Group gathers in San Jose to make voices heard after U.S. military operation in Venezuela

By Amanda Hari

Wet weather wasn’t going to stop demonstrators from filling San Jose’s Mexican Heritage Plaza to make sure their voices were heard. 

The group, San Jose Against War, held the event to express its disapproval of President Trump’s decision to launch a large-scale military operation in Venezuela.

“It’s very important that we stand firm and raise our voices that we, the American people, do not believe in this,” Sharat Lin said. “We do not support it.”

Lin lives in San Jose, but he’s spent a significant amount of time in Venezuela.

For him, it was hard to watch the images coming out of there on Saturday.

“Yeah, it hit home because I was there where those bombs dropped,” said Lin, recalling his past visit to the country. 

Lin cares deeply about Venezuela’s political past, present, and future. So much so, he’s previously volunteered to help monitor elections in the country.

“The Venezuelan government has invited international observers to independently verify the validity of those elections,” Lin explained. “And I served twice as an international observer.”

Nicolás Maduro’s elections in Venezuela are a widely controversial issue. Part of the charges against Maduro, who is set to be arraigned Monday, includes running a “corrupt, illegitimate government.”

Despite a majority of the international community, including the U.S., refusing to acknowledge his presidency, Lin insists, in his view, that the election was a democratic process.

“I just want to push back against this notion that Venezuela and Nicolás Maduro are illegitimate,” said Lin. “He was duly elected. There’s plenty of Venezuelans that disagree with him, and that’s fine. But that’s part of democracy.”

Lin told his story to a crowd of demonstrators standing and marching in the rain, including Fabi Saba.

“It’s raining cats and dogs and people are out here because they’re enraged,” Saba explained. “This is not acceptable. This takes people back in time to 1989 when the United States invaded Panama under the same pretext of drug cartels.”

Saba continued to march for more than a mile in hopes of sounding the alarm.

Lin went on to say he’s calling on Congress to pass a resolution that would explicitly stop any president from doing something like this again without congressional approval.

“We prevent these kinds of military intervention that are so destabilizing,” said Lin. “We want a world that is peaceful and stable, but he is doing exactly the opposite. So that’s why we’re here.”