DETROIT – A Detroit woman has family who live just a few minutes away from Nicolás Maduro’s home in Venezuela. They watched the military operation unfold from their window.
The family is celebrating -- they say their dreams, long delayed, have now been delivered.
“Lots of emotions,” Jessica Gutierrez said on Saturday. “Emotions you didn’t even know you had.”
Gutierrez’s family owns El Rey de las Arepas in southwest Detroit. For her family back home in Caracas, last night was long and scary.
“I got a phone call from my family at 1 o’clock in the morning here, 2 o’clock in the morning there,” she said. “They said the United States is attacking now and they aren’t just what that’s going to look like.”
For hours, they did not know what was happening.
Early in the morning, they found out U.S. forces had captured Maduro.
Then, the relief came.
She also has family and friends in Miami. She sent Local 4 videos of them celebrating the news in Miami.
“It’s like a relief, excitement, happiness, it’s like you can breathe again,” she said. “It’s been 25 years of a horrible dictatorship.”
Now, almost 2,400 miles away in southwest Detroit, inside their restaurant kitchen, they are cooking up meals to mark the historic moment.
“Never lose faith,” she said. “Never lose faith. It took 25 years. But, here we are celebrating it. Thankful that everyone is ok down there, family, friends, all the innocent children.”
She says people plan to gather outside the restaurant on Sunday at noon to celebrate.