Nobel laureate María Corina Machado returned to Venezuela after 10 months in exile. She announced it on X.
Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado returned to Venezuela on Sunday after more than 10 months in exile, announcing her arrival in a social media post. She wrote that she was there with her supporters.
Her campaign team said she made her first public appearance at the Santa Rosa church in Lara state in western Venezuela, where she was quickly surrounded by worshippers. Machado has not said how she entered the country. Her advisers said she made seven unsuccessful attempts to return in recent months, including by air and sea. She had been in hiding since January 2025, after a brief detention following a protest. She left Venezuela in December to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway and spent the months since traveling to rally international support, including from President Donald Trump, to whom she gave her Nobel medal.
She returns to a country reshaped by the United States, which captured and removed President Nicolás Maduro in January. Delcy Rodríguez is the interim president. Machado has called for elections soon, while Washington says Venezuela must first stabilize. Trump has said Machado lacks support among Venezuelans and has praised Rodríguez’s willingness to open the oil industry to foreign investors. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Machado’s safe return was the result of U.S.-supported reconciliation talks, which he said have led to the release of hundreds of political prisoners and the return of hundreds of opposition figures from exile.
Opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, who is also in exile, said her return brings her sovereign voice back to lead the process, and that he would soon join her. Her return follows opposition protests in Caracas on Thursday, called by Machado from exile in Panama, demanding a date for presidential elections.
Information for this report was provided by NPR, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Hill, The Washington Post and TNND.