Mayor Mamdani’s comrades in the Democratic Socialists of America this week trumpeted Venezuela as a socialist utopia — despite the widespread poverty, killing and drug-smuggling that marked dictator Nicolás Maduro’s disastrous tenure.
During a video call Tuesday called “Hands off Venezuela!” attended by some 1,400 people, party officials painted a picture of a country where homes are affordable, people live content in idyllic communes, and the only threat to happiness in American imperialism.
They did not mention that Maduro flew DSA leaders to Venezuela at least three times since 2021, where he wined and dined them in lux hotels as he fed them propaganda.
And party leaders didn’t whisper a word of the Maduro regime’s abysmal human-rights record that prompted 8 million to flee in what the United Nations called the largest exodus in recent Latin American history.
During the hour-long meeting, there was no mention of the country’s disputed elections, its 17,882 politically motivated arrests, or the more than 10,085 people executed by security forces since Maduro took power in 2013.
“There’s a lot of misinformation about Venezuela,” claimed North Carolina DSA leader Tristan Bavol-Marques, as he launched into a “history lesson” that conveniently left out any mention of Maduro until his Jan. 3 capture by US forces.
But Bavol-Marques parroted figures touted by the Maduro government – like the 5 million affordable “good quality” homes the tyrant purportedly built under a program known as the “Gran Misión Vivienda.”
“I’ve seen these homes myself, I’ve actually been to a party in one of them,” he flexed. “They’re very beautiful, they’re well-built and they’re sold at cost – which makes them deeply affordable.”
But not only have the homes been described as structurally weak and often lacking basic necessities like water — only a fraction have been actually constructed, with Maduro’s cronies pocketing most of the funds, according to Venezuelan human rights groups.
“That’s basically how this kleptocracy has functioned,” said Diego Vicentini, a Venezuelan film director whose family fled Caracas for Miami more than a decade ago.
“It’s all about social programs, which the oil money gets funneled into, and then nothing ever gets built, and then where did that money go? There is a lot of that, infrastructure that was promised like 15 years ago and it’s half of a wall falling apart,” he told The Post.
The DSA leader also boasted about Venezuela’s supposed 5,000 “socialist communes,” local communities that have some degree of self-governance — as long as they vote for Maduro, human rights groups noted.
The group blamed any problems it did briefly broach — such as the 90% of people who live in poverty — squarely on “imperialist” US sanctions first imposed under President Barack Obama in 2015 after Maduro assumed power.
The DSA urged attendees to bombard their members of Congress with letters opposing Maduro’s capture — and has already flooded representatives with no fewer than 30,000.
“The only president who should be prosecuted right now is Donald Trump,” State Sen. Jabari Brisport (D-Brooklyn), a proud card-carrying DSA elected official, chimed in at the meeting, while whining Maduro was being held hostage in his district and should be returned to Venezuela.
“If we don’t stop them, the Trump administration could go after Cuba, Chile, Mexico, Columbia, Greenland, or any government that might dare to disobey commands,” he warned.
“We can’t follow the lead of the mealy-mouthed losers who run the Democratic party,” slammed Brisport, an elected Democrat.
He called President Trump’s government “illegitimate and authoritarian” — and had no similar words for Maduro’s regime.
Maduro spent years courting and cultivating DSA leaders.
In 2021, a group of eight young DSA leaders met with the tyrant in the imposing hall of Miraflores Palace in Caracas – a grandiose affair broadcast on Venezuelan state television and which Politico described as a public-relations triumph for Maduro, while noting the socialists were on an “anti-imperialist tourist adventure.”
“Who I met is not a dictator,” gushed Austin Gonzalez, one of the DSA delegates, in a since deleted tweet. “I met a humble man who cares deeply about his people.”
The DSA members, whose two-week government-organized trip was meant to “build solidarity” with Maduro’s administration, were put up at the five-star luxury Gran Meliá hotel, where one DSA leader gawked at the views.
“View from the dancefloor,” tweeted Jen McKinney along with a snap. “It’s absolutely beautiful here.”
One of the delegates, Marvin Gonzalez, was deputy director of policy, information and analysis for the campaign of fellow DSA “Squad” member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) between 2020 and 2023 – the same period he traveled to Caracas to meet Maduro.
“Had a dope ass sancococo today!” he tweeted referring to the traditional, hearty Latin American meat stew called sancocho, live from the country where the UN estimates just under 20% of the population suffers from hunger, New Lines Magazine reported.
DSA delegations have returned to Venezuela on at least two other occasions, including to serve as “credentialed electoral observers” in the 2024 election, which officials from both the Biden and Trump White Houses have called illegitimate.
“Not only has Maduro reinforced his leadership, he has done so with the firm backing of the burgeoning commune movement in Venezuela whose support has proven crucial for his re-election amidst a brutal US-backed sanctions regime,” the DSA raved in a since deleted statement that called the elections “free and fair.”
Vicentini, 31, slammed the socialists as “out of touch” and “disrespectful.”
“Here we are, one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world, an economy collapsing, torture, imprisonment, silencing… How can they really know what’s going on in another country? It seems either disingenuous or just very ignorant,” he said.
“Venezuelans are overjoyed that Maduro was taken away.”
Maduro pled not guilty as he made his first appearance in Manhattan federal court Monday on drug trafficking and weapons charges, declaring “I am a decent man.”
He and his wife are currently detained in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
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