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Venezuela’s Machado Stole the World’s Attention. Now She Is Frozen Out.
The opposition leader and her movement went from elation to dismay after President Trump said allies of Nicolás Maduro would rule the country.
Venezuela’s opposition woke up with a jolt of euphoria Saturday when it learned that the U.S. had forcefully ousted the authoritarian Nicolás Maduro—opening the way for its own leader, María Corina Machado, to take power.
A few hours later, President Trump threw cold water on the idea, saying Machado didn’t have enough respect or support in Venezuela to lead. Instead, he turned to one of Maduro’s top lieutenants, Delcy Rodríguez, to lead a transition and vowed to take over the country’s oil industry.
“I have never seen a speech destroy the image of a movement more quickly than that,” said Javier Corrales, an Amherst College scholar who has written books on Venezuela. “It’s a catastrophe.”
Venezuela’s opposition is facing one of the biggest tests in its quarter-century battle against Chavismo, the far-left movement led by Maduro and named after his predecessor, Hugo Chávez.
Not only does the opposition still face a repressive regime at home, now Machado and her allies have to contend with a U.S. administration that is focused on securing their country’s oil wealth and cementing Washington’s control over the Western Hemisphere rather than holding elections in Venezuela and restoring democracy.
Machado captured the world’s attention with her daring escape from Venezuela in December to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. Now, outside her country, she has to find a way to become relevant again.
“Machado doesn’t have any chance to get into the government soon, unless there will be a free and fair election, and that is not on the agenda right now,” said Imdat Oner, a former Turkish diplomat in Venezuela who is now a fellow at the Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy, in Florida. “The window is closing for them, and there is not much they can do.”
In public, Machado and other opposition leaders have continued to praise Trump and say they are hopeful that Maduro’s downfall will lead to democracy. Machado called the capture of the Venezuelan strongman, who had cracked down on dissent and cozied up to U.S. adversaries, a “huge step for humanity, for freedom.”
“Jan. 3 will go down in history as the day justice defeated tyranny,” she told Fox News on Monday. “It’s a milestone.”
Machado also said that Rodríguez can’t be trusted and that a democratic transition needs to move forward. “Delcy Rodríguez, as you know, is one of the main architects of torture, persecution, corruption, narco trafficking,” she said. “She’s the main ally and liaison with Russia, China, Iran.”
Machado, who spent months in hiding inside Venezuela before traveling to Norway last month, said she would return to the South American country as soon as possible.
Trump appears to have picked Rodríguez over Machado for largely practical reasons. As a regime stalwart, Rodríguez is seen as best-positioned to maintain near-term stability and lead a temporary government, according to an analysis by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Machado’s positions have upset some Venezuelans. She faced pushback from business elites after criticizing them for continuing to operate in Venezuela and for her opposition to any negotiations with the government. She has been a staunch supporter of U.S. sanctions that have hurt the economy. And she avoided criticizing the Trump administration’s deportations of Venezuelan refugees back to a country she describes as a brutal dictatorship.
In Venezuela, Machado’s tough stance against the government could make it difficult for her to maintain public order and would risk sparking a violent backlash from regime hard-liners and military commanders who dislike her.
“There has to be a little realism here,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday on CBS News. “We want to see Venezuela transition to be a place completely different than what it looks like today, but, obviously, we don’t have the expectation that’s going to happen in the next 15 hours,” he added.
After initially lashing out at the strike against Maduro, Rodríguez struck a conciliatory tone Sunday when she invited the U.S. government “to work together on a cooperative agenda.”
Trump has threatened to oust Rodríguez if she doesn’t obey, but he is also wary of Venezuela’s opposition, said former U.S. officials. That stems from the opposition’s failure to take power during Trump’s first term, when the U.S. threw its support behind a parallel government that went nowhere.
Now, Machado and her allies will likely lean on Republican lawmakers in South Florida to try to persuade the White House to rethink its approach. That is unlikely to change Trump’s mind, said Oner, the former diplomat.
“Trump is convinced that ceding this position to the opposition would not be smart,” he said. “There would be a power vacuum, and the Venezuelan opposition might not manage it so well.”
Freddy Guevara, a member of Machado’s coalition who was a political prisoner for some three years in Venezuela, said he is still hopeful.
Guevara said one of the opposition’s priorities now will be to secure the release of hundreds of political prisoners in Venezuela. He said it would also be pushing to re-establish the rule of law.
“Maduro being out opens a path to a real transition in Venezuela,” said Guevara, who now teaches at the Kennedy School at Harvard University. “But we know that the job is not done.”
Guevara said that even if the Trump administration doesn’t demand that Rodríguez take action to improve human rights, Maduro’s capture should make the regime’s enforcers think twice before cracking down on dissent.
“They know that they are not untouchable anymore,” he said.
Some opposition members hope that Maduro’s downfall will unveil cracks in the regime that can be exploited.
From his exile in Europe, Edmundo González, the former presidential candidate who the U.S. said rightfully won the 2024 election in Venezuela, demanded that the armed forces honor the constitution.
“As commander in chief, I remind you that your loyalty is to the constitution, to the people, and to the republic,” he said Sunday.
Opposition members are also conveying that Trump’s plans for U.S. companies to rebuild Venezuela’s oil industry—a task that would require tens of billions of dollars in investment—will require a return to democracy to provide legal security to investors.
“They will soon have to realize that there is no recovery without democracy,” said Ricardo Hausmann, a Venezuelan economist. “If you want to recover the Venezuelan oil industry, you need rights, you need legal security.”
Machado’s best hope might be the most perilous one: returning home to drum up pressure that would demonstrate her support among Venezuelans, said Corrales, the Amherst College scholar.
“It could be the kind of shock to the system that is needed at this point,” he said. “So that whatever plan Trump and Delcy Rodríguez have concocted, if they want to derail that, the only way to do it is from within.”
He added: “It’s incredibly risky.”
Write to Ryan Dubé at ryan.dube@wsj.com
