Machado readies return to Venezuela to press for elections

Trump officials resist plan over oil, unrest worries

PANAMA CITY—Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado is preparing to leave exile in Panama and return to Venezuela to push for new presidential elections, according to a Wall Street Journal interview appearing in the September 19 print edition.

Her planned return faces resistance from Trump administration officials who fear it could unsettle the U.S. arrangement with Venezuela’s interim government or trigger unrest. Her first attempt to re-enter Venezuela in June was abruptly halted midflight amid that resistance. Since then, she has settled in Panama City to prepare for her next attempt.

“I cannot lead the process from abroad,” Machado said in a rare sit-down interview with The Wall Street Journal last month in Panama City. “The moment to return has arrived.”

These days, Machado wakes up at 6 a.m. in a borrowed friend’s apartment near the Pacific coastline and pours herself a strong coffee before getting back to planning what the Journal characterizes as “the biggest gamble of her life.” She is ready to enter Venezuela by land, sea, or air at a moment’s notice, though the date of return remains uncertain. “The call to go could come in ten minutes or ten days—or longer,” she said.

Since escaping Venezuela in disguise last December to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway, Machado has spent nine months in exile drawing up a detailed strategy to mobilize her political movement back home. She plans to use it to press for a democratic transition even as President Trump strongly backs the interim government she hopes to replace, which has granted the U.S. sweeping access to Venezuelan oil.

Machado envisions her first months crisscrossing Venezuela’s 23 states, reprising the road campaign that helped her build a nationwide movement that defeated Nicolás Maduro in the 2024 presidential election, according to results recognized by the U.S. and other governments but rejected by Caracas. She wants to reboot that grassroots network to press for a democratic transition from the Maduro allies who currently run the country.

“I see myself traveling all across the country, all the way to the tiny communities—sitting down, listening to mothers, to workers, to farmers, to businessmen, to drivers, to students, to teachers, to doctors, everybody,” she said.

Her team’s “day one” priority will be to lay the groundwork for speedy presidential elections, in which she intends to run, including updating voter rolls. She projects thousands of citizen assemblies across Venezuela, where her allies plan to use QR codes to gather ideas from ordinary Venezuelans and use artificial-intelligence tools to distill them into priorities for a national transition plan.

Members of her party, Vente Venezuela, have gradually emerged from hiding in recent months. In June, young activists aligned with her movement staged “Elecciones Ya” rallies in 16 states as part of an effort to rebuild street-level organization. Machado and her team said they are also actively planning to govern: identifying people who could take over state institutions after a transition, including in education, healthcare, the judiciary, the armed forces, and the economy.

With Trump increasingly embracing acting President Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s longtime deputy, Machado is adamant that she—and a democratic Venezuela—would be a natural U.S. ally. She says she would expand intelligence-sharing with Washington, work with U.S. agencies and the Coast Guard against drug trafficking, and coordinate with Colombia to dismantle criminal groups on the border.

Machado has also been courting foreign investors. Some executives considering investing in Venezuela have sought her out, said members of her team, seeking assurances that deals struck with the current government would be honored in any transition. “I’ve told all of them: Go to Venezuela,” she said. “I’m not telling them to wait.”

How much of that agenda Machado will be able to carry out remains unclear. She would be returning to a country where much of the state, including the security apparatus, is hostile to her.

Rodríguez has warned that Machado will have to “answer to Venezuela” for backing the U.S. military raid that ousted Maduro in January, and other top officials have taunted that they have “a surprise” waiting for her. “We’re waiting for her,” Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said in June, “but she better come quickly.”

In a phone call in June, Trump told Rodríguez not to move against Machado or interfere if she came back, said people familiar with the conversation. But some in the White House believe her premature return could provoke a confrontation and disrupt the administration’s transition plan. Machado and her supporters are trying to change their minds.

“My presence in Venezuela is not a challenge,” said Machado, who spent more than a year in hiding before she escaped. “Part of my effort has been to explain that it is exactly the opposite. It’s a contribution to the process.”

The fierce debate over Machado’s return has exposed different visions of how Venezuela should emerge from more than two decades of increasingly authoritarian rule.

Recent developments have further entrenched Washington’s partnership with Rodríguez. Trump has announced a major oil deal negotiated with Rodríguez’s government and plans to meet with her at next week’s United Nations General Assembly, which will give her the most prominent international stage yet.

The oil deal announced by Trump last month has further complicated Machado’s position. It gives the Pentagon a 35% stake in a private company with rights to one-fifth of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves through a partnership with Alejandro Betancourt, a businessman who made a fortune under former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez and Maduro.

A White House official praised the “extraordinary” relations with Rodríguez’s government, saying it allowed Trump to “secure the biggest oil deal in world history.”

The fact that the oil deal was negotiated with Rodríguez makes it difficult for Machado to support. But openly attacking it would mean opposing one of Trump’s most prized foreign policy achievements.

Machado has been blunt about the government Washington has chosen to work with. “Delcy Rodríguez represents chaos,” she said. “Everything she has done, she has done by coercion.” She said Rodríguez’s government is “absolutely incompetent, incapable of running even a corner store.”

Venezuela’s foreign ministry and Rodríguez’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Machado’s team spent months blanketing Washington earlier this year to lobby U.S. officials and lawmakers. She also traveled across Europe, meeting with several European leaders as well as with Pope Leo, who gave her the reception and high-level access usually afforded to a head of state. But she waited to go back to Venezuela, partly on the advice of administration officials who urged her to wait.

The twin earthquakes on June 24, which killed 6,500 people in Venezuela, were an inflection point for her. “An abyss opened in our country,” Machado said, describing a surge of public anger at the faltering government response. “For me, something broke definitively, and it accelerated everything.”

Some Trump officials believe Machado could still easily win an election, especially with the exile vote, people familiar with the discussions say, but some have doubts about her ability to govern. They especially have concerns about her ability to hold together the remnants of the old system, including the military.

Trump initially said Machado lacked the “support” and “respect” to lead the country, but sometimes revels in her popularity among Florida Republicans. At a private dinner in Doral with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and a few local politicians in March, he called her on speaker, according to a person present. “Everyone loves you here,” he said, according to a video seen by The Wall Street Journal.

Machado was also cut out of U.S.-backed transition talks between the interim government and members of the opposition-controlled 2015 National Assembly, which Washington still recognizes as Venezuela’s last democratically elected legislature.

Some in Washington see Machado’s prolonged absence as a plus. The view is that if things get better—if the blackouts stop, salaries rise, and basic conditions improve—there will be less pressure for a wholesale break from the current system.

Some of Machado’s allies fear that the longer she stays out of Venezuela, the more her movement could lose momentum. “I have questioned myself many times,” she said. “Obviously, I would have wanted to return a long time ago, and everyone knows it.”

For now, she is keeping a low profile. Walking with her through the cobblestone streets of Panama City’s historic Casco Viejo, it is easy to see why: from the vendor selling paletas in the plaza to guests at a five-star hotel, she is instantly recognized and surrounded by people seeking selfies and hugs. “Next time I see you, I expect to see you in Miraflores,” one told her on a recent outing, referring to the presidential palace in Caracas. “When are you going back?”