Seven Attempts, Still No Way Home for Venezuela's Nobel-Winning Opposition Leader Machado
Venezuela's opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado has made seven attempts to return to Venezuela and every one has failed, according to her team, in a report published by Britain's Observer on October 14. Machado, 59, remains in Panama.
On the first attempt, her private jet from Virginia was ordered to turn back mid-flight. On the second, an airline refused to let her board a commercial flight from Panama. Few details have been shared about the third and fourth attempts, except that one was by land. The latest three took place within 24 hours last month, while acting President Delcy Rodríguez was at the UN General Assembly: a boat journey was cancelled because of an apparent engine fault, and requests to land private jets on Aruba and Curaçao, the Dutch Caribbean islands off Venezuela's coast, were rejected.
Claudia Macero, communications coordinator for Machado's Vente Venezuela party, said it is Rodríguez who is blocking Machado's return. She added that there is no public or documented evidence of a direct U.S. impediment, pointing to Secretary of State Marco Rubio's recent denial of U.S. involvement: "We hold on to that. But obviously we understand that there are forces that do not want her to come." Former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela James Story said the White House may believe Machado's return would upset a fragile equilibrium created around the opening of Venezuela's oil and mining sectors, describing the result so far as "a more profitable dictatorship."
Washington's three-step plan for Venezuela — stability, economic recovery, and only then political transition and new elections — still has no election date. Machado wrote in the New York Post last week that her return was "urgent." Asked about her comments, President Trump declined to be drawn, saying only: "She is an excellent woman." Other exiles have managed to return: Macero, who fled in 2025 after spending almost a year trapped in the Argentine embassy, recently flew into Caracas and was let in without questioning.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 玛丽亚·科里纳·马查多（摄于2013年）。图片来源：Wikimedia Commons，Gabo Bracho 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0 授权
