Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has returned to her country after more than 10 months in exile. She had tried and failed several times before to come home. “I am here. With you,” Machado wrote on X on Sunday.
She had left Venezuela at night, in disguise, on a speedboat, to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. A month later the United States seized her rival, President Nicolás Maduro. Donald Trump’s administration then backed Maduro’s deputy, Delcy Rodríguez.
Rodríguez was sworn in as interim president and later signed a highly favourable oil deal with the United States. On Sunday Machado was seen attending prayers at a church in Venezuela’s Lara state.
Supporters embraced and welcomed her there. She then set off for the capital, Caracas, at the head of a large convoy of cheering supporters. Entering Caracas at night, she was seen smiling through the car’s sunroof.
On X she wrote that it was a night of reunion in Caracas, a reunion of every family, and a night of Venezuela’s freedom. Machado’s ally and former presidential candidate Edmundo González confirmed her arrival. “I am delighted to be able to say that our leader is back on Venezuelan soil; she will show us the way,” he said. González added that he too would soon join Machado to move Venezuela towards freedom.
In September an adviser to Machado said she had tried seven times in a few weeks to return home and had been turned back. Reports spread that the United States was behind the delays, which Washington denied. Machado has said she will run for president again if elections are held in the future.
Machado won the independent primary election in 2023 with more than 90 percent of the vote. But the Maduro government barred her from the election on allegations of fraud and tax evasion. Machado denied the charges, calling them politically motivated. González then ran in her place in the 2024 election. The Maduro government declared itself the winner without producing any evidence, while the opposition said González had won.
In January US forces seized Maduro and took him to New York, where he faces charges of drug trafficking, weapons offences and torture. Machado’s spokesman David Smolansky called her return a major step towards free and fair elections and thanked Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report