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The Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado published a Holy Week message on her X account last Saturday, addressing all Venezuelans. In it, she used the symbolism of the Passion of Christ to draw a parallel with the suffering of the Venezuelan people and to call for hope amidst the transition process the country is experiencing.
"Dear Venezuelans, this Holy Week is the opportunity to renew our faith and connect with the profound meaning of every sacrifice made out of love. When we see Jesus on the Cross, we know that the light of the Resurrection is very close," wrote Machado in his post, accompanied by an image of a massive religious procession featuring the figure of the Nazarene dressed in purple.
In the text, the leader of Vente Venezuela identified the collective pain of her nation with the burden of the Cross: "The cross that Venezuela bears today weighs on the shoulders of every family that has mourned the departure of a child, of every persecuted, imprisoned, and slandered individual, of every neighbor who has endured in extreme poverty, of every young person determined to live with dignity."
Machado transformed that image of suffering into a message of active hope: "our pain today is transformed into hope because we understand that our suffering has not been in vain and that we are close to the return to life".
The opposition leader also emphasized the strength that emerges from collective resistance: "From that resistance also comes our strength: the intimate bond among us, the living relationship of the people who have traversed this journey together and who will remain united to witness the dawn of our land."
The message, which concluded with the phrase "Let us continue moving forward together in this rebirth in the Freedom of Venezuela", comes at an unprecedented historical moment for the Caribbean nation, following the capture of Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026 by American forces in the so-called "Operation Absolute Resolution" and the beginning of a transition process under the interim presidency of Delcy Rodríguez, formally recognized by the United States on March 9.
At the time of publishing the message, Machado was outside of Venezuela, as part of an intense international tour that included meetings with the Venezuelan diaspora in Santiago de Chile and Houston, and which this Sunday included the announcement of an upcoming meeting in Madrid.
Last Tuesday, Machado met for the third time with Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the State Department in Washington, after which she declared: "we will reunite our families in Venezuela. We are making progress". Previously, on March 7, she had met at the White House with President Donald Trump, Rubio, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to discuss the roadmap for the transition.
In Venezuela, the party Vente Venezuela reopened its national headquarters in Caracas on March 28, and on March 29 announced that Machado would return to the country in the coming days to exercise her civic rights, although no exact date was provided. According to the Foro Penal, by the end of March there were still 777 political prisoners in the country, despite more than 6,000 releases reported by the interim government.
The image that accompanied the post evokes the procession of the Nazareno de San Pablo, the most emblematic religious tradition of Holy Week in Venezuela, held in Caracas for over 350 years, in which thousands of believers accompany the image of Christ dressed in purple and adorned with orchids — the national flower — in a procession that departs every Holy Wednesday from the Basilica of Santa Teresa.
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