One night, Ileana Schiffino, an abdominal surgeon from Venezuela, was in an operating room treating a patient who was shot 16 times. The man was a bank robber. As Schiffino worked, someone attempted to pull her out of the operating room. She refused to leave the patient.
After she completed the surgery successfully and stepped out of the operating room on her own, she was confronted by the patient’s brother, who had been waiting outside. Schiffino said she did not immediately understand what was happening. Then he pressed a gun to her head.
In that moment, she said, her thoughts went to her nine-year-old son, her mother, and her father.
“I feel like I’m gonna die, and I pray, and I say, ‘Well God, support my son,’” Schiffino said.
Schiffino describes herself as a scholar and a public servant. For years, she said, she treated anyone who came through the doors of the hospital where she worked, believing deeply in her responsibility as a physician. Over time, she said, that mission became harder to sustain as conditions in Venezuela deteriorated under what she described as a socialist system of governance. Crime rose, she said, and safety eroded—making it nearly impossible for thousands of professionals like her to continue contributing to society.
“In my family, we are all professionals,” Schiffino said. “We like to go to college, and the socialist president, Maduro, he doesn’t like professionals. In this moment, [there] is a bad situation with the criminal people over there.”
Schiffino shared her story at a Venezuelan advocacy event hosting speaker Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart on at the Los Angeles Adult Day Care facility in Golden Gate. Her message, echoed by others in the room, was simple: Venezuelans want the chance to work, to live safely, and to contribute meaningfully to their country.
About 30 people attended the Jan. 28 event, many of them Venezuelans who said they once lived in a country that steadily unraveled under the Chavez and Maduro governments.
“We have had no greater allies than this administration and this president,” Diaz-Balart said in Spanish.
The congressman added that while he has worked closely with President Trump on issues he has disagreed on, Venezuela is not one of them.
“And this is only the beginning of a very important process,” Diaz-Balart said in Spanish. “This president—what he has done in seizing this narco‑terrorist, taking him (Maduro) from his home with his beloved wife, who is also a terrorist just the same, and bringing them here to the U.S. so that they now face the justice of the United States.”
The event opened with Erick Tovar, son of organizer Rohel Tovar, leading the crowd in the Venezuelan national anthem. He then personally thanked the congressman for all the support he has given to the Venezuelan people, describing Diaz-Balart as a longtime advocate for the exiled community, even before the Trump administration.
“The congressman is one that is a man of honor,” Erick Tovar said. “And he is the one that has proven, over time, to fight for this cause, and he is also the son of immigrants, so he understands our struggle. To have someone that represents our side in Congress, to have him on our side and be our champion, has inspired us to go look for more.”
He added that recent political developments, taken by the Trump administration, have given him hope that he may be able to return to his homeland sometime during his lifetime.
Rohel Tovar echoed a similar sentiment but harped on how this is not just a fight for Venezuelans, but for the entire Western Hemisphere.
“We are in a process, a transition, but that transition would not have been achieved without your intervention and help, and we hope to continue in the future until we reach a free and prosperous Venezuela, a free Cuba, and also until South America is free from communism, free from socialism,” Rohel Tovar said in Spanish. “
The event lasted for approximately one hour, with a concluding question-and-answer session before attendees thanked the congressman again while taking a group picture, holding the Venezuelan flag.
The event was monitored by at least three Collier County Sheriff cruisers—two in the front and one in the back.
There was no word as to whether another event is scheduled or in the planning stages. However, the Tovars and Schiffino said they will be at the next one wearing bright Venezuelan flag colors.
“We will continue that fight that we started, because it is not for us, but it's for the next generation. It is for the people that will write history, and we'll see that the Venezuelan people were people that fought with honor, people that fought with integrity, and people that did not give up,” Erick Tovar said.
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