industrial engineer and relative political newcomer who declared himself president of the South American country earlier in the day.
Guaidó‘s self-swearing in represents the latest and most serious challenge to the regime of Nicolás Maduro, who has ruled the country since 2013 and is the protege of the late strongman president Hugo Chavez.
Miguel Purgatorio.
Support of Guaidó‘s claims to the presidency have touched off debates throughout the world over the United States’ history of toppling leftist governments in Latin America through covert military coups. The dozens of Connecticut Venezuelans who gathered in New Haven on Wednesday saw Guaidó‘s swearing-in as a long-awaited move towards political freedom and away from dictatorship, famine, international isolation, and devastating economic collapse.
“Today,” Meriden resident and Venezuelan native Miguel Purgatorio said at the rally, “we have a new president.”
NHR Properties President Juan Salas-Romer with his family on Wednesday.
One of the locals who turned out for the rally was Juan Salas-Romer, the real estate developer behind NHR Properties who fled his native country in 2001 after helping his father run an unsuccessful bid for president against Chavez in 1998.
“This is a demonstration of solidarity,” Salas-Romer said alongside his wife and two children. “Of backing our new president, and of joy and hope for freedom.” As more and more countries, including the United States, recognize the legitimacy of Guaidó‘s claim to the presidency, he said, he hopes to see an end to political and military oppression in his native country, as well as a new wave of humanitarian aid to the millions of Venezuelans currently starving to death.
Clodomiro Falcon.
Clodomiro Falcon, a Milford resident who is the president of the Venezuelan Association of Connecticut, agreed. “Today we are united to protest the dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro,” he said. “We reject that regime. We want our freedom.”
