Venezuela: María Corina Machado returns from exile after more than 10 months and reappears in Barquisimeto
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado returned this Sunday, October 25, to Venezuela after more than 10 months in exile, according to CNN, USA Today and El País. “I am here. With you,” the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate announced in a message on X on Sunday morning, shortly before other opposition members confirmed her arrival.
Hours later, the opposition shared images of Machado in Lara state, where she was greeted by supporters at the Santa Rosa church in Barquisimeto, where she went to give thanks to the Divina Pastora, one of Venezuela’s most revered images of the Virgin Mary. Crowds pressed in around her, chanting her name.
Machado had secretly left Venezuela in December 2025 to travel to Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and according to her advisers she tried unsuccessfully to return at least seven times in recent months, by air, by sea and over land. In June, after the earthquakes that struck the country, she said the government closed its airspace to her; in September, while interim president Delcy Rodríguez was in New York for the UN General Assembly, she was denied entry three times in a single day.
Her return comes in a transformed landscape: a month after she left, United States forces captured then-president Nicolás Maduro and began working with the interim government of Delcy Rodríguez toward a democratic transition. That process, which involves several opposition figures, had developed without Machado or Edmundo González Urrutia.
González Urrutia, the opposition’s presidential candidate in 2024 and currently in exile, celebrated the return on X: “Today is a very important day for Venezuelans. Our sovereign voice returns with her to lead and guide this process!”, adding that he will very soon join her in the country.
United States President Donald Trump said he did not know about her return but hoped she was safe: “She’s a very nice woman,” he said. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X that Machado’s safe return was “the direct result of the U.S.-supported reconciliation talks,” which have already secured the release of hundreds of political prisoners.
The return poses a challenge for the interim government and for Washington’s strategy: Machado demands presidential elections as soon as possible — she has proposed July 24, 2027, the birthday of independence hero Simón Bolívar — while the interim government has yet to announce a date for the vote and the United States maintains the country must stabilize first. It is also unclear whether the authorities will change the calendar or whether Machado will join the negotiating table, but her presence allows her to act politically from Venezuelan territory.
Photo: El Nacional / Archive