Miguel Cabrera says he would be killed if he returned to Venezuela

Venezuela is currently embroiled in a complex complex economic, political and humanitarian crisis, with violence surging and hunger everywhere. It’s a messy situation with no end in sight.

Major League Baseball players across the league have been vocal about Venezuela’s problems, widely opposing president Nicolas Maduro and attempting to raise awareness of the chaos back home however they can, from interviews to eye black to social media posts.

Well on Monday, Venezuela’s greatest ever player, Miguel Cabrera, uploaded to his Instagram “story” a series of thoughts about the unrest in Venezuela. He said he has to pay “protection money” to keep his mother safe and that he fears if he returns to his home county, ‘they’ll break me, they’ll kill me.”

Via MLive, he said in Spanish, “I protest for truth, for the end of communism, and I am not with dictators. To the people of the resistance, you are not alone.”

Cabrera, who played for Venezuela this spring at the World Baseball Classic, also denied that he was being paid by Americans to oppose Maduro’s government, a response to the president’s claims that prominent Venezuelans have been bribed into speaking out against him.

You can find Cabrera’s comments on Instagram for now, though they’ll expire 24 hours after they were posted. The relevant clips are also preserved here:

Cabrera and all his high-profile countrymen are in a difficult position. They want to speak out about the crisis in their home country, but doing so can jeopardize the safety of their families and make life difficult for them if they ever go home. It must be extremely difficult to watch your home fall apart from afar and be all but powerless to stop it.

Maduro has scheduled an election July 30 with plans to officially extend his control over the Venezuelan government, while the opposition has called for an unofficial referendum July 16 in hopes of delegitimizing the president.

[MLive]