Why President Trump Is Giving Venezuelan Expats Déjà Vu

The day after the Women’s March on Washington, I met up with a few friends from my home country of Venezuela for lunch. I was telling them all about the emotional experience of walking with half-a-million people down the streets of D.C.; how invigorating it was, how hopeful it had made me feel after months of worry. One of the women I was eating with had joined in on the peaceful protests that happened in New York on Saturday, but the other had decided to stay home. It wasn’t because she was against the march, she explained, but rather that she no longer had it in her. “I have a complicated relationship with marching,” she said to me. “In Venezuela, we marched and marched, and marched. I got that natural high from seeing all those people around me; I thought nothing could stop us. But now here we are, 15 years later, and nothing changed.”More…