For days now, Venezuelan WhatsApp, Signal and social media groups across the world have barely slept.
From with messages of disbelief, tears, voice notes and even cautious humour, as Venezuelans absorbed what once felt unthinkable: the possible end of decades of authoritarian rule under former leader Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro.
The jubilation from many Venezuelans around the world comes on the heels of outrage from other parts of the international community at US President Donald Trump's controversial decision to capture Maduro to face multiple narco-terrorism, conspiracy-related drug charges.
"I never thought I'd see this day," Maria Fernanda Gonzalez, a 35-year-old Venezuelan who fled Caracas in 2017, exclaimed.
"We lost friends, family, our youth. This feels like breathing again."
Others described calling relatives they had not seen in years, including nephews and nieces who only know Venezuela through stories.
Some Venezuelans living overseas spoke of an exile that may finally have an end date.
For 24-year-old Santiago Vidal Calvo, a Venezuelan foreign policy analyst at US think tank the Manhattan Institute, the news of Maduro's removal to the US still feels unreal.
During his teenage years under the Chávez and Maduro regimes, Mr Calvo witnessed family and friends' lives collapse from middle-class standards into morning bread lines and hauling barrels of water up flights of stairs.
"I've never seen another system in Venezuela other than Maduro and Chávez," he said, having migrated to the US in 2021 on a scholarship.
"Never known a Venezuela outside of class decline, corruption and escape."
But while diasporas celebrate a psychological release years in the making, voices inside Venezuela — particularly those tasked with executing the day-to-day realities of a potentially violent transition that will go on for months — are striking more restrained tones.
They spoke to the ABC on condition of anonymity, as Venezuelans watch for signs of a struggle between internal factions jostling to fill the power vacuum left by Maduro.
Figures 'way worse than Maduro' still in control
"The regime is still completely in power. All that has changed is that Maduro is not in power," an opposition representative in Caracas who wished to remain anonymous told the ABC.
"There are still ranks of senior officials, military men, way worse than Maduro, still in power here."
Local media, opposition figures and policy-makers warn that removing Maduro does not automatically dismantle the system he leaves behind.
An editorial published on Monday in independent Venezuelan publication El Nacional said the country had gone from "unbridled joy, held back for so long, at the dictator's fall, to this new situation in which the regime, seriously battered and ridiculed, nevertheless remains in power."
Venezuelans speaking to the ABC from Maracaibo and Valencia — municipalities west of Caracas — stress that despite the big news in the international media, very little has changed at the ground level.
"The public transport drivers, police, garbage collectors, courts, bankers … it's not like overnight we've got a clean state of workers revolutionising the place," one Valencian local told the ABC via Signal with a laughing emoji.
[Datawrapper Venezuela Municipality Map]"We've got hope. Maduro is gone. But the same people that populated the regime, they still patrol the streets and live in our buildings.
"So the situation is extremely tense."
Meanwhile, figures who have established power inside the country's security state, like Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, are, according to analysts both within and outside Venezuela, fully capable of establishing a coup despite the US presence.
Mr Cabello — a former military officer and long-time regime powerbroker — still commands deep loyalty within the armed forces and security services, making him one of the most feared figures in Venezuelan politics.
"This is a guy … who has all of his life — over 50 years or something — wanted nothing more than to be the president of Venezuela," Mr Calvo said.
And while countries around the world have criticised US president Donald Trump's intervention in Venezuela, Mr Calvo explains that many of those same countries — like Mexico and Colombia — have been intervening to support Maduro's drug cartel for years.
In the US' case, former president Joe Biden pardoned Maduro's relatives who were caught, convicted and jailed for smuggling millions of dollars worth of cocaine — 800kg, headed for New York — back in 2022, Mr Calvo said.
"So the view from Venezuela is that Biden, the US, supported the drug cartel — while Trump at least understood, whatever his motivations, that he wasn't going to let that slide," he said.
"That's the 'non-Maduro' Venezuelan view, at least."
But while reports of sporadic gunfire and fears of a coup remain ongoing in Venezuela — amid standing orders to capture Trump intervention supporters — political analysts are confident that in the long run, any attempts at re-establishing the regime will eventually fail or backfire.
Their evidence? The 2024 election result ultimately showed support for Maduro was outnumbered two to one, even with internal election rigging, political pressures, and the exclusion of diaspora voters — a logistical feat by the opposition that analysts maintain could only have been possible with Maduro insiders breaking ranks.
Secondly, even if hardliners move to a coup, some analysts are confident the regime insiders who facilitated Maduro's capture would do so again — creating a "dream scenario for both the United States and Venezuela's opposition, whose biggest obstacle remains clearing out pro-Maduro's senior ranks".
Machado 'the right leader' — but even allies urge caution
María Corina Machado, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize recipient and Venezuelan opposition figure widely credited with unifying anti-Maduro forces, has publicly welcomed the news of Maduro's removal, calling it a historic turning point.
"The hour of freedom has arrived," Ms Machado said in one of her first public addresses over the weekend.
"We will restore order, free the political prisoners, build an exceptional country, and bring our children back home."
But among opposition organisers, policy advisers and civil society figures inside Venezuela, there is growing unease about how quickly that moment is being pushed toward formal power.
Several voices in and out of Caracas, speaking on condition of anonymity due to fears of arrest, told the ABC that while Ms Machado remained the movement's most legitimate leader, the institutional conditions for her to govern may not yet exist.
They expressed concerns that transitioning too fast may "set her up for failure".
"Machado is the right person," Mr Calvo said.
"But if you put her in front of a state that's still controlled by the same generals, judges and police commanders, you risk burning the symbol before the system is dismantled."
Others warned that premature transition could give hardliners an excuse to reassert control, particularly if violence escalated or negotiations collapsed.
They suggested that keeping the interim leader and Maduro's former deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, in executive control until Venezuela was constitutionally required to hold an election in 90 days was a smart move — a move that Ms Machado appeared to strongly reject as a continuation of the Maduro regime in a Fox News interview yesterday.
"The hour of freedom is going to take a long time to arrive," El Nacional's editorial stated.
"We always knew it would be a complex and difficult task, fraught with unforeseen situations that cannot be resolved solely by our will."
For now, two realities coexist.
Outside the country, Venezuelans allow themselves — cautiously — to imagine return, reunion, hope and repair.
Inside Venezuela, those charged with turning hope into governance insist that the most delicate phase is only just beginning — and that, as ever, the devil lives in the details.
