Caracas Chronicles

My mother always told me that journalism is not a job, but a vocation. 

I grew up in a newsroom in Caracas, and the newspaper business has been my family’s trade for three generations.  When I was 11 years old, the Hugo Chavez regime accused my mother of terrorism. Her real crime was reporting on Chavez’ advancing corruption and authoritarianism. 

We’ve been exiled ever since—it will be 20 years this December since we had to start all over again in the United States as political refugees.

When I graduated from college in 2017 as a journalist and political scientist, I knew that working on most media outlets as a news reporter would not be possible if I wanted to continue my activism for Venezuelan democracy, which has been a part of my life since Chavez was elected when I was five years old and my family began strongly opposing him.

As a college student, I had interned in mainstream media outlets such as CNN and MSNBC and learned these recognized newsrooms expect their reporters to not share any opinions online, especially none that would go against their editorial line or be considered controversial.

I eventually decided that in order to continue raising my voice about the Venezuelan tragedy, I would work at a right-wing tabloid that allowed me to have an online presence and oppose the Venezuelan regime. Unfortunately, too many Americans now see the Venezuelan crisis as a left versus right issue, and Democrats and leftists just have not taken an interest in our story, leaving the right to emerge as the only real political ally in the Venezuelan cause.

I quickly rose in the tabloid’s newsroom to be the principal news reporter, and for a bit I managed to both share the story of Venezuelans and make a good living as a news reporter in New York City.

That was until the Donald Trump administration began focusing on Venezuela’s regime this year, and correcting the narrative of a New York Times article on my country cost me my job. 

The article’s writer traveled to Caracas and staged an absolutely inappropriate photo shoot with Delcy Rodriguez, one of the regime’s most tyrannical figures. Not only that, they portrayed Henrique Capriles Radonski as an opposition leader, even though every Venezuelan knows he hasn’t been a leader to us for years, and is now seen as a pawn for the regime. The journalist did not interview our actual leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado.

I was distraught after reading the article, knowing that Americans don’t know much about Venezuela and would come to understand the story through this misleading lens. This, at a crucial time when Venezuelans are asking Americans for help after Nicolas Maduro blatantly stole an election and began hunting down those who had bravely managed to show the world evidence of the chavista fraud.

I grabbed my phone and made a video explaining how it was misleading and posted it on my personal social media.

After a few days of mourning my time at the tabloid and its humiliating ending, I pondered whether to share my story, as I was still afraid of burning bridges that I could one day need in order to support myself as a journalist

The next morning, my editor directed me into a meeting and asked me to delete the video, saying it signaled that I could not be trusted to be unbiased in future reporting about The New York Times.

I was shocked, as my daily work life was filled with editorial battles with editors who handed out outrageous headlines and repeatedly asked me to violate journalistic ethics, which I always refused.

In one particularly disrespectful exchange after Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize, two editors changed my article’s headline to describe her as ‘a relative unknown’ as they portrayed Donald Trump as being robbed of the honor. When I flagged that Machado is quite known worldwide as the leader of the Venezuelan opposition, two editors laughed at me and then changed the headline to ‘completely unknown.’ I had to remove my name from the article before they gave in and changed the headline back. That’s just one example of the daily battle I went through to keep my journalistic ethics in this newsroom.

I told my editor I would delete the video and went back to my desk as my vision became blurry. I felt I had to delete the video in order to pay next month’s rent. But something in me screamed not to. I thought about all my family has sacrificed for not bowing down in the face of authoritarianism, how my grandfather built a legacy out of nothing and gave it up to fight for democracy, and now fears he will die outside the beloved country he helped build. How my mom gave up a comfortable life to tell the truth. How I visited her when was hiding from the regime’s forces in our hometown’s mountains. How she made the painful decision of fleeing Venezuela on a boat a month later instead of allowing the regime to put her in jail for decades, because she had a daughter to think about. 

I knew I couldn’t let the values they taught me down, so I got back up and asked to speak to my editor again, and told him I was resigning instead. Even though I was terrified of losing my income, I decided it was time to dedicate myself to my true passion: sharing the stories of the left-wing tyrannies too often supported by well-meaning First Worlders who simply don’t know or care enough about them.

I told my editor my last day would be in four weeks. I also removed the outlet’s name from my LinkedIn and social media.

The next week I was thrilled to participate in a civil debate about the situation in Venezuela for France 24. The interview went really well, and when I came in to work the next day, several colleagues congratulated me for my professionalism during the broadcast, where I emphasized the brutality of the chavista regime and the need for more pressure on Nicolas Maduro.

But at the end of the day, my editor asked me into a meeting, telling me to ‘bring my things.’ He then informed me that that would be my last day at the job, citing the France 24 interview and saying ‘they couldn’t condone it.’

My editor informed me they would ship me the things on my desk and walked out of the room less than a minute after he walked in. That was my last interaction with the editor I had worked closely with for years, and who had repeatedly told me I was his best news reporter. 

Feeling shocked and humiliated, I walked out of the room and turned to my left, where I saw the HR department. I then approached the HR person, explaining I was just essentially fired and asking about my exit interview, which I had earlier specified was important for me to conduct. That prompted the head of HR to ask for my badge and escort me out of the newsroom, in front of the colleagues I had worked with for years.

She told me I was not fired, that they had simply accepted my resignation. 

After a few days of mourning my time at the tabloid and its humiliating ending, I pondered whether to share my story, as I was still afraid of burning bridges that I could one day need in order to support myself as a journalist.

Then I thought about the English-language outlets such as the Grayzone and Mint Press that make money spreading Chavista propaganda and attacking Maduro’s victims, and how what happened to me exemplifies the uphill battle we Venezuelans face as we try to tell our story.

I realized then it was time to take the muzzle off and lose the fear. My mom didn’t flee Venezuela on a boat so I would be silenced in the United States as a journalist. The time to speak is now.