MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
As it applies pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the Trump administration has support from Venezuelan exiles in America - notably in Doral, Florida, home to what is believed to be the largest group of Venezuelan Americans and exiles in the country. Scott Tong is host of Here and Now, the midday show from NPR and WBUR. He reported from Doral last week, and he's here to tell us some of what he heard. Good morning, Scott.
SCOTT TONG, BYLINE: Michel, good morning.
MARTIN: So you spoke with some Venezuelan exiles - people who were born in Venezuela but left under duress. What did you hear from them?
TONG: Well, I heard they're following very closely the moves the Americans are making that Franco was just talking about. They have stories of persecution back home in Venezuela under Maduro's socialist government and, before that, his predecessor, Hugo Chavez. They spoke of being in the political opposition, being imprisoned, receiving death threats and being beaten, their friends and relatives being disappeared in verb form, as they put it. Now, many of them favor a muscular American intervention to remove Maduro, who they claim has stolen elections. Here's a piece of tape from my interview with Jorge Jaen of the Venezuelan American Republican Club of Miami-Dade.
JORGE JAEN: There has to be a heavy hand. Could be taking care of the drug laboratories that you have in Venezuela.
TONG: Surgical strikes on those. Is that what you mean?
JAEN: Yeah. It could be surgical strikes.
TONG: I mean, there's some discussion about strikes on him.
JAEN: Anything that brings freedom to the individuals that are being oppressed in Venezuela, I think, should be on the table.
TONG: And, Michel, these dissidents and exiles - they have powerful allies in this moment, including Marco Rubio, who's from South Florida - a staunch anticommunist, of course, the secretary of state and President Trump's national security adviser - as well as this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner. Maria Corina Machado is living in hiding in Caracas. She's the head of the opposition and remotely often calling for regime change.
MARTIN: So in your reporting, did you get the sense that the Venezuelan exile community pretty much agrees on the idea of taking some military action against Maduro?
TONG: Not all. My sense in Doral - last week I was there - was the voices for military action appear to be the loudest. Some are concerned things could go wrong. Say, if the Americans invade, could they differentiate between the good guys and the bad guys? Will innocent Venezuelans die? If Maduro does go, could it bring chaos and a power vacuum, making lives - regular people - even worse?
MARTIN: And what about the claims of these groups pushing for regime change? Did you have a sense of whether they're accurate?
TONG: Independent analysts and scholars say there are some half-truths and misinformation coming from these groups. Proponents of change say Maduro is the head of a cartel, has close ties to terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah. David Smilde is a longtime Venezuela scholar at Tulane University. He says evidence for these claims is rather thin, and he says there's a long and sordid history of exile groups around the world encouraging American military invasion.
DAVID SMILDE: The lesson here is that exiled and marginalized opposition leaders from other countries are not good sources of information. They have, obviously, understandable political interests in generating U.S. intervention. I mean, listen to them. Great. But they should not be taken as solid analysis.
TONG: And, Michel, as Franco just mentioned, in some cases, this American action has not ended well. David Smilde references Iraq in 2003 and Cuba during the Bay of Pigs in 1961. So we'll have more on this story today and tomorrow from Doral, Florida, on Here and Now.
MARTIN: That's Scott Tong. He's host of NPR's Here and Now, a co-production with member station WBUR. Scott, thanks so much for sharing your reporting with us.
TONG: Michel, thanks.
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