Saturday morning, Congressman Seth Moulton, who represents the 6th District including Marblehead, responded to the Trump administration’s actions in Venezuela capturing that country’s president Nicolas Maduro and his wife.
“Congress did not authorize this war,” Moulton wrote on X. “Venezuela posed no imminent threat to the United States. This is reckless, elective regime change risking American lives (Iraq 2.0) with no plan for the day after. Wars cost more than trophies.” Moulton served in Iraq as a Marine.
Paul Hare, who lives in Marblehead, served as a British deputy ambassador to Venezuela in the 1990s and is watching the situation closely.
“Venezuelan society has undoubtedly been taken over by criminal elements,” Hare told the Current on Saturday, adding that Maduro has grown more authoritarian, taking control of the military, judiciary, police and election commission.
Hare said Maduro clearly lost Venezuela’s last presidential election and is allowing cocaine trafficking, gold smuggling and money laundering through crypto.
“It’s a difficult case,” he added. “The lawyers are saying it’s a breach of international law, a breach of the U.N. Charter, of course, not respecting the sovereignty of another country. And we don’t know if there is a plan for the day after.”
Hare’s daughter, Victoria Dosch, lives in Marblehead with her family and teaches Spanish at Tower School. She lived with her parents in Caracas from seventh through 11th grade.
“My thoughts are of continual and increasing concern for my many friends from Venezuela, their families, my teachers and other loved ones in the area that are impacted by this escalation,” Dosch said. “Life in Caracas has been excruciating for decades. Even when we lived there in the 1990s, the violent crime and inflation levels were the source of ongoing real-life nightmares each and every day for my five siblings and me. What we lived through, alongside our Venezuelan best friends, is one of the primary reasons I chose a place like Marblehead to raise my children. I take not one second of the freedom and security we feel here for granted.”
Dosch added: “My family and I have always been hoping for freedom and reprieve for these hardworking, resilient people. We study and reflect upon the Venezuela reality in my Spanish classroom weekly. The situation today has escalated, without a doubt, and I do not have a crystal ball. There is hope that this dramatic turn of events could lead to peace and stability in Venezuela, but that is simply a wish. Many things need to happen in the coming weeks for that to evolve. My thoughts are with the people who survive day to day in this uncertain time, not just in Venezuela, but nearby, wondering what this means for their own realities, having access to basic necessities like water, electricity and food, and how much worse this will get before, we pray, we see the long-awaited path to justice and liberty appear. The optimist in me wants to believe it will. The realist in me knows that this is far more complicated than we can ever understand.”
