From hiding to Nobel laureate: María Corina Machado’s continues fight for Venezuela’s democracy

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) – María Corina Machado has long been the face of resistance to Venezuela’s 26-year ruling party. Now, she is also a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader who prompted millions of Venezuelans to reject President Nicolás Maduro in last year’s election, appeared in public for the first time in 11 months on Thursday, following her arrival in Norway, where her daughter received the award on her behalf the previous day.

Machado had been in hiding since Jan. 9, when she was briefly detained after joining supporters during an anti-government protest in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas.

Her Nobel win for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in her South American nation was announced on Oct. 10. Hours after waving from the balcony of a hotel to a cheering crowd gathered outside on Thursday, Machado told reporters that she would continue the fight for her homeland’s democracy and promised to return soon.

“My return will be when we believe the security conditions are right, and it won’t depend on whether or not the regime leaves,” she said. “It will be as soon as possible.”

Machado, an industrial engineer and daughter of a steel magnate, began challenging the ruling party in 2004, when the nongovernmental organization she co-founded, Súmate, promoted a referendum to recall then President Hugo Chávez. The initiative failed, and Machado and other Súmate executives were charged with conspiracy.

She drew the anger of Chávez and his allies the following year for her Oval Office meeting with then U.S. President George W. Bush. Chávez considered Bush an adversary.

Her full transformation into a politician would come in 2010, when she was elected to a seat in the National Assembly, receiving more votes than any aspiring lawmaker ever. It was from this position that she boldly interrupted Chávez as he addressed the legislature and called his expropriation of businesses theft.

“An eagle does not hunt a fly,” he responded. The exchange is seared in voters’ memories.

Machado, 58, sought Venezuela’s presidency for the first time in 2012, but she finished third in the primary race to be the presidential candidate for the Democratic Unity Roundtable.

The ruling party-controlled National Assembly ousted Machado in 2014 and, months later, the Comptroller General’s Office barred her from public office for a year, citing an alleged omission on her asset declaration form. That same year, the government accused her of being involved in an alleged plot to kill Maduro, who succeeded Chávez after his 2013 death.

Machado, a free-market firebrand, denied the charge, calling it an attempt to silence her and opposition members who had called tens of thousands of people to the streets in anti-government protests that at times turned violent.

She kept a low profile for the next nine years, supporting some anti-Maduro initiatives and election boycotts and criticizing opposition efforts to negotiate with the government. By the time she announced a new bid for the presidency in 2023, her careful messaging had softened her image as an elitist hard-liner, allowing her to connect with skeptics on both sides.

She won the opposition’s presidential primary with more than 90% of the vote, unifying the faction – as noted by the Nobel Prize committee. But ruling party loyalists who control the country’s judiciary kept her from appearing on the ballot, which forced her to throw her support behind former diplomat Edmundo González.

She hiked on overpasses, walked highways, rode motorcycles, sought shelter in supporters’ homes and saw her closest collaborators be arrested as she kept campaigning across Venezuela. She repeatedly joined thousands of supporters chanting in unison “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” in rallies and asked them to vote for González, a virtual unknown who had never run for office.

González crushed Maduro by a more than a two-to-one margin, according to voting machine records collected by the opposition and validated by international observers. Still, Venezuela’s National Electoral Council, loyal to the ruling party, declared Maduro the winner of the July 28, 2024, contest.

People protested the results across the country, and the government responded with full force, arresting more than 2,000 people and accusing them of plotting to oust Maduro and sow chaos. Most were released over the following months, but the government simultaneously arrested dozens of people who actively participated in Machado’s efforts last year.

Some of Machado’s closest collaborators, including her campaign manager, avoided prison by sheltering for more than a year at a diplomatic compound in Caracas, where they remained until May, when they fled to the U.S. She reunited with them, her family and González on Thursday.

González went into exile in Spain last year after he became the subject of an arrest warrant, and Machado hadn’t been seen in public since January, when she joined people protesting Maduro’s planned swearing-in ceremony. Her and González’s inability to stop Maduro from taking the oath of office led to a decline in support.

People’s trust has diminished since then, primarily over Machado’s unquestionable support for Trump, including the large U.S. maritime deployment in the Caribbean that has carried out deadly strikes off the coast of Venezuela. This has led to new divisions within the opposition, but she remains undeterred in her efforts to oust Maduro.

Machado told reporters Thursday that Venezuelans have “given everything for an orderly and peaceful transition to democracy” and now need “action,” not just statements, from other governments to meet their goal.

“The one who has declared war on Venezuelans is the Maduro regime,” she said. “In criminal systems, we need the world’s democracies to support our citizens.”

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