Venezuelan Lives in Colombian Streets Shift After Maduro’s Sudden Capture

In Cúcuta, a former homeless Venezuelan waters park worker is wearing a green uniform. In Bogotá, delivery couriers check their apps and avoid cameras. After Nicolás Maduro’s capture, Venezuelan migrants in Colombia are thinking about returning home, amnesty, and the lives they have rebuilt amid uncertainty.

A Uniform, a Border, and a New Home

The hose hisses as water soaks the grass, making it darker. Cristopher Landázuri works in the city’s green spaces, walking through a park in Cúcuta with the calm of someone protecting a routine he never expected to have.

When he crossed into Colombia in 2019, he says he had no job, no home, and no direction. He slept on the streets of Cúcuta, fell into drugs, and survived however he could in a border city along the 2,219-kilometer line that became a main escape route for millions of Venezuelans. “I used to live on the street, I went through drugs, and thanks to a city hall program, I was able to rehabilitate,” he told EFE.

Now, he talks about staying confident. “I fell in love with Cúcuta, I fell in love with Colombia, I already have my life here,” he told EFE.

In January, Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured in a U.S. military operation that started a complex political transition. For Venezuelans in Colombia, the news raised a clear question: Is it possible to return without risking everything again?

Colombia is the main destination for Venezuelan migrants, hosting about 2.8 million people, according to official figures. International organizations estimate that over 7.7 million Venezuelans have left in the last decade. Many have rebuilt their lives in Bogotá as security guards, bakers, delivery riders, journalists, or street vendors.

The Fear in the Plaza

In central Bogotá, rebuilding can look like waiting. In markets and small plazas, dozens of migrants stand around for hours, waiting for an order to land on a phone screen. Several food delivery riders working through apps like Rappi or DiDi declined to speak with EFE, and some stepped away as soon as they saw a recorder.

One rider explained why. “If they see us, they grab us and take us to El Helicoide,” he told EFE, referring to the detention center where U.N. agencies have reported torture rooms and where detainees have died in custody, including Gen. Raúl Isaías Baduel, a former defense minister under the late President Hugo Chávez.

Hope still cuts through. Antonio Alexander Hernández, a 54-year-old security guard, says he learned of Maduro’s capture in the early hours of January 3. “Glory to God, what we were waiting for has arrived,” he told EFE. Hernández says he fled after being warned that he was on a list of people to be captured. He wants to return only if there are guarantees. “I plan to go back, but with an amnesty law that lets us return in peace,” he told EFE.

Others see a return as real but not immediate. Isamar Celín, a manicurist in Chapinero who also works as a private nurse, left Venezuela six years ago. She says the news made her “very happy,” she told EFE, but she won’t go back yet because her mother is getting cancer treatment in Colombia. “Venezuela would have to be as stable as Colombia to move her,” she told EFE.

Diego Alexander Matute, once an administrator in Venezuela and now a baker in Bogotá, sees rebuilding as a process, not a celebration. “Of course I would go back, but first there has to be economic and political stability,” he told EFE. Not yet. Not without stability.

Work Still Wins

Ariadni Benítez has sold coffee for seven years, carrying two thermoses and plastic cups, offering tinto to drivers and passersby. She left Venezuela during a health crisis for her daughter when she couldn’t find medicine. “I have stability, my daughters are studying, so I’m not really thinking about going back,” she told EFE.

Beatriz Jhoana Ochoa, who sells empanadas and arepas from a street stand in Cúcuta, recently returned to Venezuela for the first time in eight years and found a country that, at least on the surface, seemed detached from the political tremor. “I arrived in Margarita Island, and everything was normal, people at the beach, drinking, enjoying themselves, nobody talked about it,” she told EFE.

Her conclusion is blunt. “I do not care whether he is there or not; I have to work anyway,” she told EFE.

The problem is that politics can change fast, while rebuilding a life takes time. Landázuri, watering parks in Cúcuta, has already crossed one threshold. For millions of Venezuelans watching from Colombia, the next step is harder to trust.

Also Read: Mexican Search Mothers Bring Desert Skills to Tucson Missing Case