Renato Elia was on a business trip in Brazil when his wife called from their home in Venezuela to tell him their daughter and two sons had escaped a kidnapping attempt in a country that was growing increasingly volatile.
Ten years later, they are American citizens living in Miami-Dade County.
“We came for a week to wait for some security at home but then my wife said let’s stay another week, and then a month, and then a year,” Elia, 53, said. “The situation started deteriorating in Venezuela and we couldn’t go back.”
His story was a familiar one to the more than 600 Venezuelans and their supporters who rallied at Cypress Bay High School in Weston on Saturday morning.
They came to hear how Congress plans to pressure a regime change in their homeland.
The nearly three-hour gathering in the school auditorium was punctuated with applause, standing ovations, the waving of U.S. and Venezuelan flags, and repeated chants of “Libertad, Libertad, Libertad.”
There were also tears and emotional, bilingual accounts of families left behind to fend for themselves without jobs, money, medicine or food in a collapsing country.
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz organized the meeting in her district — that she called “Weston-zuela” — to reassure the largest Venezuelan community in the country that the government would do all it could to solve a “humanitarian crisis of epic proportions,” and restore Venezuela’s democracy.
“My colleagues and I have also drafted additional legislation that will bring even more pressure to bear on this corrupt regime,” she said. “That includes bills to restrict efforts to stifle domestic dissent, increases in humanitarian aid, and greater monitoring and strategies to prevent Russian influence on Venezuela’s government and military.”
Sharing the high school stage with Rep. Wasserman Schultz was fellow Rep. Donna Shalala as well as Sen. Robert Menendez and Rep. Albio Sires, both of New Jersey, and Ambassador Carlos Vecchio, charge d’affaires of Venezuela to the U.S., representing opposition leader and self-declared interim president Juan Guaido.
Near the end of a question-and-answer session with the audience, Vecchio crossed the stage, walked down the stairs, and hugged an emotional Patricia Ferrer, who admitted to fighting back tears while thanking him for continuing to fight the tyranny that chased this Aventura resident from her native Caracas 10 years ago.
“[The hug] was a surprise,” she said. “It was a complete surprise but I really wanted to make him feel the thankfulness of all Venezuelans toward [our] fight.”
Vecchio reminded the audience that Saturday marked exactly one month since Gauido took the oath of office. He added that any nation that supported human rights was also Venezuelan at heart.
“We will never forget what you have done inside the United States for supporting our government, for supporting our liberty, and helping us restore our democracy,” he said, to the cheering crowd.
And, even though Elia has made a comfortable life for his family in South Florida, he said he still bears a responsibility for his home country.
“I feel if there’s a change in Venezuela I have a duty to go back and do something about it,” he said.
wkroustan@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4303 or Twitter @WayneRoustan
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