Deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro was captured in an audacious nighttime military operation that Donald Trump said would set the US up to "run" the South American country and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations. While the operation shocked the world, it was foretold just days earlier in Peru.
A prediction made more than 4,000 km from Caracas, in Peru's capital city of Lima, appears to have come true following Maduro's capture yesterday. On December 29, a group of shamans gathered by the sea in Lima to perform an annual ritual in which they offer glimpses into the upcoming year.
Dressed in traditional Andean ponchos and headdresses, the group conducted a ceremony to forecast the course of international relations, ongoing conflicts, and the fate of various world leaders.
One of the key predictions focused on the 63-year-old Venezuelan leader. The shamans stated that Maduro would be removed from office and that Donald Trump would play a pivotal role in his exit.
"We have asked for Maduro to leave, to retire, for President Donald Trump of the United States to be able to remove him-and we have visualised that next year this will happen," said shaman Ana Maria Simeon during the ritual.
However, the prediction was only partially accurate. While the group foresaw his fall, they believed he would flee and not be captured. "We see Nicolas Maduro defeated," proclaimed another shaman, Juan de Dios Garcia. "Nicolas Maduro will flee Venezuela. He will not be captured."
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were extracted from their home in a military base in the capital, Caracas, on Saturday - an act that Maduro's government called "imperialist." The couple faces US charges of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy.
The shamans also foretold an end to the war in Ukraine. "I see that the conflict will end; they will raise the flag of peace," Garcia predicted.
The ceremony is performed every year in late December, and the group has a mixed record with its annual predictions.
The shamans had previously predicted an end to the war in Ukraine in 2023.
Last year, they warned a "nuclear war" would break out between Israel and Gaza, where a ceasefire is currently in place.
But in December 2023, the group correctly predicted that former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, who had been imprisoned for human rights abuses, would perish within twelve months.
Fujimori died from cancer in September 2024 at the age of 86.
After dancing in circles and playing ancestral instruments duringthe ceremony, the shamans asked for peace in the Middle East, an end to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia and the fall of President Maduro.
The shamans also predicted natural disasters, such as earthquakes and climatic phenomena.
