Bangladesh, Jan. 4 -- The night Nicolás Maduro was captured did not unfold first on television screens or official press briefings. It erupted instead through vibrating phones, glowing WhatsApp notifications, and frantic voice notes sent across continents. From Caracas apartment blocks plunged into darkness to migrant neighborhoods in Lima, Buenos Aires, and Madrid, Venezuelans experienced the end of an era not as a single moment, but as a cascade of messages-confused, emotional, and often terrifying.

Just after 2 a.m. in Caracas, as many residents were still asleep after New Years celebrations, a short message appeared in a WhatsApp group linking Venezuelans inside the country with family members abroad. “Friends. Urgent. The...