Venezuela’s Machado to hold Madrid rally as opposition frozen out after Maduro capture | María Corina Machado
Venezuela’s opposition leader María Corina Machado, who finds herself sidelined by Donald Trump after the kidnapping of president Nicolás Maduro, will try to revive her push for political change with a rally in Madrid on Saturday.
“Venezuela will be free,” the Nobel peace laureate insisted in an interview on the eve of this weekend’s demonstration in Puerta del Sol square, which is expected to draw tens of thousands of protesters.
Supporters had hoped that Machado, whose movement is widely believed to have defeated Maduro in Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election, would come to power after US troops captured his autocratic rival on January 3. Instead, Trump backed Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, in exchange for concessions on Venezuela’s vast oil and mineral resources.
“We’re very happy with the president-elect that we have right now,” Trump said earlier this month, even though Rodríguez was not elected.
Machado, who fled Venezuela last December to receive the Nobel peace prize in Oslo, has not been able to return since Maduro’s capture; Washington was apparently concerned that his presence could cause social unrest and disrupt Trump’s plans to exploit oil reserves.
In Machado’s absence, Rodríguez consolidated his power by purging key Maduro allies from the government and trying to portray himself as a competent technocrat who could revive the moribund economy. There are campaign-style propaganda posters on the streets of Caracas, stamped with Rodríguez’s face and the slogan: “Onward, Delcy, I’m counting on you.”
Inside a new interview Speaking to Spanish newspaper El País, Rodríguez’s brother and powerful national assembly chief Jorge Rodríguez refused to say when new elections might be held. “The most important thing right now is the economy,” he said.
Members of Machado’s movement have become increasingly frustrated with the freezing of their country’s political future and the failure to achieve a democratic transition following Maduro’s ouster.
Tom Shannon, a veteran US diplomat who has worked on Venezuela since the 1990s, said: “Every day [Rodríguez] Is there ever a day when the democratic opposition is not there… and that is devastating for the opposition.”
Shannon, Secretary of State John Kerry’s envoy to Latin America, said Trump’s decision to attack Iran raised Rodríguez’s hopes of retaining power.
“The pressure is now off because all our military attention is directed elsewhere and there is no bandwidth to keep up the pressure on Venezuela,” he said, noting how Washington “rehabilitated” Rodriguez by lifting sanctions against him. license To encourage US investments.
in conversation A recent conference in MiamiMachado ally Omar González complained that two key elements were forgotten by those spearheading what US secretary of state Marco Rubio called Washington’s three-step plan for “stability, recovery and transition.” One of them was the will of the Venezuelan people, who no longer wanted Rodríguez’s “gang of criminals to be in power.” The other was the country’s constitution, which required elections to be held within seven months of the president’s absence.
González said Machado believed the way to “open up” the situation was for him to return from exile; He claimed that he and other opposition activists would soon do so. “To make a perhaps slightly exaggerated analogy, [it will be] “A sort of Normandy landing,” González said, predicting that Venezuelan exiles would return simultaneously by land, air and sea to fight for democracy.
When and how Machado will return remains a mystery, as does the reaction he will receive from the Rodríguez regime. In a recent interview, Delcy Rodríguez said the conservative politician should be “held accountable” if he returns.
Walter Molina, a Venezuelan political scientist living in Argentina, said he has no doubt that life in Venezuela has improved since the end of Maduro’s “absolute tyranny,” though not enough, with more than 500 political prisoners still behind bars and Maduro’s allies still in power.
“If before we were 50 floors underground, now we’re 35 floors below… And if María Corina Machado comes back, I think we’ll be closer to the ground floor,” he said.
“[Before] It was impossible to see a way out. Now you can see one. Now the question is: How far is this way out? How far are we from the light at the end of the tunnel?”
Earlier this week, Machado met with French president Emmanuel Macron and Dutch prime minister Rob Jetten. But despite the high-profile nature of Saturday’s rally, Machado said he had no plans to meet with Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, during his time in Madrid.
An outspoken critic of Donald Trump’s recent military interventions against Venezuela and Iran, Sánchez questioned the legality of the US’s actions in the South American country following its capture of Maduro.
Machado, on the contrary, thanked Trump for his intervention and presented him with the gold Nobel peace prize medal.
To talk Spain’s Cope radio station on WednesdaySecuring Venezuela’s return to freedom and democracy is the “most important goal,” Machado said. He added: “There are times when it is appropriate to hold certain meetings for this purpose, and there are times when it is not appropriate, and therefore there are no meetings planned at this time.”
Sánchez will attend a meeting of progressive leaders from around the world in Barcelona this weekend. But on Friday, Machado met with Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of Spain’s conservative People’s Party, and Santiago Abascal, leader of the far-right Vox party.
