IT WAS, AS is her style, a homecoming laden with symbolism. When the first images of the opposition leader María Corina Machado emerged from inside Venezuela after a near ten-month exile on October 25th, they showed her surrounded by supporters next to the statue of the Divina Pastora. The shrine, inside a church near the western city of Barquisimeto, depicts the Virgin Mary as a shepherdess guiding her flock. Shortly before she appeared Ms Machado had posted a cryptic message on X: “I am here. With you all.”
She is reported to be accompanied by an American private security team. In January Ms Machado handed the Nobel medal, which she won for her campaign for democracy in Venezuela, to Mr Trump (who claimed he deserved it more). Her theatrical return caught millions of Venezuelans—and possibly the country’s ruling regime—by surprise. She had lived there in hiding until December, when she left the country clandestinely to collect the Nobel peace prize in Oslo. In recent months she had made several attempts to go back, mostly via commercial and private aircraft. On each occasion the regime had managed to foil her plans. This time it appears she quietly crossed the land border from Colombia. What help she received from the United States government is unclear. However she managed to get back, her presence in Venezuela looks set to complicate the unusual, cosy relationship the administration of President Trump has formed with the disreputable regime of Delcy Rodríguez . The latter has been running the country since January 3rd, when United States troops captured her ex-boss, Nicolás Maduro, and whisked him and his wife, Cilia Flores, to face charges of drug trafficking in New York. “She gave me her Nobel Prize, so how can I say anything else? His focus instead has been on portraying the capture of Mr Maduro, and what has followed in Venezuela, as an unmitigated success. He spins it as giving America total control of Venezuela’s vast proved oil resources. Mr Trump’s problem, and Ms Machado’s opportunity, is that this is not true. Few Venezuelans view his propping up of Ms Rodríguez (who is widely loathed), or their own economic situation, as anything like success. Mr Trump’s own popularity in Venezuela has slumped in recent months.
For months the wildly popular politician had been promising to come back “soon” to Venezuela. “She is a very nice woman,” he said. She said at the time she made the gesture in gratitude for his “decisive support of our cause”. His government in August secured “majority control” of 65bn barrels of the country’s oil, about a fifth of its proven reserves, in an agreement with Venezuela and a private oil company. He claims that Venezuelans are “dancing in the streets” in celebration of all he has achieved. “He got rid of Maduro, which is good, but it is basically the same shit here,” said Eduardo, a computer technician in Caracas, the capital.
Mr Trump claimed not to know about Ms Machado’s return when he was asked about it on Sunday.
That same evening, Ms Machado was on her way, with a caravan of supporters, to the capital. Venezuelans may well soon be dancing in the streets—but not to Mr Trump’s tune.
“The conditions allowing for the safe return of Ms Machado to Venezuela is the direct result of the US supported reconciliation talks which has already seen hundreds of political prisoners freed and hundreds of political opposition figures return from exile,” said the American secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on October 25th. “Very soon I will be with you,” posted Mr González, the winner of the 2024 election.
Ms Machado has called for new elections in Venezuela to be held by next July, and has made it clear she will be putting her name forward as a candidate. This proposal has not yet received Mr Trump’s backing.
“I don’t think they’re ready [for elections] yet,” he said in September.
