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María Corina Machado announced this Sunday that she will return to Venezuela "very soon," driven by the devastating earthquakes of last Wednesday that have left over 1,450 dead and thousands of families homeless. "The time has come," declared the Venezuelan opposition leader and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner in an interview with Fox from exile in the United States.
"It is my duty to stand by my people; we need to be together to embrace each other, to cry, to mourn together, but also to give each other strength in this very difficult time," said Machado, who stressed that the absolute priority at this moment is to save lives and "to comfort and assist those who have been affected."
The two earthquakes —with magnitudes 7.2 and 7.5, occurring just 39 seconds apart— shook Venezuela on June 24, with epicenters in the Yaracuy state. The official toll has risen to 1,450 dead, 3,150 injured, and 12,721 affected families, while the UN estimates over 50,000 missing and nearly 6.76 million people impacted by the disaster.
The state of La Guaira has been declared a disaster zone, with over 100 buildings collapsed and the Maiquetía International Airport closed. The direct economic damages are estimated at 6.7 billion dollars, equivalent to 6% of Venezuela's GDP, according to figures from the government itself.
Machado has been outside of Venezuela since late 2025, when she secretly left the country by boat to Curaçao to attend the Nobel ceremony in Oslo. Prior to that, she lived for over a year in hiding within the country to avoid being arrested by Nicolás Maduro's regime following the presidential elections in July 2024.
However, his announced return does not have the backing of Washington. According to The New York Times, two officials from the Trump administration—who did not identify themselves—described the attempt to return as "untimely," with one of them directly labeling it as a "political ploy."
The Trump administration has prioritized its relationship with the interim government led by Delcy Rodríguez, who assumed the acting presidency on January 5, 2026, following Maduro's capture. During a meeting at the White House held in March, several U.S. officials also expressed their concern for Machado's personal safety if she were to return to the country.
It is not the first time that the opposition leader has announced an imminent return without following through. On March 1, she stated that she would return "in a few weeks", and at the end of that same month, her party Vente Venezuela claimed it would be "in the coming days", deadlines that passed without her return occurring.
The leader of Vente Venezuela, Omar González Moreno, confirmed on Saturday that Machado will return "very soon," suggesting that she might be delaying her arrival to avoid politicizing the humanitarian tragedy.
The political context adds urgency to the moment: the July 3, 2026 deadline for declaring the absolute absence of the president and calling for new elections expires, counted from when Rodríguez took office on January 5.
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