In one corner of Venezuela’s capital, hundreds of government supporters held guns to their chests, as one speaker after another, microphone in hand, urged them to defend the nation with their lives.
In another corner, businessmen and diplomats worried about the escalating tensions between Venezuela and the United States, about what they see as a lost opportunity for dialogue between the two countries and about the possibility of a U.S. strike that could unleash bloodshed and chaos.
Still, in other parts of the capital, Caracas, there was a battle-weary calm and skepticism that there will ever be political change in Venezuela.
Granted a rare visa for foreign journalists, I spent a week in Venezuela at a particularly tense time. Relations with the United States are at a crossroads, with the Trump administration sending warships into the Caribbean. The buildup’s size and President Trump’s public threats against President Nicolás Maduro have raised the specter of strikes, of commando raids in the South American nation, or of some broader conflict.
Mr. Trump has said he wants to unleash the military on cartels and stop trafficking to the United States, and his administration has called Mr. Maduro the head of a terrorist organization threatening the United States and flooding it with drugs.
The United States says it has blown up at least three drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean, including at least two from Venezuela, in a significant escalation of the kind of pressure that Mr. Trump has put on Mexico to crack down on fentanyl.
But while some drugs do come from Venezuela, fentanyl does not, and the cocaine that does is a very small percentage of the trade, far less than what comes from Colombia and exits from Colombia and Ecuador, according to the U.S. government’s accounting.
That has led many observers to say that the Trump administration’s real goal is to go after Mr. Maduro.
In interviews, some Venezuelans said they supported any action that would lead to the ouster of Mr. Maduro, who is accused of major human rights violations and whose movement has led the country for a generation.
The group supporting the use of force is led by Maria Corina Machado, an opposition leader. Her base says that by removing Mr. Maduro, the United States can defend the result of last year’s presidential vote, which Mr. Maduro is widely believed to have lost. Independent vote monitors and many countries, including the United States, recognized Mr. Maduro’s opponent, Edmundo González, a surrogate for Ms. Machado, as the legitimate victor.
One of Ms. Machado’s advisers, Pedro Urruchurtu, said she was coordinating with the Trump administration and had a plan for the first 100 hours after Mr. Maduro’s fall. That plan involves the participation of international allies, he said, “especially the United States,” and would “guarantee a stable transition” to Mr. González.
But in interviews, other Venezuelans were far less eager to see the United States get involved. Many, even those who said they wanted to see Mr. Maduro gone, arguing that he has held on only through repression, said that a violent U.S. move was not the solution. Many people spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation.
Some said they doubted the willingness of the United States to keep a large contingent of troops on the ground to ensure the stability of a U.S.-backed government.
Three diplomats said they saw few signs that anyone in Mr. Maduro’s inner circle would split to support an opposition leader, or that the military would turn on him.
Other Venezuelans warned that ousting Mr. Maduro would only invite the armed actors left behind — the military, Colombian guerrilla groups, paramilitary gangs — into a battle for the spoils.
And in Venezuela, with its oil, gold and other minerals, there are many spoils.
“You kill Maduro,” said one prominent businessman, “you turn Venezuela into Haiti,” which descended into chaos after its last president was assassinated.
Still others were skeptical that Mr. Trump was willing to get involved militarily and said that the president’s gunboat strategy, led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, would only push Venezuela further from the United States and toward China, Russia and Iran.
Mr. Maduro has responded to Washington’s mobilization by arming civilians, sending tanks into the streets and announcing military exercises throughout the country, which have been publicized on state television and social media. But his advisers say the central message to Washington is that their government does not want war.
The Venezuelan president sent a letter to Mr. Trump this month praising his efforts to halt other conflicts and said he was open to a “direct and frank conversation” with Mr. Trump’s special envoy to Venezuela, Richard Grenell.
Early this year, Mr. Grenell seemed to be trying to improve relations, traveling to Venezuela to meet with Mr. Maduro just after Mr. Trump took office. But more recently, Mr. Trump appears to favor Mr. Rubio’s hard-line approach.
In an interview at her office inside the country’s oil ministry building, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said that she believed Mr. Trump was leading the world into “a stage where the United States has openly declared war on the world.”
“The Ministry of Defense is no longer Defense, it’s the Ministry of War,” she said. “Trade relations are no longer trade relations, they are a trade war.”
She called the boat attacks “absolutely illegal,” and called for a normalization of economic relations with the United States, which has sanctioned Venezuela’s vital oil industry.
“The people of the United States do not want war in the Caribbean,” she said.
Even amid escalating tensions, Venezuela has continued to accept twice-weekly flights of deportees from the United States, said the country’s foreign minister, Yván Gil.
Several diplomats and business leaders in Caracas said that they hoped the United States would shift back to a policy of diplomacy, believing that persistent negotiations could eventually persuade Mr. Maduro to hand power to a reformist successor or moderate opposition leader in exchange for sanctions relief and other conditions.
They also said that he is tired, but cannot leave office if he thinks he will be arrested. Mr. Maduro, who is 62 and has led the country since 2013, is under indictment in the United States on drug conspiracy charges.
On the streets of Caracas, the strain between the two nations has produced contrasting images of war and peace.
On a recent day, a downtown boulevard filled with people the government had gathered for a rally: some civilians, others members of the Bolivarian militia, a reserve force.
Several people said that they worked for the government, that their superiors had required attendance, and that they had been given unloaded guns to hold during the event. Many hurried to leave as soon as it ended.
Others said that patriotism had brought them out, and vowed to defend Mr. Maduro and his movement.
“If there is an invasion,” said Marisol Amundaray, 50, “I will safeguard my children and head to the street with my rifle.”
In other parts of the city, though, normal life continued. Not far from the presidential palace one morning, Constanza Sofía Arangeren twirled on a cobblestone street in a gold ball gown as a photographer snapped away.
She was preparing her 15th birthday celebration, and her mother was more anxious about the upcoming party than a possible invasion.
No one interviewed said they were hoarding supplies. Some said they were not worried about an attack; others said they couldn’t afford to.
“In a normal country where there is a threat like this, the first thing people do is stock up on food,” said Estefanie Mendoza, 42, a social worker with two children, “but we can’t do that.”
While the country’s economy has recovered somewhat since a protracted crisis helped fuel a migrant exodus, the rebound has been uneven.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Rubio have argued that significant amounts of cocaine are trafficked through Venezuela and that they are seeking to stop U.S. overdoses. A 2020 report from the U.S. State Department said just 10 percent to 13 percent of the global cocaine supply goes through Venezuela.
Fentanyl, which causes far more overdoses than cocaine, is almost entirely produced in Mexico with chemicals imported from China, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
The boats that U.S. forces have bombed in the Caribbean have killed at least 17 people, according to the Trump administration.
Some legal exerts have called it a crime to summarily kill civilians not directly taking part in hostilities, even if they are believed to be smuggling drugs.
In the state of Sucre, on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast, the first boat to have been destroyed, on Sept. 2, is widely believed to have been carrying people from the towns of San Juan de Unare and Güiria, on a spit of land known as the Pariah Peninsula.
For years the region has been dominated by cocaine trafficking, according to Ronna Rísquez, a Venezuelan journalist who has conducted field work in the area.
But migrants, trafficking victims and government-subsidized Venezuelan gasoline — which can be sold at a higher price in Trinidad and Tobago, just six miles away — also leave from this area, she said.
In an interview, one woman who identified herself as the wife of one of the dead men said that her husband was a fisherman with four children who left one day for work and never came back.
Some in Venezuela said they feared U.S. military action would mean more loss. And they said they didn’t believe that Ms. Machado, who says she is in hiding in Venezuela, and Mr. González, in exile in Spain, could guarantee their security.
“Name one successful case in the last few years of a successful U.S. military intervention,” said Henrique Capriles, an opposition politician who has clashed with Ms. Machado.
A bloodless U.S. “extraction” of Mr. Maduro was the stuff of Netflix, he said, not reality.
“And the cost for us Venezuelans, what will it be? What guarantee do we have that this will translate into a recovery of our democracy?”
Nayrobis Rodríguez, Tibisay Romero and Isayen Herrera contributed reporting.