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Nicolás Maduro’s political downfall is inevitable, the Nobel laureate María Corina Machado has claimed, rejecting claims that the dictator’s demise would plunge Venezuela into a Syria-style civil war.
Speaking to journalists in Oslo two days after being awarded the Nobel peace prize, Machado voiced confidence that her country was on the cusp of a new political era amid an intensifying US campaign to unseat Maduro.
“Transition is irreversible,” said the conservative pro-democracy activist, who arrived in Norway’s capital on Wednesday having dramatically slipped out of Venezuela by boat after nearly a year living in hiding.
Machado told reporters that Maduro and senior members of his regime still had time to negotiate a peaceful handover. “But … Maduro will leave power, whether there is a negotiation or not. We would like it to be through a negotiation,” she added, dismissing fears that a change of regime could plunge Venezuela into violence similar to the civil wars in Libya and Syria or the conflict in Afghanistan.
“These [comparisons] are utterly unfounded because the situation [in Venezuela] is completely different. We have … a well-knit society without religious, racial, regional, socio-political divisions,” she told reporters from a small number of outlets including the Guardian.
Machado, a 58-year-old former congresswoman from Caracas, has spent almost half of her life battling the Chavista political movement, which Maduro inherited from Hugo Chávez after his death in 2013. In the years after Maduro took power, plummeting oil prices and economic mismanagement and corruption plunged Venezuela into economic chaos, with US sanctions later compounding the crisis. More than eight million citizens fled overseas – an exodus larger than the one generated by Syria’s civil war.
In July 2024, Maduro appeared to suffer a landslide defeat in the presidential election, amid widespread anger at his increasingly authoritarian rule and Venezuela’s economic collapse. Detailed voting data released by the opposition and verified by independent experts indicated that Edmundo González, a diplomat who ran in Machado’s place after she was banned, won the vote, although Maduro clung to power after launching a ferocious crackdown.
Twenty-four hours after that allegedly stolen vote, during one of her last public appearances before going underground, Machado made an almost identical forecast about Maduro’s fate. “I would say his departure is irreversible,” she told the Guardian at an event Caracas.
But 16 months later Maduro remains in power and this week struck a defiant tone, urging supporters to prepare “to smash the teeth of the North American empire if necessary”.
Since August Donald Trump has ramped up the pressure, putting a $50m bounty on Maduro’s head and ordering a massive military buildup in the Caribbean Sea as well as a series of deadly airstrikes on alleged narco vessels supposedly linked to Venezuela’s government. Earlier this week, US troops commandeered an oil tanker in the Caribbean Sea that was carrying tens of millions of dollars worth of Venezuelan oil, a move Machado described as a “very necessary step” to deprive resources from the Maduro regime.
Late on Thursday, the US imposed sanctions on three nephews of Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, and on six crude oil supertankers and the shipping companies linked to them. The treasury department alleged the vessels “engaged in deceptive and unsafe shipping practices and continue to provide financial resources that fuel Maduro’s corrupt narco-terrorist regime”. Trump also repeated his threats to launch strikes on targets on the Venezuelan mainland.
However, back-channel talks over Maduro’s future are believed to have continued. Maduro and Trump held a rare phone conversation in late November, prompting claims that the US president had given his counterpart an ultimatum to leave power, although the details of their conversation remain a mystery.
Reports have emerged that Brazil’s leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, held a secret conversation with Maduro during which the Brazilian offered to meditate the crisis with Trump.
Colombia’s foreign minister, Rosa Villavicencio, signalled that her government would be willing to offer Maduro asylum, in another sign of growing regional pressure.
Some observers fear Trump’s escalating pressure campaign and Maduro’s apparent unwillingness to resign mean the US may be lurching towards a military intervention on Venezuelan soil, with potentially devastating consequences.
Earlier this week, Lula’s chief foreign policy adviser, Celso Amorim, warned that a US attack on Venezuela could plunge South America into a Vietnam-style conflict.
Speaking in Oslo, Machado insisted her movement was preparing for “an orderly and peaceful transition” once Maduro was gone. She said González had invited her to be vice-president if their movement was able to take power. Machado claimed that “the vast majority” of the police and armed forces would follow the new administration’s orders once the political transition began.
Ricardo Hausmann, a former Venezuelan minister and economist, rejected the “lazy and irresponsible” claims that his country would inevitably be plunged into chaos by Maduro’s departure from power. “Venezuela is politically unified,” said Hausmann, who believed Maduro would only agree to step down if Trump dramatically increased the pressure.
“If staying in power means that you may get missiles thrown at you, like [Iranian general Qasem] Soleimani, then you might want to consider seriously whether you want to stay in power,” Hausmann said.
