Locals in ‘Little Caracas,’ Queens, celebrate Maduro’s ouster

Locals in a bustling Queens hub for the Venezuelan community celebrated the United States’ capture and removal of their homeland’s longtime dictator.

Residents of the city’s “Little Caracas” — a stretch of Roosevelt Avenue that runs through the predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhoods of Jackson Heights, Elmhurst and Corona — told The Post that the capture of former President Nicolás Maduro on Saturday was a long-awaited moment of reckoning.

“It’s amazing news because we’ve been suffering with this guy for a long time. So it’s been more than 26 years that we’ve been waiting for this,” said Eric Gonzalez, a 41-year-old car salesman from Queens.

“So now that the US Army went all the way over there to take him out, that makes us all so, so happy,” he said of the moment Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were flown to the States and indicted on a slew of federal charges.

Gonzalez is originally from the northwestern Venezuelan city of Maracaibo and has been living in the US for 10 years. He fled the country in 2015, both over his opposition to Maduro’s authoritarian regime and to seek better economic opportunities.

“For me, it was always so dangerous to go back because I was always against this. So every single person that is against it is in danger.”

Yesterday, his mother, who remains in Venezuela, called Gonzalez crying about what he described as a moment of hope.

“She was crying, my mom was crying in praise, she was like, ‘We can’t believe it.’ We were waiting for this for so long, you have no idea,” Gonzalez said.

Duvin Flores, a 19-year-old waiter at El Budare Cafe, said that a party of roughly 50 people celebrating Maduro’s ousting spontaneously erupted at the Roosevelt Avenue eatery on Saturday.

“Yesterday, this was a party right here, many people came, and they celebrated,” Flores said.

The waiter moved to the US from Venezuela nearly three years ago and now lives in Jackson Heights. His 60-year-old grandmother remains in the country, he said.

“People come from different countries, not only Venezuela. We have been waiting for this moment for 26 years, and we can see the liberty in Venezuela, the freedom,” Flores said.

The operation to capture Maduro, 63, and Flores, 69, began at around 10:46 p.m. EST on Friday when President Trump gave the final order for the US to attack Venezuela.

The dictator was carted across the Caribbean via helicopter, amphibious assault ship, and military plane on Saturday, with a stint in Guantánamo Bay, before arriving in New York to face a litany of federal charges.

Federal prosecutors have accused Maduro of leading “a corrupt, illegitimate government that, for decades, has leveraged government power to protect and promote illegal activity, including drug trafficking,” according to his indictment.

He allegedly partnered with violent drug traffickers and narco-terrorists to bring upwards of 250 tons of cocaine into the US by 2020, prosecutors said.

Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, are being held in Brooklyn’s infamous Metropolitan Detention Center and are awaiting an arraignment in federal court on Monday.