MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

María Corina Machado returns to Venezuela after ten months abroad and seven failed attempts

Machado returns to a country transformed since Nicolás Maduro’s removal from power following the US military operation in January

Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado returned to Venezuela on Sunday after nearly ten months abroad and at least seven failed attempts to go back. “I am here. With you,” she wrote on X, shortly before reappearing at a Mass at the Divina Pastora sanctuary in Barquisimeto, Lara state, surrounded by supporters.

Former presidential candidate Edmundo González confirmed her return: “I am thrilled to announce that our leader, my dear María Corina, is on Venezuelan soil. Today is an important day for Venezuelans,” he wrote, adding that he too would return “very soon”. How she entered the country has not been disclosed. US network Newsmax said she came in from Colombia, while Spain’s ABC newspaper said her return was made possible by a diplomatic operation involving several countries.

Machado left Venezuela in early December 2025, after more than a year in hiding, to collect the Nobel Prize in Oslo. Between June and September she tried to return at least seven times, by boat, overland and on commercial and private flights from the United States, Panama and Curaçao. Several media outlets reported that US officials blocked some of those attempts, which President Donald Trump denied. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said she could return “like any Venezuelan citizen”.

Machado returns to a country transformed since Nicolás Maduro’s removal from power following the US military operation in January. The government of acting President Delcy Rodríguez has been negotiating since August with Dinorah Figuera, president of the National Assembly elected in 2015, a roadmap that includes renewing the Supreme Court and the National Electoral Council and holding regional elections before the presidential vote, a sequence Machado has rejected. The presidential election still has no date.

The government says it had not vetoed her return, although it accuses her of having promoted the US intervention, and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello had warned he had “a surprise” in store for her. Machado, barred from the 2024 election, backed González’s candidacy, whom tally sheets collected by the opposition showed as the winner despite the victory claimed by the chavista government. An AtlasIntel poll for Bloomberg in August gave her 57.4% of voting intentions.