On October 25, María Corina Machado was still traveling the highways linking Barquisimeto to Caracas when US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had already written his own account of the return. According to Rubio, Machado’s return was the “direct result” of the reconciliation talks between the Venezuelan government and the opposition. However, Machado’s movement has kept its distance from these talks since July.
Hours later, at the White House, Donald Trump claimed he knew “nothing” about the trip and politely dismissed the matter: “She’s a very nice woman.” However, sources familiar with Machado’s movements asserted that her return was coordinated with the governments of the United States, Panama, and Colombia and approved by Trump himself.
Machado returned to a country where negotiations have been ongoing since August. To understand how she ended up in that empty chair, her own words suffice.
Four positions in 10 months
On January 3, hours after the US military operation that resulted in the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Congresswoman Cilia Flores, as well as the deaths of dozens of civilians and soldiers, Machado celebrated the arrival of “the hour of freedom.” That same afternoon in Palm Beach, Trump snubbed her. “I think it would be very difficult for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support or respect of the people,” he said. Three days later, Volker Türk of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva maintained that the military operation had undermined “a fundamental principle of international law.”
A month later, as the National Assembly prepared to debate the Amnesty Law announced by acting president Delcy Rodríguez in January, the far-right leader who had refused to negotiate with Chavismo for years declared her willingness to meet with Rodríguez to establish a transition schedule. During the same videoconference, she called the government a “mafia.”
With the country still in ruins following the June 24 earthquakes, Machado requested help from the White House and US Congress to return to Venezuela. According to a White House leak, this request frustrated senior US officials. Days later, Washington asked her to turn back while she was en route to Venezuela.
On July 26, Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia released a statement announcing that their faction would not participate in the talks between the government and the 2015 National Assembly, led by Dinorah Figuera. This decision set the stage for the rest. Three days later, Unión y Cambio, a movement to which former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles belongs, announced its support for the dialogue. One part of the opposition took a seat at the table, while the other preferred to watch from outside.
On September 23, before the UN General Assembly, Delcy Rodríguez said that Venezuela would hold elections and that the Venezuelan people would decide the “right moment” for them, free from interference. Meanwhile, Machado remained in Panama. US officials privately opposed her desire to return. On October 15, she complained in an interview that the United States had excluded her from the negotiations. The State Department responded that it had invited her party to the negotiating table.
She rejected the seat in July, but complained in October that they had not seated her. This back-and-forth has been going on for a while.
Two decades of shortcuts
Anti-politics, or the pursuit of power through unconventional means, has a long history in Venezuela, and Machado is present in almost every chapter. In 2004, Súmate—the organization Machado co-founded that received funds from the National Endowment for Democracy, which is financed by the US Congress—led the collection of signatures to revoke Hugo Chávez’s mandate. Chávez comfortably won that referendum, and the following year, George W. Bush met with Machado in the Oval Office.
Ten years later, she promoted La Salida alongside Leopoldo López and Antonio Ledezma. La Salida was the 2014 street campaign that aimed to force Nicolás Maduro’s resignation. The protests and barricades that ensued resulted in 43 deaths, including demonstrators, passersby, and police officers. In December 2018, she wrote to Benjamin Netanyahu and Mauricio Macri, asking them to advocate for protection measures for Venezuela before the UN Security Council “through the promotion of a regime change.” Months later, in April 2019, she backed a failed military uprising.
The same pattern reappeared in July 2024 when her faction refused to recognize the result proclaimed by the National Electoral Council (CNE). Venezuelans paid for this refusal at the table every day. Although Machado did not sign any sanctions, in 2024 she asked the international community to “impose more consequences,” and in February 2025, she celebrated Trump’s revocation of Chevron’s license. “This was the right thing at the right time,” she said. By then, UN special rapporteur Alena Douhan had recorded that state revenues fell by 99 percent under the US sanctions, and wages dropped from 150-500 US dollars a month to one to ten dollars. Official sources estimate that the country has lost 232 billion dollars in oil revenue since 2015, and the acting president has denounced 1,081 coercive measures still weighing against Venezuela this year.
A table with its own calendar
On October 22, while Machado was calling for mobilizations to demand an immediate election date, Delcy Rodríguez received the heads of the two delegations at the Miraflores Palace—Jorge Rodríguez for the government and Dinorah Figuera for the 2015 National Assembly—who had just closed the third cycle of dialogue with a list of agreements. The preliminary commission of the Judicial Nominations Committee had interviewed 127 candidates for the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ). A committee was formed to address political, economic, and social guarantees, and the legal framework for disqualifications was opened for review. The parties also agreed to send a joint delegation to recover Venezuelan gold held by the Bank of England and direct it to the earthquake victims. “I recognize the good Venezuelan men and women who, from this dialogue, are driving the necessary changes and transformations,” said the acting president.
Three days later, with Machado already on the Venezuelan side of the border, Figuera herself celebrated her “return in freedom” and presented it as a result of the dialogue. The negotiation that Machado had rejected in July now seemed to be the key to her return.
A week after that meeting, Rodríguez set the course of her government in a message to the nation: “Sovereignty is not negotiable. We cooperate with everyone, but we decide in Venezuela.” She noted that almost 9,000 people had already benefited from the Amnesty Law for Democratic Coexistence and announced a criminal justice reform with technical assistance from the European Union and the United Nations. She also ordered that no one be detained without a judicial order, except in the act of a crime. Regarding elections, she was clear: “There will be elections, all of those mandated by our Constitution, organized by a renewed electoral authority, and witnessed by the world.”
She had only devoted a few lines to Machado’s return days earlier. “Politics as a show must cease,” she said. She noted that beneficiaries of the amnesty were entering through the transitional airport structures. “This country is much bigger than any one person,” she said.
The next round of negotiations is scheduled for November. The goal is to have a new TSJ [Supreme Justice Tribunal] in place before the end of the year, followed by the renewal of the CNE [National Electoral Council]. The acting president refers to this as a “sequence of objectives.” However, none of these dates align with the caravan’s timeline. None of those dates moves to the rhythm of a caravan.
Madrid, Jerusalem, and the Caribbean
What happens far from that table helps explain who Machado is speaking to when she addresses the world. On February 8, 2025, her recorded message opened the Patriots for Europe summit in Madrid. This far-right bloc of the European Parliament gathered under the slogan “Make Europe Great Again,” and among the speakers were Viktor Orbán, Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini, and Geert Wilders. In the video, Machado thanked Santiago Abascal, the leader of Vox and the meeting’s host, for being “always at the forefront of the struggle for freedom in Venezuela.”
The connection to Benjamin Netanyahu dates back to 2020 when Vente Venezuela, Machado’s party, signed a cooperation agreement with Likud, Israel’s leading right-wing party and champion of revisionist Zionism. In October 2025, just days after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Machado spoke with the Israeli prime minister by phone. According to Netanyahu’s office, she expressed appreciation for his “decisive actions during the war” in Gaza. A commission, experts, UN rapporteurs, governments, and human rights bodies, including Israeli NGOs, have denounced the war in Gaza as a genocide. She also pledged to move the Venezuelan embassy to Jerusalem if she ever reaches power.
In November of that year, she described Trump’s strategy toward Venezuela as “absolutely correct” in a video address to a business forum in Miami. This statement was made amid a bombing campaign against boats in the Caribbean that had already resulted in dozens of deaths, which experts characterized as “extrajudicial executions.”
Two paths from Caracas
Machado’s arrival on October 25—her first time back in 10 months—put her in the same city where the government and opposition delegations have been meeting, setting the stage for two next steps: a gathering with the opposition parties and a national tour.
The first possible path was opened by her spokesperson, Claudia Macero, who asserted that Machado is willing to sit down “with whomever she has to,” including the acting president. This path leads to the table she rejected in July, complete with its rules and calendar. In November, the agenda includes the TSJ and the CNE, the two entities on which the election date depends.
The other path has been apparent since October 22, when her supporters demanded an immediate date for elections. If Machado returns to the streets, she will clash not only with the plan set by the Venezuelan government but also with Washington, which on the day of her return asked “all political actors” to support dialogue.
In either case, the shortest path to the date she demands goes through the empty seat she left in July—the same seat she accused others of denying her in October.
Source: Red Latinoamericana
Translated from Spanish by The Assembly Media team.