This transcript was generated using AI automation and may contain minor formatting or transcription errors. Please refer to the original audio to verify specific quotes or context. The transcript covers the introductory remarks and the post-screening panel discussion; the 73-minute documentary screening itself is not captioned here.

Escaping Venezuela: Screening and Panel Discussion

Cato Institute

Panelists:

• Jesús Armas, Venezuelan Political Activist
• Germania Rodríguez Poleo, Venezuelan Journalist
• Jim Epstein, Director, Escaping Venezuela; Executive Editor, Reason magazine

Moderated by Ian Vásquez, Vice President for International Studies, Cato Institute

This transcript discusses imprisonment and torture. Readers for whom this is a sensitive topic may wish to take that into account.

Opening Remarks

Ian Vásquez: Welcome everybody to the Cato Institute. I’m Ian Vásquez, Vice President for International Studies. For the better part of the past 27 years, after Hugo Chávez rose to power, Venezuelans had been living under a socialist dictatorship. Hugo Chávez, of course, came to power through a popular vote, and he promised to usher in a Bolivarian revolution — named that way after the country’s liberator, the independence leader Simón Bolívar — and he promised to achieve social justice. It didn’t take long, however, before Chávez started to implement “socialism of the 21st century” and put in place an authoritarian regime. That regime proceeded to produce one of the most spectacular collapses of any country at any time in history outside of wartime. My colleagues Marcos Falcone and Daniel Raisbeck recently catalogued the scale of that destruction — the humanitarian, political, and economic crisis that was produced — in an article we posted on the Cato Institute website called “How Socialism Destroyed Venezuela in 16 Charts.” There you can see very dramatic visuals of the explosion of corruption, poverty, emigration, and crime that occurred under the Chavista regime and that continues to this day. But the data tells only part of the story — it doesn’t capture the ways, or the extent to which, people’s lives have been destroyed in Venezuela.

That’s why I’m so pleased to be able to host this film screening this evening of the documentary Escaping Venezuela, produced by our friends at Reason magazine. And I’m especially delighted that after the documentary we’ll be having a short, thirty-minute discussion with political activist from Venezuela Jesús Armas, Venezuelan-American journalist Germania Rodríguez Poleo, and Jim Epstein, who is the producer of the film. I’ll introduce them more fully at that time. I think this film does a very nice job of telling Venezuela’s story, and that’s especially important now that Americans are actually starting to pay attention to what’s going on in Venezuela — and much of the world is too — since the United States intervened in the country and captured and removed the dictator Nicolás Maduro at the beginning of this year. The documentary is useful for Venezuelans too, because so much has happened in the last twenty-five or so years that it’s easy to forget everything that led to the current tragedy, and it’s well reported in this film. Those of us who have been traveling to Venezuela for decades, and have been professionally involved there and formed close relationships with Venezuelan advocates of freedom, take the fight for liberty in Venezuela personally. That’s yet another reason I’m so pleased to host this film, our guests, and all of you tonight. So let’s watch the film — it lasts about 73 minutes. After that we’ll have a discussion, and then we’ll have a reception. Thank you.

Panel Introduction

Ian Vásquez: Germania Rodríguez Poleo is a Venezuelan-American journalist, political analyst, and activist. She fled Venezuela as a child after her family was persecuted by the Hugo Chávez regime. Throughout her career she has covered politics, human rights, and the Venezuelan crisis. Previously she served as U.S. chief reporter for the Daily Mail and is a contributor to Caracas Chronicles — for those of you who don’t know, that’s one of the leading English-language publications covering Venezuela, and I recommend it. Today Germania works as an independent journalist and political analyst, and her work has appeared in places like Reason, The Free Press, and so on.

We’re also joined by Jesús Armas. Jesús has actually come up from Caracas, where he lives. He’s the founder of Ciudadanía Sin Límites, a Venezuelan think tank that for fourteen years has defended individual liberty and promoted market-oriented reforms in the water, electricity, and broader energy sectors. He’s a member of Vente Venezuela, the party of María Corina Machado, the leader of Venezuela’s democratic opposition, and he organized her 2024 presidential campaign in the city of Caracas. He previously was a member of the Caracas City Council, and in fact Jesús was a political prisoner under the Maduro regime, having been arrested in the aftermath of the 2024 elections in December of that year and released in February of this year.

And finally, we have with us Jim Epstein, executive editor of Reason. He’s done a number of other documentaries — one of them was Cypherpunks Write Code, about the roots of Bitcoin. He’s written a number of feature articles, one about the dangerous world of Venezuelan Bitcoin mining, another on Brazil’s growing libertarian movement. Before Reason, Jim spent eight years as a producer at WNET, the PBS flagship station in New York City, where he won five New York Emmys and three Golden Eagle Awards for his work.

So, welcome, and thanks for joining us. Jesús, I think I’ll ask you — we’ll begin with you. As I mentioned, you were arrested and spent a lot of time in jail. Could you tell us something about that experience — why were you arrested, what did you learn about the nature of the regime while you were there, how did things change while you were there? I think people would be interested in hearing your personal story, which, by the way, was reported widely in the international press, as was the moment you were released.

Panel Discussion

Jesús Armas: Okay, thank you so much. So I was the organizer of María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia’s campaign in the city of Caracas. Right after the 28th of July, 2024 — the day of the presidential election — Nicolás Maduro stole the election, and he started the most extreme process of repression in the history of Venezuela, one of the most extreme episodes of repression in the region in maybe fifty or more years. In just two weeks, we had more than two thousand political prisoners in Venezuela. People were jailed just because they voted for María Corina and Edmundo González Urrutia. People were arrested just because they went to the street to raise their voices, to fight for freedom and democracy.

Right after the 28th of July, I went underground. I had to hide, and I started organizing protests, moving from safe house to safe house every week. On December 10th, 2024, I was arrested. I was having a coffee at a coffee shop really close to where I was staying, and when I went out, there were eight members of Nicolás Maduro’s intelligence service. They didn’t have any identification — they were all dressed in black, they had masks, they had assault rifles. They handcuffed me, hooded me, and put me in the back of an SUV. They took me to a clandestine safe house in the west of Caracas, and put me in the kitchen of this house — it was like a regular home that used to belong to a family, and the intelligence service had confiscated it to use as a torture center. They started an interrogation process, and when they started to feel frustrated because I wasn’t saying anything, they started to torture me. They put a plastic bag all around my face to stop my breathing. It was a hard moment — I was there, almost all the time with my face covered, handcuffed, for five days.

Then I was moved to a prison in the east of Caracas, where I was in a really small cell with thirty-seven other prisoners. These weren’t political prisoners — they were regular prisoners, murderers, people involved in narcotics, gang leaders. It was the worst condition you can imagine. We didn’t have a bathroom — we had to use plastic bags. We didn’t have a bed — we had to sleep on the floor. I spent all the nights fighting with rats, trying to get some sleep but also trying to avoid getting bitten. That’s how prisons in Venezuela are.

Then I was finally moved to El Helicoide, which is the most infamous torture center in Latin America. I was there for almost fourteen months. I was isolated — I didn’t have access to a lawyer, I didn’t have access to a phone call for thirteen months, I didn’t have any news about the outside world, any news about my family. My dad was actually diagnosed with cancer while I was in prison, and I didn’t know anything about that. Finally, after those fourteen months — I spent January 3rd, the day Maduro was arrested, inside that prison. That day, I understood I was going to be released, but it wasn’t a fast track — I spent one more month inside, asking myself when I was going to be released. It was really hard. That’s my story — but it’s not only my story, it’s the story of thousands of Venezuelans who’ve been kidnapped and arrested, without any respect for their human rights, over the last twenty-five or more years in Venezuela.

Ian Vásquez: How did you know you were going to be released, and when you were released, what happened?

Jesús Armas: I understood that night that I was going to be released because one of the guards, one of the members of Maduro’s intelligence service, came to our cell and told us Maduro had been arrested. We didn’t even have a window in our cell, but he gave us a cell phone that night, and in that moment we had access to information — we could communicate with the outside world. We saw the news, we talked to people outside, and we knew the end of Nicolás Maduro was there, and the possibility of a transition to democracy. We’re not there yet, but it was the first step.

The day I was released — February 8th — was really crazy, because I didn’t know I was going to be released that day. I had a visit that day — my mom came to visit me at the prison. While I was with her in the visit room, the director of the prison came to me and said, “Okay, stand up, don’t say anything, come with me — you’re going to be released.” My mom was really worried, because she didn’t understand what was happening. I was taken in a truck of the intelligence service to my home, and then some friends called my mom and said, “Tell Jesús to come to this important square really close to home, because a lot of neighbors and activists are here waiting for him.” I went there, and there were hundreds of people waiting for me. Then Juan Pablo Guanipa, one of the most prominent opposition leaders — who was released that same day — called me and asked where I was, and I told him to come. He came, we gave a big speech right there, and then we organized a caravan and moved from that square to the prison where I’d spent those fourteen months, and then to another prison. It was a really important moment for Venezuela, because it was the first time we’d raised our voices publicly since 2024.

Ian Vásquez: Yeah, I remember that — you were going through Caracas on a motorcycle.

Jesús Armas: Yeah.

Ian Vásquez: And everybody was crowding around you. Germania — at the beginning of the year there was a lot of enthusiasm in Venezuela that things were going to change, and indeed hundreds of political prisoners have been released, there was a reform to the energy law. How do you evaluate these first nine months since the removal of Maduro — how much has really changed?

Germania Rodríguez Poleo: Hi, everyone — I want to thank you for being here and taking a moment to care about Venezuela and what happened in our country. Ian, it’s very complex, and it’s hard to explain. A lot of Americans seem a bit confused, because they’re like, “Well, you guys celebrated the arrest, but now you don’t seem so happy.” All these things can be true at the same time. Venezuelans — I think I can speak for us — are incredibly grateful that the United States arrested Nicolás Maduro. That has given us an opportunity we didn’t have before. Jesús is here today thanks to that. That said, it’s been ten months, and we’re a bit concerned that they’re giving priority to signing oil deals, when we Venezuelans understand you cannot do business with these people. This isn’t even — The Free Press had an editorial about this I really recommend — the issue here isn’t just a moral one, that the United States is dealing with Delcy Rodríguez, who’s a brutal dictator and part of the Chavista system. The issue is that it’s bad business. Any agreement signed with Delcy Rodríguez isn’t going to last after Donald Trump is gone and the Department of War stops instilling fear in the regime.

So I think we Venezuelans would like to see the transition to democracy given higher priority than the oil-signing agreements. And do we like Donald Trump saying Venezuelans are dancing in the streets? No — because we’re happy Maduro got arrested, but we’re not dancing in the streets. The situation in Venezuela remains critical. People cannot afford food, healthcare. They’re spending hours every day without electricity. So all these things are true at the same time — we have hope we didn’t have before, we’re thankful, but we’ve dealt with this regime for thirty years, and we know appeasing them doesn’t work. We know they know how to buy themselves time, and we’re concerned, because Donald Trump has two years left — Delcy doesn’t work on electoral time frames.

Ian Vásquez: Donald Trump took a picture of himself with Delcy Rodríguez at the United Nations meeting last week, and that picture made big headlines all around the region and the world. What did you make of that?

Germania Rodríguez Poleo: I think we were preparing ourselves for that picture. We Venezuelans, against our will, have had to become experts in geopolitics and realpolitik —

Jesús Armas: And political realism.

Germania Rodríguez Poleo: We understand. Everything I just said doesn’t mean — and maybe Jesús has a different opinion here — I agree with President Trump that Venezuela isn’t ready to go to elections tomorrow, because it’s a dictatorship. We could win an election — we did in 2024. But are they going to respect the results if they still control the military and every aspect of the country? So I would like the President of the United States, my president now, to prioritize the democratic forces of the country, and to not be so chummy with Delcy Rodríguez. I know what he’s doing — I think a lot of Americans don’t know the details, and he’s trying to sell a story that Delcy isn’t Chavismo, that Chavismo’s been overthrown, Maduro was bad, and it’s a new day. No, no, no — Delcy Rodríguez is an ideologue. So is her brother. Diosdado Cabello is still there. So it would be a shame if everything the U.S. did up until now goes to waste because they don’t finish the job.

Ian Vásquez: Yes, I think it’s a problem if Delcy Rodríguez is continuously being legitimized as some sort of actually legitimate leader. Jim — you could have made, and you have made, documentaries on all sorts of different topics, but you chose to do one on this. Why is that? What was your motivation for this particular film?

Jim Epstein: Well, you know, when I started this film, Venezuela wasn’t in the news the way it is today, but it was in the news, and there was this spectacle of — wow, there are millions of people fleeing this country, it’s the most oil-rich country in the world, it has the largest proven oil reserves of any other country, and there were stories of starving children. I first approached it with curiosity — what happened here? How could these policy mistakes have been so catastrophic, that this country with so much natural resources, and which once had such a great civic culture, could have ended up here? And then, as I learned the history of Venezuela, I was also driven by a lot of anger at the way it was being covered in the United States. Maduro was depicted — the phrase John Oliver used was “epic mismanagement of the economy” — or, “Maduro’s just an authoritarian dictator,” and everyone was forgetting this long history of what led up to this. What led up to it, as I tried to show in the film, was a grand experiment in socialism, in making a country socialist — Chávez had such grand ambitions. He wanted to restore the socialist movement that had been crushed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He wanted to prove something to the world, and that grand experiment ended in devastation and death and hunger. I felt that if the world doesn’t learn that lesson from this tragedy, we’re dishonoring all the millions of Venezuelans who’ve had their life savings wiped out through inflation, who have food insecurity, who’ve fled the country and given up everything, or who have been tortured and imprisoned, like Jesús.

Ian Vásquez: A question for Jesús and Germania. What would you like to see in Venezuela as the immediate next steps that haven’t yet been taken? Or maybe another way to ask it: what are your biggest criticisms of the regime right now, in terms of what they’re doing, or not doing?

Jesús Armas: I think the regime wants to stay in power — that’s their location, you know? They don’t want a democratic election, and that’s what Venezuela needs, and what Venezuelans are fighting for — to have free and fair elections, as you all have in the United States. And Delcy Rodríguez has shown in the last few months that she’s also really incompetent. Right now in Venezuela there are many states without any electricity, where people are living every day with blackouts of eight, ten, or fourteen hours. She’s not good at running the economy of Venezuela either — we still have the highest inflation in the world, we still have a lot of issues with our currency. I think we Venezuelans need an open dialogue with the world about how to set a date for a presidential election, and also how to dismantle the repression system of El Chavismo. And at the same time, I think the most urgent thing is the release of all political prisoners.

Germania Rodríguez Poleo: I want to add, though — hopefully there will be free elections and once again a return of democracy to Venezuela, but it’s going to take generations. Chávez and Maduro destroyed the institutions of Venezuela — they corrupted the military, they drove out the free press, they corrupted the judiciary, eight million people fled, an incredible brain drain. It’s so much easier to break things than to rebuild them, and I think that’s what — hopefully, even when Venezuela gets to the point of having a democratic election, that’s just the beginning of the struggle to put things back together.

Jesús Armas: But at the same time, we are so bad off that there’s an opportunity for Venezuela to really change, and to create institutions that really respond to a democracy and to liberal values.

Germania Rodríguez Poleo: Yeah, absolutely — I think we have a great opportunity in Venezuela at the same time. To go back to what I feel is being done wrong, and what I’d like — a thousand percent, Venezuelans don’t understand why all the political prisoners haven’t been released. We hear Donald Trump saying that Delcy is “his employee” and that he controls Venezuela — so why are there still so many political prisoners? Jesús touched on another situation that’s harder for the U.S. to address with a dictatorship still there — the services are worse than ever, the economy feels worse to people right now than before January 3rd. So when Venezuelans in Venezuela see Trump bragging about how much oil he’s getting, but don’t see their own situation improving day to day, we’re creating a disconnect there. And what I think has happened — well, with María Corina’s return, there’s a lot of reporting that — I understand part of it — clearly the U.S. government did an intelligence assessment that said María Corina’s presence in the country was a factor, because she is that factor, she’s the opposition leader —

Jesús Armas: She’s the country’s leader, not only the opposition leader.

Germania Rodríguez Poleo: Well, correct — because they won an election.

Jesús Armas: Yeah.

Germania Rodríguez Poleo: Yeah, super, you’re right, you’re right — she’s the legitimate leader, the leader of the majority of the country. I used to say, after the setbacks, “No, María Corina, it’s not time yet” — but I think now it is time, and we have information that the White House isn’t helping that process. That doesn’t look good to Venezuelans. We need our own leadership — and why? Because right now there are two parallel processes. One is the business side, the oil deals; the other is the dialogue table — I don’t even know what to call it anymore, we’ve had so many negotiation tables. But I think the U.S. government and the State Department have been smart to approach the transition through the elected National Assembly of 2015, which you all saw in the film — Maduro just said, “No, bye, I’m ending Congress” — so these people are part of a negotiating table to talk about these things. How do we rebuild a country? One of the first things they’re talking about is a new Supreme Court. These are the things that need to happen, and I’d like to see it happen not even as fast as the oil deals — faster, because without this, without democracy, there’s no respect for private property.

Ian Vásquez: Yeah.

Germania Rodríguez Poleo: And Exxon has already had property stolen from them — they don’t want to go back in with the same government. So we all want the same thing, but I think the White House isn’t understanding that it can’t have full economic recovery without a transition to democracy.

Jim Epstein: And I think Trump — you couldn’t have scripted it better — everything he’s saying feeds into the narrative of the “evil imperialist United States wants to come and steal the oil.” Everything he says is just picture-perfect for feeding that narrative, and that’s a real danger, because it’s exactly Chávez’s narrative all along — that everything that’s gone wrong in Venezuela was the fault of the United States. That was Chávez’s brand of socialism, effectively.

Germania Rodríguez Poleo: Yeah, it makes it really hard for us Venezuelans to support what he’s doing when he does that. The reality speaks for itself — actually today they have this big oil energy convention in Venezuela, and in the middle of this convention, with representatives of all these big oil companies there, they had an electricity blackout. The thing is, with Delcy in power, without the right institutions, without legitimate leadership in Venezuela, it’s impossible to really develop the country — impossible to really extract the oil. That’s the reality. And talk about bad signs — something that’s really, really bad: they did an oil deal with a character called Alejandro Betancourt, who’s actually responsible for the electricity crisis in Venezuela. He was put in charge by Chávez of fixing the electric grid after it was nationalized, and now he’s a billionaire and there’s no electricity in Venezuela. And this is the guy the Trump administration is working with to fix the oil economy. Listen — again, it’s not just a moral thing, though that’s part of it — you cannot do business with these people and have it work. He overbilled the government by something like three billion dollars.

Jim Epstein: Correct.

Germania Rodríguez Poleo: So what Venezuelans are saying — there’s still something like 400 percent inflation in Venezuela, they’re seeing their economic situation worsen, and the Trump administration is saying Delcy is fantastic, the United States is getting the oil, and they’re seeing zero benefit from that.

Ian Vásquez: At bottom, it seems to me there’s a real crisis of legitimacy, and that’s certainly not a suitable environment for investment — I think that’s one of the big problems the administration is running into, and it goes to the heart of the flaw in its strategy.

Jesús Armas: They’re doubling down, postponing the transition to democracy until after they get growth going.

Ian Vásquez: Mm-hmm.

Jesús Armas: But it’s clear that it’s just not going to happen that way. Unfortunately, it seems like the more they’re invested in this oil deal and that kind of thing, the more incentive there is for the administration to keep working with the dictatorship, and not —

Germania Rodríguez Poleo: Exactly — with democratic leaders.

Ian Vásquez: Jim, was there anything that surprised you in making this film — something unexpected, or a big obstacle you hadn’t expected?

Jim Epstein: I’d say the big obstacle was — I mean, I could have made fifty hours about what happened under Chávez and Maduro, and I definitely want to give a shout-out to the editor of the film, who’s here, Danielle Thompson, who was my total partner in trying to whittle it down, because it was so hard to figure out which moments to show. There was the protests of 2017, which were also huge; there was the shutdown of Globovisión, also a huge moment, in 2013. There was a lot that ended up on the cutting-room floor, so it was hard to try to streamline the story and pick which moments to tell. It was surprising, too — there are contemporary people who analyze what happened in Venezuela and will tell you it wasn’t socialism, that Venezuela was never socialist, and I don’t know how to deal with that. Chávez used the word “socialism” literally every other word starting in 2005 — it was as close as you could get.

Ian Vásquez: It’s kind of like seeing Chávez say what Americans say now about Venezuela, but about the Soviet Union — “socialism was never tried.”

Jim Epstein: It was never socialist, no — Cuba was never really socialist, the Soviet Union was never really socialist —

Germania Rodríguez Poleo: It’s like — okay, well, what is, then? I don’t know.

Jim Epstein: Pretty socialist, though. And it didn’t work out that well, but —

Ian Vásquez: Okay. We’re almost out of time, but I do want to take a couple of questions from the audience. If you have a question, raise your hand, wait for the microphone, and identify yourself. We’ll begin here in front, please.

Audience Q&A

Audience member (Linda Edwards): Hi, Linda Edwards, Reason board member and chairman of the IEA in London. Jim, I just wonder — how did you find Carlos? Because telling the story anecdotally, and having him narrate, was really powerful.

Jim Epstein: Thank you. Through luck. At the early stage of the project I was working with a woman named Claudia Murray, who I want to give a shout-out to as well — she’s Cuban, and she was helping me with a lot of the pre-production. We did a short story for Reason about a storage unit in Miami where Venezuelans were coming to get donated stuff, and we interviewed everyone who came through about their stories. Then that organization agreed to let us post a video to their Instagram feed saying we were looking for personal stories, people who had stories to tell, and Carlos’s wife, Nelsy, answered our call. Claudia went over there and said, “I think — their daughter’s stuck at the Mexican border, and Carlos was arrested and tortured, and they helped Supreme Court justices escape — I think this is a good one.” So we went for it. For a long time — as Danielle knows better than anyone — I thought the story was centered at this apartment complex in Mexico where all these Venezuelans were living, and they all had incredible stories to tell, and I thought, “That’s the center of the film, that’s how I’m going to tell it.” I got to know a lot of those families too, interviewed them, and did a whole lot that had to be left on the cutting-room floor. But in the end we realized it was Carlos’s story we had to tell, because he was such a showman, and he’d been involved in helping political prisoners escape — it touched on a lot of the important themes I wanted to get to.

Ian Vásquez: Okay, one last question — we’ll take one from this gentleman right here, please.

Audience member (Andrés Segovia): Thank you. Hi, Andrés Segovia, Arcadia Foundation, and member of Vente Venezuela in Washington. First I need to congratulate — the tie is amazing. I have two questions — one for the political activist and the journalist, and one for Mr. Epstein. For our political activist and journalist: one of the things we can notice in this historic resource that you made is that the opposition and the media in Venezuela, in general, denounced the bad things that happened for a long time, but they really lacked pundits who talked about alternatives — something that could be the real alternative to socialism. Everybody in Venezuela knows, for a long time, that everything was wrong there, but there are very few places where you can go to think about what alternative we have to socialism. Right now we need to change that — I’d like to know your opinion. And for Mr. Epstein — I’d like to know what you think about the immigration issue, because you crossed the border into Mexico, you saw the drama people seeking asylum in America are living through. We’re talking about thousands of people who have stories like this, and they’re looking for some kind of status in this country, which is the land of the free. So that’s my question.

Germania Rodríguez Poleo: I think you’re right about your diagnosis, and I think that’s an issue a lot of countries under modern authoritarian movements face — that the opposition, for many reasons, and the media — there’s persecution, there’s censorship — are unable to really put up a fight from an alternative. Particularly in the case of Venezuela — Venezuela was always a leftist country. Before Chavismo, it was social democracy. This is hard to explain to Europeans and Americans, because all these words start to mean something different depending on who you’re talking to. But Venezuela was a country where — and the film shows this — there was a culture that there has to be a welfare state, because we have oil. So I actually think one of the things that still unites Venezuelans is that they believe the oil industry should be nationalized. I don’t know if we have polling on that —

Jesús Armas: Actually, one of the things I regularly do is poll on that topic.

Germania Rodríguez Poleo: I’ve been wondering about that.

Jesús Armas: Yes — and actually, the majority of Venezuelans right now are open to a private oil industry. That’s a huge change.

Germania Rodríguez Poleo: Yes — because part of Venezuelan culture, which was terrible — natural resources don’t make a country rich, but our culture was like, “Why aren’t we all rich if we have oil?” And the film shows how we ended up where we ended up. However, I do think this is a problem that oppositions to authoritarian movements and populism have generally — I’m seeing it a lot in the States too. Trump is a populist, and I think his opposition doesn’t know how to deal with him. We saw that in Venezuela. I always say Chávez drove us crazy — that’s what populists do. When you’re crazy, you cannot think. I see Delcy Rodríguez and I want to throw up — how could I not? They stole my country. But that’s not the best frame of mind to fight back against authoritarianism, and that’s happened in Venezuela and many other countries. I talk to Iranians all the time — they feel a similar disappointment with their activist leaders. So I think in the future it’s going to be really, really hard for any socialist movement to convince the Venezuelan people. I think Venezuela wants private property, wants a classical liberal alternative, and María Corina has been offering that her whole political life. That’s why she’s the leader of the opposition now — because she was brave, of course, but also because she offered Venezuelans an alternative to socialism. So I think we’re in a good place to build different kinds of institutions in Venezuela. But the first step is to have free and fair elections, to have María Corina Machado return to the country, and of course to work with the United States and all our allies in the Western Hemisphere to get rid of all the influence of China, Cuba, and, of course, the violent groups — the Colectivos and the Colombian guerrillas.

Jim Epstein: And I think the question to me was about my views on immigration. I certainly feel like Cato’s the right place — home to Alex Nowrasteh and David Bier, the two best immigration analysts out there — to say that I’m an open-borders guy. I believe everyone, all immigrants, should be allowed into this country — it’s probably the issue I care most about, actually. We didn’t even get into the horrors of what the Trump administration is doing to Venezuelans in revoking Temporary Protected Status and making their lives miserable — Germania could talk much more about that. Miami was actually created by Fidel Castro, who drove out all the Cubans — all the Cubans left and made Miami into an incredible city. And the Venezuelans — Hugo Chávez doubled down and made Miami even greater, because the Venezuelans moved in. I remember being there a few years ago, and there were Venezuelan grocery stores, it’s a city where you can speak Spanish, you never need to learn English, you can live in this incredibly functional Latin American city — it’s fabulous. And now everyone’s afraid, people don’t want to go out. We’re actually bringing Carlos to New York in a couple of weeks for a screening we’re hosting there of this film, and Cesar Baez, who’s a producer on the film, has been arranging for Carlos to take a train — because we can’t let him go near the airports, since even though he has a completely valid asylum claim in process, ICE is at the airports and it’s too dangerous. So it’s horrific what’s been happening.

Germania Rodríguez Poleo: I think you’re forgetting plenty of other Latin American dictatorships that made Miami great, by the way — it started with Cuba.

Jim Epstein: Yes.

Closing

Ian Vásquez: We’re, I’m afraid, out of time. I want to thank all of you for joining us, and I want to thank Reason magazine for making this film. Thank you, Jim, for joining us. Gracias, Jesús. Gracias, Germania. Please join us for a reception, and thank our guests for their time.