Exiled opposition leader María Corina Machado returns to Venezuela
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The Venezuelan opposition leader, María Corina Machado, has announced she has returned to Venezuela almost a year after she left the country to receive the Nobel peace prize. “I’m here.
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With you,” she wrote on X on Sunday lunchtime. Her close ally Edmundo González, who is in exile, confirmed her arrival. “Venezuela!
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I am thrilled to announce to you that our leader, my dear María Corina, is on Venezuelan soil,” he posted on social media. “Today is a very important day for Venezuelans.
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Our sovereign voice returns with her to lead and guide this process!” he said, adding that he too would soon return. It was not immediately clear how Machado, 59, had managed to return to Venezuela but footage on social media showed she was in Barquisimeto, the capital of Lara state, which is about 220 miles west of the capital, Caracas.
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Images showed her surrounded by supporters holding mobile phones in the Sanctuary of the Divine Shepherdess church.
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Footage posted on social media by her close ally Pedro Urruchurtu showed hundreds of supporters gathered outside the church to greet her, shouting: “Freedom! Freedom!
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Freedom!” The Trump administration had reportedly opposed Machado’s return, believing her presence would complicate the cosy relationship it has struck up with the interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, since abducting her former boss, Nicolás Maduro, in January.
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Machado and Rodríguez are political arch-rivals.
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Machado slipped out of Venezuela last December – a few weeks before Maduro’s capture – and in recent months has reportedly made more than half a dozen failed attempts to return home, including after the devastating earthquake that hit the northern coast in June.
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After Maduro was seized, many had expected Donald Trump to give Machado his blessing to take power.
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Her movement is widely believed to have beaten Maduro in the 2024 presidential election, but he refused to hand over power. Instead the US president embraced Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice-president, who now governs a country widely seen as a US protectorate.
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Machado has repeatedly heaped praise on Trump for launching the operation to remove Maduro, and gave him her 2025 Nobel peace prize medal, which she had been awarded for her peaceful challenge to Venezuela’s authoritarian government.
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Asked by reporters on Sunday about her return, Trump said: “I don’t know anything about it, but I think she’s a very nice woman.
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She gave me her Nobel prize, so how can I say anything else? “I hope she’s safe.
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She’s a very nice woman. But we’re doing very well in Venezuela.” The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, claimed credit for creating the conditions that allowed Machado’s safe return after 10 months in exile. Her return “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”, he said.
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From Barquisimeto, Machado headed east through the state of Yaracuy towards Caracas in a convoy of vehicles.
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Images released by aides show her reaching out from a car’s sunroof towards dozens of supporters who had gathered at the roadside to see her.
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Members of Venezuela’s government have long hinted that Machado would be arrested if she tried to return as a result of her years-long struggle for political change. But there was no sign of the security services bothering her on Sunday as she moved towards the capital, perhaps suggesting Washington had sanctioned her return and instructed Rodríguez’s government not to react.
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Machado has called for fresh presidential elections to be held by July 2027, but it is unclear whether the Trump administration supports that timeline given the lucrative partnership it has struck up with Rodríguez. Trump announced what he called “the biggest oil deal in world history” with Venezuela in August, subsequently describing the agreement as the spoils of January’s brief “war”.
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