María Corina Machado

0:03 No, Mr. President. Mr. President, we've spent eight hours listening to you describe a country. Nothing like the one experienced by us Venezuelan women and mothers. We've reached the extreme of hearing that we've seen an increase in the production of milk. When you know that today there are women, mothers that fight for a liter of milk because they don't have any to take home.

0:54 This is the moment to give the country answers. How can you say that you respect the private sector when you've dedicated yourself to expropriate, which is stealing? Tell the truth to Venezuela. Here is a Venezuela that wants a profound transformation. Because you're out of your ranking to be debating with me.

2:24 I'm sorry, but that's the truth. Eagles don't hunt flies, Congresswoman. It was January 13th, 2012. Hugo Chavez was addressing Venezuela's National Assembly. The chamber was packed with government ministers, military commanders, and lawmakers. His supporters filled the galleries above. For eight hours, the president entertained them.

2:50 He cracked jokes, mocked his opponents, and even broke into song. His speech was being broadcast across the country on mandatory radio and television broadcasting, a cadena. Chavez had been battling cancer. His face was swollen from treatment, his hair slowly growing back. But standing before the assembly, he still commanded the room.

3:10 And when Maria Corina Machalo challenged him, he barely had to answer. A joke, an insult, and the chamber erupted in applause. Machado was an opposition deputy from Caracas. She was also running in the opposition's presidential primary, hoping to become the candidate who would face Chavez later that year.

3:28 Throughout his address, Chavez had repeatedly singled her out. The cameras would turn toward her, broadcasting her stoic reaction to the country. Then, after listening for hours, she stood up. That year, Maria Corina would lose the opposition primary. She would never get a chance to face him in a presidential election.

3:47 But the exchange would outlive him. Just over a year later, Hugo Chavez was dead. Venezuela descended into a catastrophe that drove millions from their homes. And one attempt after another to remove his successor, Nicolas Maduro, ended in disappointment. But through it all, Maria Corina remained. She was stripped of her seat in the National Assembly, she was beaten in Parliament.

4:11 But it would take more than a decade for the woman Chavez had dismissed in that chamber to become the leader to whom millions of Venezuelans would rally. By then, she would be asking them to do something painful, indescribably difficult. To believe that they could still win. Welcome to the Guacamaya.

4:36 I'm Alex. Before we begin, I want to share something with you. This will be the second to last episode of the podcast. Today we'll follow María Corina Machalo's rise and the movement that carried Venezuela toward the presidential election of July 28, 2024. Then, in two weeks from today, on November 3rd, our final episode will cover what followed: the election's aftermath and the US intervention.

5:00 You have no idea how much making this series has meant to me, but it also takes an enormous amount of time and energy, and I've decided to devote more of that to the book I'm writing, which will also be on modern Venezuelan history. Basically, what we're talking about on this podcast. There will be a time for a proper goodbye in the final episode, but for now, we still have a story to tell.

5:20 This is the story of María Corina Machado. By the beginning of 2023, Venezuela was in a state of absolute hopelessness. Juan Guaido's attempt to force Maduro out by challenging his claim to the presidency had failed. More than 50 countries had recognized Guaidó as Venezuela's legitimate interim president.

5:42 But international recognition could only accomplish so much. Maduro still controlled the military, the police, the courts, and the institutions that governed the lives of Venezuelans. Foreign governments could refuse to recognize Maduro, but whenever they wanted something from the Venezuelan state, his officials were the ones that were still behind the desks.

6:02 Then, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world. The effort to remove Maduro, already faltering, lost what remained of its momentum. On December 30th, 2022, the opposition National Assembly, elected in 2015, voted to dissolve Guaidó's interim government. Four months later, he fled Venezuela. The movement that had once promised an imminent transition ended with Maduro still in the presidential palace.

6:46 And the country around him had changed. Someone who remembered Venezuela during the Chavez years could have walked through parts of Caracas and wondered whether they had entered a parallel reality. The American dollar, the currency of the empire, had become the currency of everyday life. After years of controlling access to foreign currency, the regime had loosened its restrictions and allowed dollar transactions to spread.

7:09 It had also relaxed restrictions on imports, shops filled with products that Venezuelans had spent years struggling to find. But finding food and being able to afford it were two very different things. Inflation had slowed from the extremes of the hyperinflation years, but prices continued to rise. Even people earning dollars found that their money bought less and less.

7:30 For those surviving on public salaries or pensions paid in Bolívares, the distance between their income and the cost of living was enormous. You could stand in a supermarket surrounded by food and still have no idea how you were going to feed your family. That also meant that the regime's food distribution networks remained powerful.

7:47 Families that couldn't afford groceries were still vulnerable to the officials who controlled access to subsidized food. Meanwhile, wealth was flaunted everywhere. Luxury restaurants, expensive goods. Caracas even had a Ferrari dealership open. A country governed in the name of socialism had become a capitalist playground for the regime's corrupt elite.

8:09 They had become, ironically, an oligarchy. For those with enough money, there were ways around the shortages, the failing services, and the deterioration of public life. For everyone else, survival remained a daily struggle. And beneath the new shops, the dollars, and the appearances of normality, something deeper had taken hold.

8:33 Resignation. After years of marches, elections, negotiations, and promises that an end was near, Venezuelans were exhausted. Maduro had survived everything. It was easier to imagine leaving Venezuela than to imagine him ever leaving power. That was the country in which Maria Corina Machado began asking Venezuelans to believe again.

8:57 For years, Maria Corina had been one of Chavez's most persistent enemies. An industrial engineer from a wealthy family, she came from the world Chavez taught his followers to despise. And she made no attempt to disguise her beliefs. She defended capitalism, private property, individual liberty, and the right of Venezuelans to build a life without depending on the government.

9:18 Her rise began in the early 2000s when she helped found Sumate, a civil society organization that promoted electoral participation and helped mobilize voters for the referendum to recall Chavez. That work made her a target. After Sumate accepted two grants from the U.S. Congress to fund its civil education activities, prosecutors pursued criminal charges against her and her colleagues.

9:40 But these trials never went anywhere. In 2010, she was elected to the National Assembly, receiving more votes than any other parliamentary candidate that year. Two years later, she stood up to Chavez. The following year, she was beaten inside the National Assembly. But neither the violence nor the persecution ever silenced her.

10:00 Even within the opposition, Maria Corina was a divisive figure. To her supporters, she was principled and courageous. To her critics, she was too rigid, too radical, too unwilling to accept the compromises that politics required. But much of this was the result of a government-led campaign to assassinate her character.

10:19 Because Maria Corina, in reality, was more of a liberal than anything. And by liberal I mean someone who defends liberal values. The individual must be protected from the state. She's not a far-right, crazy, radical, right-wing nut. What she did do was repeatedly warned that negotiations would give the regime time to recover, divide its opponents, and remain in power.

10:39 For years, other opposition leaders set the strategy. Maria Corina remained a prominent voice, but was often outside the circles making the main decisions. By 2023, those leaders had little left to offer their country, exhausted by disappointment. And the stubbornness that had once made her seem politically impractical became a reason to trust her.

10:57 She had spent years insisting that the regime would not willingly surrender power, years refusing to soften her position to it. Now, Venezuelans who had lost faith in almost everyone else were beginning to listen. The presidential election was approaching in July 2024, and the opposition needed a candidate.

11:17 The parties agreed to hold a primary. But first came a fight over who would organize it. Some wanted technical assistance from the National Electoral Council, the Cene. Maria Corina opposed trusting an institution controlled by Maduro to oversee the selection of his opponent. Ultimately, the primary commission decided to organize the election independently.

11:36 Volunteers would staff voting stations, communities would provide the spaces, and ballots would be counted by hand. But one question remained. What if the winner was someone that the regime refused to let run? Maria Corina was already banned from holding public office for 15 years. But she continued campaigning.

11:55 Five days before the primary, the government and the opposition signed the Barbados Agreement, promising electoral guarantees for the 2024 election. The U.S. responded by temporarily easing oil and gas sanctions.

12:07 The White House announced plans Tuesday to ease some economic sanctions on Venezuela as a gesture meant to encourage ongoing talks between the government of Nicolas Maduro and opposition leaders.

12:17 But María Corina's ban remained in place. On October 22, 2023, Venezuelans voted anyway. They lined up public squares, private homes, and spaces offered by local businesses. Abroad, Venezuelans cast ballots in cities around the world. More than 2.4 million people participated. And the result wasn't close.

12:40 Maria Corina Machello won with more than 92% of the vote. The woman dismissed for years as too uncompromising to unite the opposition now had an overwhelming mandate to lead it. Her campaign promise was simple. Until the end. That they already know that they have lost. So the regime began taking away the people around her.

14:59 In January 2024, security forces arrested her regional coordinators in the states of Yaracuy, La Guayra, and Trujillo. In March, they arrested her coordinator in Barinas. Then came Henry Alviárez and Dinorah Hernandez, two senior figures in her party. The video of Hernandez's arrest spread across social media.

15:22 She's crying for help as officers force her into a vehicle. Arrest warrants followed for other members of Machado's inner circle. Six opposition figures, including her campaign manager, Magalli Meda, sought refuge in the Argentine ambassador's residence. The government was dismantling her team around her.

15:42 But she kept going. The regime refused to let her run. So in March, Maria Corina announced that Corina Yoris, an 80-year-old philosopher and academic, would stand in her place. Yoris was unknown outside academic circles. She had no political disqualification. Yet the opposition was unable to register her.

15:59 Its representatives couldn't access the electoral system to submit her candidacy. Then the coalition managed to register another name, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia. A 74-year-old former diplomat, initially entered as a placeholder to preserve the opposition's place on the ballot. In April, the coalition agreed that he would become the candidate.

16:18 Maria Corina backed him and urged her supporters to do the same. Here we are. We are determined to move forward, because we will win. With the presidency denied to her, she put the movement behind someone else. Her name wouldn't be on the ballot, but the people knew where to put their vote. On the road, obstacles multiplied.

16:46 Roadblocks, closed bridges, intelligence officers following her movements, and the intimidation extended to ordinary people who helped her. In May, Maria Corina and her team stopped for breakfast at a small restaurant in Corozopando, in the state of Guarico. Hours later, tax officials arrived and closed the business.

17:04 The women who ran it sold her empanadas. That was enough to bring the dictatorship to their door. But when news of the closure spread, Venezuelans began placing orders and paying in advance to support them. An attempt to make an example of those women became another reason for people to help. Help her, and you could be punished.

18:39 Sell her breakfast, work on her campaign, offer her a ride, and the dictatorship would come for you. And yet people kept helping. And every time they did, other Venezuelans could see that they were no longer alone. Venezuela was waking up. These were no ordinary rallies. For millions of Venezuelans, that message resonated.

19:35 A son returning home, a granddaughter growing up next door, a salary that could feed a family, a mother who would never again have to lower her head before a party official to receive a bag of food. There was something deeply maternal about this connection. In a country accustomed to strong men demanding loyalty, here was a woman confronting the men who had made so many people afraid.

19:59 People entrusted her with their hope, and her determination gave them the courage to act on it. July 28, 2024. Before dawn, Venezuelans were already lining up to vote. Images spread across social media, lines stretching around corners, voters holding up ink-stained fingers. After everything, the arrests, the threats, the candidates blocked from running, the day had finally arrived.

20:31 But casting a ballot was only part of the plan. Maria Corina and her team had spent months organizing to collect the evidence of the result. At each polling station, the voting machine printed a tally showing how many votes each candidate received. An acta. Accredited party witnesses were entitled to copies of those records, collect enough of them, and the opposition could establish the result independently of whatever the regime announced in Caracas.

20:54 The strategy depended on thousands of ordinary people, witnesses who would remain at their posts, volunteers who would collect and transmit the records, citizens who would stay nearby as voting ended and the results emerged. The instruction was simple vote and defend your vote. That evening the videos began to arrive.

21:16 A voice reading a number from a tally sheet, a crowd listening, then Edmundo's Total, and an explosion of cheers. From one town and then another and then another came scenes of celebration. People embraced, shouted, held their phones above the crowd to record what was happening. For Venezuelans watching at home, every new video made the possibility feel more real.

21:43 They had done it. After 25 years of chavismo, they had voted to end it. Now they waited for the announcements. Around midnight, Elvis Amoroso appeared before the cameras, the president of the National Electoral Council. He read the numbers. Nicolas Maduro had won, he said. The Electoral Authority presented no polling results to substantiate that announcement.

22:19 No proof. In fact, they pretended that they were hacked, even though the electoral system can't be hacked externally, to claim that the website was down. All they said were the totals. The records proved it. But Maduro was claiming another six years in power. And as the night gave way to the morning, the hope that it brought millions to the polls had become a source of agony.

23:35 They had voted. They had proved their victory. What would happen now that the regime had refused to accept it? Thanks again for listening to the Guacamaya. Our final episode will be out in two weeks on November 3rd. I hope you'll join me as we finally bring this story to the present. Thanks again.