{"id":228745,"date":"2026-10-26T02:07:23","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T02:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/exiled-opposition-leader-maria-corina-machado-returns-to-venezuela-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T02:07:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T02:07:23","slug":"exiled-opposition-leader-maria-corina-machado-returns-to-venezuela-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/exiled-opposition-leader-maria-corina-machado-returns-to-venezuela-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Exiled opposition leader Mar\u00eda Corina Machado returns to Venezuela – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nobel peace prize winner\u2019s return after almost a year in exile is unlikely to please interim president Delcy Rodr\u00edguez
The Venezuelan opposition leader, Mar\u00eda Corina Machado<\/a>, has announced she has returned to Venezuela almost a year after she left the country to receive the Nobel peace prize.
\u201cI\u2019m here. With you,\u201d she wrote on X on Sunday lunchtime.
Her close ally Edmundo Gonz\u00e1lez, who is in exile, confirmed her arrival. \u201cVenezuela! I am thrilled to announce to you that our leader, my dear Mar\u00eda Corina, is on Venezuelan soil,\u201d he posted on social media.
\u201cToday is a very important day for Venezuelans. Our sovereign voice returns with her to lead and guide this process!\u201d he said, adding that he too would soon return.
It was not immediately clear how Machado, 59, had managed to return to Venezuela but footage on social media showed she was in Barquisimeto, the capital of Lara state, which is about 220 miles west of the capital, Caracas.
Images showed her surrounded by supporters holding mobile phones in the Sanctuary of the Divine Shepherdess church.
Footage posted on social media<\/a> by her close ally Pedro Urruchurtu showed hundreds of supporters gathered outside the church to greet her, shouting: \u201cFreedom! Freedom! Freedom!\u201d
The Trump administration<\/a> had reportedly opposed Machado\u2019s return, believing her presence would complicate the cosy relationship it has struck up with the interim president, Delcy Rodr\u00edguez, since abducting her former boss, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, in January.
Machado and Rodr\u00edguez are political arch-rivals.
Machado slipped out of Venezuela last December \u2013 a few weeks before Maduro\u2019s capture \u2013 and in recent months has reportedly made more than half a dozen failed attempts to return home, including after the devastating earthquake that hit the northern coast in June.
After Maduro was seized, many had expected Donald Trump to give Machado his blessing to take power. Her movement is widely believed to have beaten Maduro in the 2024 presidential election, but he refused to hand over power.
Instead the US president embraced Rodr\u00edguez, Maduro\u2019s vice-president, who now governs a country widely seen as a US protectorate.
Machado has repeatedly heaped praise on Trump for launching the operation to remove Maduro, and gave him her 2025 Nobel peace prize medal, which she had been awarded for her peaceful challenge to Venezuela\u2019s authoritarian government.
Asked by reporters on Sunday about her return, Trump said: \u201cI don\u2019t know anything about it, but I think she\u2019s a very nice woman. She gave me her Nobel prize, so how can I say anything else?
\u201cI hope she\u2019s safe. She\u2019s a very nice woman. But we\u2019re doing very well in Venezuela.\u201d
The US secretary of state\u200b, Marco Rubio, claimed credit for creating the conditions that allowed Machado\u2019s safe return after 10 months in exile.
Her return \u201cis the direct result of the U\u200bS\u200b-supported reconciliation talks which has already seen hundreds of political prisoners freed and hundreds of political opposition figures return from exile\u201d, he said.
From Barquisimeto, Machado headed east through the \u200bstate of Yaracuy towards Caracas in a convoy of vehicles. Images released by aides<\/a> show her reaching out from a car\u2019s sunroof towards dozens of supporters who had gathered at the roadside to see her.
Members of Venezuela\u2019s government have long hinted that Machado would be arrested if she tried to return as a result of her years-long struggle for political change. But there was no sign of the security services bothering her on Sunday as she moved towards the capital, perhaps suggesting Washington had sanctioned her return and instructed Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s government not to react.
Machado has called for fresh presidential elections to be held by July 2027, but it is unclear whether the Trump administration supports that timeline given the lucrative partnership it has struck up with Rodr\u00edguez.
Trump announced what he called \u201cthe biggest oil deal in world history\u201d with Venezuela in August, subsequently describing the agreement as the spoils of January\u2019s brief \u201cwar\u201d.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nobel peace prize winner\u2019s return after almost a year in exile is unlikely to please interim president Delcy Rodr\u00edguezThe Venezuelan opposition leader, Mar\u00eda Corina Machado, has announced she has returned to Venezuela almost a year after she left the country to receive the Nobel peace prize.\u201cI\u2019m here. With you,\u201d she wrote on X on Sunday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":228746,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}