This story was originally published on mynorthwest.com.
Paula Lamas was watching television just after midnight on Saturday when the impossible began to unfold.
U.S. forces had entered Venezuela. Explosions lit up Caracas. And Nicolás Maduro, the man who had ruled Venezuela for more than a decade, was being extracted from the country in a predawn military operation.
Lamas, a former news anchor at KUNS when it was Seattle’s Univision affiliate, is originally from Venezuela. She and her mother fled more than 20 years ago, fearing for their safety under the regime of Hugo Chávez. She has not been able to return home since.
Her mother never thought she would live to see this moment.
“My mom thought she would die without ever seeing a day like Saturday morning,” Lamas told KIRO Newsradio. “We couldn’t believe what was happening. So now we are hopeful that at some point, when things are stable and secure, we can go back and hug our family and be able to return home.”
A holiday trip that became permanent exile
Lamas was in her early 20s in 2001 when she traveled with her mother from Venezuela to California and Nevada to celebrate the holidays.
By the end of the trip, it became clear they could not safely return home due to political unrest.
Lamas’ mother, a former attorney and judge, later received a call telling them not to return for security reasons.
What was supposed to be a vacation became permanent exile. Lamas eventually made her way to Seattle, where she built a career in broadcast journalism. She received an Emmy Award nomination for Best News Anchor from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Northwest chapter for her work at KUNS Univision, becoming the first Latina journalist in Washington to receive that honor.
Now, more than two decades later, she watched from afar as the regime that forced her family out of their homeland came to an abrupt end.
“I’m going to speak today as a journalist, I’m going to speak as a Venezuelan, but I’m also going to speak as Paula Lamas, someone who has lived this story and understands the loss and the painful cost of pretending neutrality when people are suffering,” she said.
A divided nation debates the operation
The U.S. military operation to capture Maduro has sparked intense debate across the political spectrum. Democrats in Congress have called it unconstitutional and drawn comparisons to the Iraq War, warning of a costly occupation with no clear exit strategy. Republicans have praised it as bold leadership against a narco-terrorist regime. Many Americans fear the U.S. could find itself entangled in another foreign conflict like those in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Lamas sees it differently. In her view, the world finally stopped looking away.
“I’m not a big fan of this administration, let’s be clear,” Lamas said. “But what happened early Saturday morning was something we could have done years ago if we had wanted to help Venezuelans.”
‘He is not a president’
Lamas took issue with how media outlets have described Maduro.
“Different networks and colleagues have been calling him ‘president.’ He is not a president,” she said.
She offered several reasons. Maduro lost the 2024 election, she said, and opposition leaders Edmundo González and María Corina Machado have toured the world presenting evidence, including paper tallies and video recordings from election night. More than 70 percent of Venezuelans voted for González, she said.
Beyond that, Lamas said Maduro was never truly elected in the first place. He was appointed by Chávez before his death.
“He is not a president because he was appointed like a king choosing a successor,” Lamas said. “That’s not how democracy works.”
In her view, Venezuela stopped being a functioning democracy years ago.
“There were no free elections, no separation of powers, no independent courts, no free press, and no real protection of human rights,” she said.
‘This wasn’t an act of war against a nation’
Lamas acknowledged the intense debate over whether the U.S. operation was legal or wise. Critics have warned of a quagmire reminiscent of Iraq or Afghanistan. Supporters say Maduro was a criminal who had to be removed.
Lamas pushed back on those who say the U.S. violated international law, citing the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, known as R2P, which emerged after the international community failed to intervene in Rwanda and Bosnia.
“This doctrine exists because the world failed in Rwanda, in Bosnia, and in many places where non-intervention became an excuse for indifference,” Lamas said.
From her perspective, Saturday’s operation was not an invasion.
“There were no U.S. troops invading Caracas. There were no bombs dropped on the population. There was no occupation,” Lamas said. “This wasn’t an act of war against a nation. It was an act of justice against a criminal enterprise that had taken a nation hostage.”
More than seven million Venezuelans have been forced to flee the country.
“This is not politics,” she said. “This is a humanitarian catastrophe.”
What comes next for Venezuela
Lamas said she is cautiously optimistic, though she urged patience. She has felt this hope before, only to be disappointed.
“We have lived through this kind of disappointment before, where we thought the situation would get fixed and it didn’t happen,” she said. “But right now we understand that we have to be happy, because this is the first step. It’s really the beginning of the end of a dark time.”
She hopes Edmundo González will be sworn in as president and that Venezuela can begin to rebuild.
“They tore down an entire country,” Lamas said. “We need to rebuild it from the ashes, pretty much.”
For those who remained neutral as Venezuelans suffered, Lamas had a message.
“To anyone who pretended to be neutral in this situation, let me tell you: you were supporting the dictator. You were supporting the repression. And I think that now the United States and everybody in the world is understanding this situation a little better.”
And for those who have criticized the operation, she had a pointed question.
“Would you say the same thing if it were your family without medicine, your children without food, your country without a voice?”
A secret she kept for 20 years
Lamas revealed something she said she has never shared publicly.
In 2006, she obtained videos from Venezuela showing Hezbollah training children as young as eight years old to use weapons. The footage came from La Guajira, a region on the border with Colombia.
She brought the material to U.S. intelligence officials.
“I had contact with intelligence agencies back in 2006,” Lamas said. “I had this meeting with a guy from intelligence, and he said, ‘This is not new. We already know.’”
What he told her next has stayed with her ever since.
“He said, ‘Every single intelligence agency in the entire world has this information. MI6, European agencies, Spain, you name it, the CIA. Everybody knows. And everybody is looking the other way because it’s not their problem right now,’” Lamas recalled.
The official told her the world would only pay attention when it became a problem for the U.S. He advised her to delete the videos and forget the conversation ever happened.
“The frustration I felt,” Lamas said. “It was like everybody knew what was happening, and no one was helping us.”
Twenty years later, she believes the world can no longer look away.
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