Venezuelan Immigrant Warns Against Confusing Chavismo With True Socialism

Germania Rodriguez Poleo arrived in the United States at age 11 with her family fleeing Venezuela. She grew up casting a ballot for Bernie Sanders, drawn to socialist promises that mirrored the ideals of her ancestors' struggle. Then she saw the signs. The red flags multiplied until they could no longer be ignored.

Once I looked at the details, it looked more like Chavismo than Scandinavia[n socialism], Poleo told Fox News Digital.

Chavismo is a specific program defined by nationalism and a centralized economy. An active military often steps in to run public projects under this system. The movement takes its name from Hugo Chávez, an autocratic leader who founded it.

Ever since that realization, I've been trying to share that message with fellow young people who truly just fall for the misinformation, she continued.

The suffering happened right here before our eyes. Venezuela has done the suffering for you, we destroyed our country, Poleo said. It stands as an example for the entire world of how a democratic country can vote itself into total collapse… One vote was enough to lose our country, and who knows if we'll ever get it back.

She detailed the war over what the definition of socialism is. Adding democratic before socialism creates a misleading distinction between policies on paper and the realities on the ground in Venezuela, Cuba, and other nations. Socialism and capitalism are mutually exclusive, and that's where [socialists are] lying to people, she continued.

If you really talk to these DSA types, they'll admit it, they think capitalism has failed and they want to try a different system… That's [where] they're lying, Poleo revealed. Social democracy operates under capitalism. Socialism wants to end capitalism and that is a very, very important distinction.

When did I open my eyes? When the red flags became too many.

Poleo explained how she moved from immigrant experience to political support for figures like Sanders. There was immense pressure to assimilate into the new Western culture surrounding her. It's the same thing that's convincing young Americans all over the United States to view socialism favorably, she continued.

By the time I got to NYU, and I had fancy professors telling me that the problem wasn't socialism, but capitalism, unchecked capitalism, repeating the horrors of trickle-down economics. [I was] going to classes like 'the politics of inequality,' 'Latina feminism.' This is what was building my world view, all taught by White American professors, of course, she recalled.

I ended up believing their lie that what they're talking about is social democracy, like in Scandinavian countries, and not what happened in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua.

Poleo narrates the documentary Escaping Venezuela for Reason. She says the lives and memories encompassing the stories of immigrants are not convenient for people who support socialism. Our story and our tragedy is not convenient for people who say they care about victims of dictatorships or migrants… They don't like our story because it shows what happens in the real world when an anti-Western, anti-U.S., supposedly anti-imperialist government gets to power and establishes socialist policies, Poleo noted.

They want to say that's not real socialism, and they don't want to listen to us. I mean, they call themselves progressives while silencing the voices of the people who understand these systems the best, she stated.

I want young Americans, my fellow young Americans, to understand that Venezuela did not have to end this way… Listen to the victims.

People stop seeing reality because they cling to an idea from a book that has never been put to work," Poleo declared. "They wait for some ideal version of things that does not exist outside their heads." That waiting is the heart of socialism, he argued. It happens right now in the world beyond the little utopian book that promises equality but delivers nothing. The examples are standing there in plain sight. Stop looking away.