The news hit like a bomb outside Venezuela’s embassy in Buenos Aires. 

Thousands of enthusiastic supporters of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado and candidate Edmundo González Urrutia flocked in from as early as 3:00 p.m. to await the election results and stayed well into the night. They had Venezuelan flags tied around their necks and balloons with the colors of the flag. They sang “The government will fall.” Jorge López, 40, was carrying a cardboard coffin that read “RIP Chavismo.”

As the results were announced around 1:00 a.m., people started to cry. Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s sitting president, claimed victory with 51.2% of the vote. “Well, this was already known,” said Andrés Ponce, 33, who came to Argentina in 2018.

Maduro has presided over a precipitous economic and humanitarian crisis, compounded by U.S. sanctions, that has forced millions of Venezuelans to leave the country. The government has been repeatedly accused of grave human rights violations including torture and extrajudicial killings. International leaders responded with skepticism to the government’s claims of an electoral win.

“Now there are broken hearts — of us migrants, of people living in Venezuela. Broken dreams of people that want to go back and now we can’t,” said Gabriela Gil, 31, who has been in Argentina for six years. She said her father was a political prisoner and her mother was almost killed by police during a protest five years ago, after being shot with 187 pellets. Her mother told her that she would still march on Monday, she said with tears in her eyes.

The opposition’s campaign emphasized the “reunion” between Venezuelans at home and abroad. According to the most recent official figures, of the approximately 8 million Venezuelans who have left the country, over 220,000 live in Argentina. However, only 2,600 were authorized to vote after the government enforced a series of byzantine restrictions.

Asked what they thought happened in the elections, all of them said one word: fraud. After the results were known, they started to chant it, some screaming it with tears in their eyes.

“It was fraud — everybody knows that we all want Maduro out,” said Mayra López, 46, who was selling Venezuelan empanadas. “María Corina was the hope of all Venezuelans both inside and outside the country.” López, a music teacher in her home country, said Venezuelans would protest because they are “warriors.”

Dreams of going home

The mood was different earlier in Intendente Seeber Square, a mile from the embassy, where thousands of Venezuelans attended an event with Foreign Minister Diana Mondino, Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, and lawmakers from right-wing party PRO.

There, Venezuelans dreamed of doing something they hadn’t done in years: going home.

“I want to know that even if I live anywhere in the world, I can come back and someone will be there to welcome me in a nice place with a good quality of life,” said Ana Ester Abrego, 22, a fashion design student from Maracaibo. Having left her home country at 16, Abrego’s accent is a mixture of Argentine and Venezuelan, a map of her migration story. “I don’t know any other government, I never knew the Venezuela my parents told me about,” she said.

Their reasons for leaving vary. “There was no toilet paper, no water, no electricity,” said Ana Sofía Moreno, Abrego’s 32-year-old cousin. Eduardo Cuervo, a hairdresser and makeup artist from Los Teques, said that, on top of the scarcity of basic goods, the police “could arrest you for being gay.” Josué Infante, a Rappi delivery rider who was holding a sign reading “Venezuela wants a Milei,” said that a friend who was in the Cruz Verde voluntary group, which provided first aid during protests, was killed by the police.

At 2:00 a.m., roughly thirty people were protesting at the embassy. Some threw rocks and bottles at the fenced building. “Son of a bitch, I want to go home,” a young man screamed as he drove by. Mere hours earlier, a caravan of cars and motorcycles honked at an enthusiastic crew waving Venezuelan flags.

Liliana Urdaneta, a housewife from the coastal city of Maracaibo, came seven years ago with her children and granddaughter, who was one year old at the time. 

“She sees her grandfather through video calls,” Urdaneta said, pointing at her granddaughter. “We don’t want more video calls — we want hugs.”