(RNS) — Since the U.S. government’s Jan. 3 capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, many Latino evangelical Christian communities in the United States have been celebrating what they call a spiritual victory as well as a political one.
“God is using Donald Trump to liberate Venezuela from the 27-year-old chains of oppression,” said the Rev. José Durán, a Venezuelan immigrant in Michigan, voicing a view held by some, though not all, Latino evangelicals and referring to the time that Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, have led the country.
Durán, who was interviewed in Spanish, serves as pastor of a senior team of advisers of María Corina Machado, the Venezuela opposition leader who was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. He’s also the executive director of Movimiento de Ciudad, an organization that supports urban ministry throughout Latin America.
Though Machado is a Catholic, her inner circle in the Vente Venezuela Party includes several evangelicals, who have taken up her charge that opposing Maduro is a “battle between good and evil.”
“We’re in agreement that we want the liberty of Venezuela from satanic communism, socialism,” Durán said.
But with Maduro’s successors increasing repression in the country and President Donald Trump insisting that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela without calling immediate elections, the future of the country is uncertain.
The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, an evangelical adviser to President Trump and the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, told RNS that U.S. Latinos’ support in the 2024 elections played a key role in the administration’s decision to remove Maduro from office and that Latino evangelicals will h …