María Corina Machado returns to Venezuela

Barcelona"I am here. With you". With this brief message on social media, María Corina Machado, the leader of the anti-Chavista opposition, has announced that she has returned to Venezuela. No more words were needed. Her followers have quickly understood that the Nobel Peace Prize winner has arrived in the South American country after ten months of absence.

In case there was any doubt, Edmundo González, the presidential candidate for Venezuela, has confirmed the return on his social media: "Venezuela! It excites me very much to announce to you that our leader, my dear María Corina, is on Venezuelan territory. Today is an important day for Venezuelans. Our sovereign voice returns with her.” Likewise, Machado's party, Vente Venezuela, has disseminated photographs where the opposition leader is seen being received by dozens of supporters at the Divina Pastora sanctuary, in the city of Barquisimeto, in northwestern Venezuela.

The return of María Corina Machado, however, has not been easy at all. The opposition leader has tried to enter Venezuela unsuccessfully up to seven times during the last three months. She had tried different routes –by land, sea, and air– and from places as disparate as Panama, Curaçao, and the United States. This time she has made her purpose a reality, but for the moment neither she nor her team have provided details about how the return trip was. Mind you, Edmundo González, exiled in Madrid since September 2024, has anticipated that “very soon” he will also return to Venezuela so that the country “truly advances towards freedom”.

Call for mobilization

Machado had repeatedly expressed her intention to return to participate directly in decisions regarding the future of Venezuela, and to assume a more active role at the head of the opposition. This same week, she had called for citizen mobilization and had demanded that a date be set for the presidential elections in Venezuela, the calling of which remains undefined since Nicolás Maduro was captured by the United States last January and Delcy Rodríguez took over the government without first going to the polls.

The return of the opposition leader is a challenge for Chavismo, which considers her its main enemy. But it is also a snub to the American president, Donald Trump, who has tried to delay Machado's return to the South American country and has preferred to ally himself with Delcy Rodríguez. This Sunday, Trump claimed to know nothing about Machado's return to Venezuela. "She is a very nice woman. She gave me her Nobel Prize, so how can I say otherwise? I hope she is safe," he added. In contrast, the United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, attributed Machado's return to the work done by the White House over the last few months. "The conditions that allow for Ms. Machado's safe return to Venezuela are the direct result of the reconciliation talks held by the United States, which have made possible the release of hundreds of political prisoners and the return from exile of hundreds of political opposition figures," he wrote on the social network X.

Machado left Venezuela in December of last year with the goal of accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. Her initial purpose was to return after a few weeks but, to her surprise, the Chavista government has prevented her from doing so time and time again.

Before leaving Venezuela, Machado lived in hiding for almost a year to avoid being arrested for having denounced that the 2024 presidential elections, in which Nicolás Maduro was re-elected, were totally fraudulent, as the National Electoral Council did not publish the details of the voting. According to the opposition, which managed to obtain a copy of the voting records, the true winner of the election was Edmundo González, the candidate supported by Machado.

The opposition leader, 59 years old, has sought political change in her country since 2002, when she founded the organization Suma't, dedicated to the defense of citizens' political rights, but she only managed to become the supreme leader of the opposition in 2023, when she swept that year's primaries. She has always considered the United States an ally, to the point that twelve days after the capture of Nicolás Maduro, she met with Trump at the White House, presented him with the Nobel medal, and expressed her desire to return to Venezuela. At that time, the American president announced that he could involve her in some way in his transition plan for Venezuela. A few days later, however, Marco Rubio stated that Machado's leadership was not realistic at that moment to initiate a transition.