Machado Returns to Venezuela After 10 Months in Exile

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has come home after more than 10 months in exile. She returns to a tense political situation.

"I am here. With you," she wrote on X on Sunday. Photographs showed her attending Mass at a church in the state of Lara, with supporters hugging her and holding her hands. Her ally Edmundo González, a former presidential candidate, confirmed she was "on Venezuelan soil" and said he would soon join her to move the country "toward freedom".

Machado left Venezuela in December on a speedboat, under cover of darkness, to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. In January the US seized her opponent, President Nicolás Maduro, who is now jailed in New York on drugs, weapons and torture charges. He has pleaded not guilty. The Trump administration then backed his deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, who was sworn in as interim president and later signed an oil deal on terms very favourable to the US.

An adviser to Machado said in September that she had tried seven times in the previous weeks to return and was denied each time. There were reports that the US helped delay her return, which it denied. Her ability to come back depended on approval from the Trump administration, and that approval now appears to have been given.

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Her spokesman David Smolansky called the return "a major step toward a democratic transition and free, fair, and verifiable presidential elections in the near future". He thanked Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the US government, Congress and allied governments.

Rubio said the conditions for her safe return came from US-backed reconciliation talks, which have already freed hundreds of political prisoners and brought back hundreds of opposition figures from exile. He said the US expects all political actors to support the talks.

Trump told reporters he knew nothing about her return. "She gave me her Nobel Prize, so how can I say anything else? And I hope she's safe," he said. Machado gifted him her Nobel prize award when she visited the White House in January, though the prize committee has said it cannot be revoked, shared or transferred.

It is unclear what Machado will do next. She has said she would run for president again if an election were held. She won the opposition primary, but Maduro's government barred her from running for office, accusing her of fraud and tax violations, which she denies. González ran in her place in 2024, and the electoral authority declared Maduro the winner without publishing detailed tallies. The opposition said it had uploaded copies of tallies showing González won.

Source: BBC News