Venezuela’s best-known opposition figure is home again. On Sunday María Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who vanished from the country last December to collect her award in Norway, announced her return with a terse post on X: “I am here. With you.”
Details of the journey remain scarce, which fits her team’s habit of secrecy. Spain’s El País reported that she crossed by land after at least seven failed attempts by air or sea over the past months. Her first public appearance came in Barquisimeto, in the western state of Lara, where supporters pressed around her at a church service, hugging her and holding up phones to capture the moment.
She comes back to a political map redrawn in her absence. In January US forces seized Nicolás Maduro, who is now jailed in New York and has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. His former deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, governs as interim president with Washington’s blessing, and a US-sponsored dialogue between the ruling camp and part of the opposition is supposed to lead to elections. No date has been set, and Machado had been left out of those talks.
David Smolansky, who speaks for her, framed the homecoming as “a major step” on the road to a credible vote for president. Secretary of State Marco Rubio credited the reconciliation process, while President Donald Trump told reporters he knew nothing about it but hoped she was safe.
What happens next is unclear. People in her Vente Venezuela party say she will first meet opposition leaders and then tour the country. Government figures, who accuse her of having urged foreign military action, see her as a destabilising force. Her ally Edmundo González, who stood against Maduro in 2024, says he will join her soon.
