Quotes
We want freedom. We want Maduro to go. Maduro, leave!,
Marina Sugey, a 42 year-old resident of a poor area of Caracas called Petare, told AFP Many people thought Corina would win and they can’t understand what happened,
said Ayari Rauseo, a 48-year-old clothes seller as she sat on a concrete bench in Catia and described how Venezuela’s slow-motion collapse had torn her family apart They’re doing this because they don’t agree with what the president Nicolás Maduro Moros is doing,
said the girl, explaining how two of her aunts had fled overseas to Chile to escape the economic meltdown So far things are calm but there are rumours about disturbances,
said David Perdomo, a 58-year-old shoemaker, as he sat on a bench on Bulevar de Sabana Grande, a normally teeming shopping district where there was hardly a soul to be seen and most shutters were down She wants to go to Spain,
Rauseo said, staring despondently into the middle distance We are longing for change and [Maduro] laughed at us and rubbed it in our faces,
said the 38-year-old street hawker who, like many, was convinced the election had been stolen They can’t attack us with missiles so they use sanctions,
Pacheco said, hailing Maduro as an everyman president of the poor People are fed up with the same old shit, with the fraud,
fumed one local, Yesica Otaiza, as the cacerolazo pot-banging protest – a South American tradition intended to express political discontent – spread to a neighbouring tower block and along the street They made so many promises and they did nothing,
he complained of Maduro’s increasingly repressive administration which has presided over a massive migration crisis that has seen some eight million citizens flee abroad Nicolás is our hope.”
Another informed the few passing motorists We won and everybody knows it,
Machado declared on Sunday after the government-controlled electoral authority announced Maduro had prevailed with 51.21% of the vote compared to González’s 44.2% People are sad and disappointed,
said the 42-year-old nurse describing how Maduro’s claim of victory had come as a shock It’s good news. He’s not to blame for the situation the country he is facing,
argued Pacheco, 79, blaming Venezuela’s opposition and the United States for causing the country’s economic collapse with its campaign of sanctions [I always voted] for the revolution … always, always, always,
As a president, Maduro has been a disaster and doesn't understand a lot of what it takes to run a modern society,
said David Smilde, a Venezuela expert at Tulane University who has studied the country for 30 years He was always very disciplined,
said Vladimir Villegas, who has known Maduro since high school and served as his deputy foreign minister until breaking with Chávez