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'With you': Opposition leader Machado returns to Venezuela / Photo: © Vente Venezuela Press Office/AFP
'With you': Opposition leader Machado returns to Venezuela
Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado returned to her home country Sunday after nearly a year in exile, greeting ecstatic supporters at a church in the city of Barquisimeto.
"I am here. With you," Machado announced in Spanish on X.
Video shared by her Vente party showed the leader, in a trademark white tee-shirt and blue jeans, embracing cheering supporters at a church.
"Her arrival heralds the reunion of all the families who will soon be united again in our country. Venezuela will be free!" the post said.
Machado's return is likely to heap political pressure on interim president Delcy Rodriguez, who has led the country under Washington's watchful eye since US forces ousted longtime leader Nicolas Maduro in January.
Machado's ally, exiled presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, reposted her message and said: "Venezuela! I am thrilled to announce to you that our leader, my dear Maria Corina, is on Venezuelan soil."
Gonzalez Urrutia stood in Machado's place in the 2024 election after she was ruled ineligible.
Maduro was declared the winner of the election despite widespread allegations of fraud.
Machado has been in exile since covertly leaving her South American homeland in late 2025 to receive her Nobel Peace Prize.
While based in Panama, she has tried at least seven times to return but has been blocked by Venezuelan authorities, according to her party.
The month after she fled Venezuela, US forces seized Maduro in a stunning nighttime raid and flew him to New York to face criminal charges.
Machado has repeatedly heaped praise on US President Donald Trump for launching the risky operation, and even gifted him the Nobel medal she received.
Asked by reporters Sunday about the breaking news, Trump said "I don't know anything about it, but I think she's a very nice woman. She gave me her Nobel prize, so how can I say anything else?"
"I hope she's safe. She's a very nice woman. But we're doing very well in Venezuela," he added.
Trump has repeatedly expressed satisfaction with Rodriguez -- who was Maduro's deputy -- as she has acceded to US demands, particularly on granting access to Venezuelan oil.
Rodriguez and her brother, who leads Venezuela's legislature, pushed through reforms to the Venezuelan oil industry and passed an amnesty law earlier this year.
The interim government has recently held multiple rounds of negotiations with a faction of the opposition, which has led to an agreement to reform the judiciary but not yet set a date for new elections.
Machado's Vente party is pushing for elections to be set sometime next year.
I.Wright--SFF
