“The Regime Must Negotiate With Me”: Interview With Maria Corina Machado

Maria Corina Machado has become the leader of Venezuela’s opposition. She was an icon for many since she harshly criticized then-president Hugo Chavez, and a decade later she won a landslide victory in the Unitary Platform’s primaries, which were held last October.

She started off in politics creating a civil society organization, Sumate, dedicated to monitoring elections. In 2010, she was elected a National Assembly representative for East Caracas. Now, she hopes to run for president and lead a political transition in Venezuela.

However, she has been barred from holding public office by the government for 15 years. Elections have been announced for July 28^th; analysts wonder if she will finally be allowed to run, she will designate a substitute, or denounce the vote. Machado’s final decision will also have implications for ongoing negotiations between Washington D.C. and Caracas.

The government says that she called for sanctions and military intervention, represented Panama while being a sitting National Assembly deputy, and supported the seizure of Venezuelan assets in the U.S. She has nevertheless called out her disqualification as unconstitutional, and an attempt by President Nicolas Maduro to stop his rivals from being elected.

I visit Machado in Vente Venezuela’s party headquarters in Altamira, in East Caracas. We speak about her beginnings, and her plan to bring about political change in Venezuela. She also says what she thinks about the upcoming vote, and negotiations between the government, the U.S. and the international community.

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Q: Where is Maria Corina from? Who were you before politics?

A: I come from a family that is the greatest blessing I could have. For many generations, they did everything for this country. One thing they taught me is to have a deep sense of belonging and responsibility for Venezuela.

I must say that politics was never my plan. I wanted to follow in the footsteps of my dad, who was a great engineer, visionary, and businessman. He created various companies, and created so many jobs.

My dad always told me that the future of this country, and its prosperity, must be seen beyond just a firm. Anyone can have a company, and to make money is relatively easy, if you do not have certain ethical standards. But generating wealth is what a true businessperson must do. And that is what I wanted to do.

I also grew up with Venezuela’s history at home. My grandmother was the granddaughter of Eduardo Blanco, the author of Venezuela Heroica, and aide-de-camp of Jose Antonio Paez—Venezuela’s first president. And the love of my childhood was Armando Zuloaga Blanco, who at the age of 24 was murdered in the Falke landing, by the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gomez.

I always saw very clearly my responsibility towards Venezuela, and my love for freedom. I never thought about becoming a politician, I really mean never. It was never in my plans.

With this, let me ask you how your political career started. Many of our readers will not know about your beginnings, but some might know of your photograph with then George W. Bush in 2005.

I would say that this was a process where one thing led to another. I started working as an engineer, and at that moment I saw the crisis with the arrival of Hugo Chavez to power. Early on I saw a big threat, regarding the division of our society. He was exacerbating barriers between us, pitting us against each other. I saw that was his intention from the beginning.

At that point, I said, we cannot continue ignoring this situation. We had to look for a way to channel these tensions peacefully. This is how we created Sumate—an NGO. When I was there, I kept thinking, I am in civil society, I cannot get into politics. But then you cannot live moaning and complaining about politics and politicians, if you are not willing to go there and do things differently.

From there I went to the National Assembly in 2010. I did not have any political support, nobody gave a dime for me. But I was able to win with the largest amount of votes in history in any parliamentary election.

How do you get from there to becoming the opposition’s candidate?

It was a long journey, starting from 2010. Look, I have always called things by their name. Maybe that has made my path harder, or more dangerous. However, I believe that the Venezuelan people have lost trust in politics because no one is frank or direct. Sometimes the truth is hard, but some want to sugarcoat things.

I saw the cruelty of this regime. I firmly believe that the destruction of our education system, of the rule of law, and the collapse of public healthcare, of public services, is not by coincidence. It is not merely corruption. I am convinced that there was an intentional process of destruction of democratic institutions to force a mass migration.

They want to divide families, because that is how you create fragile people. Think about a mother without her children, siblings that are separated, children without their parents. That is why I believe that was an intentional strategy, to make people leave this country. When I saw that, I felt obliged to talk about it.

When no one thought it possible, and when we were live on national television, I told Chavez what was a reality. He was stealing from the productive sector, by illegally using expropriations. In this way, I said things for what they are. Some people were scared by this, others would call me all sorts of names, they would say I am a radical, an extremist. It is very easy to attack a person when you have no way of attacking what they say.

Our readers may not know this episode between you and Chavez, could you tell us more about it?

This was January 13^th, 2012. I was a National Assembly representative, and Chavez was giving his “presentation of memory and accountability,” which is like the State of the Union Address. He started doing something very irregular, by letting representatives speak. We were live on television, we also had the diplomatic corps, the military high command, ministers, and governors. Of course, the stands were full of Chavez supporters.

At one point, he started attacking me and my family. So when he gave me a chance to speak, I stood up and told him what was going on in this country. The destruction of the productive apparatus, all the families without food, the insecurity, the murders. And I told him, “to expropriate is to steal.” And this created a commotion because it was the first time that someone told Chavez to his face what he was doing.

At that moment, my situation became very tough, because I became the target of a brutal campaign, of the whole regime and their propaganda apparatus, to attack me. However, you will be surprised of the amount of times when, while I travel across the country, people come up to me and say “From that day, we trust you.”

Now I would like to ask you about what your candidacy proposes. What are the key elements? How do you plan to rebuild Venezuela?

Venezuela has everything. It has everything to build this that we call Venezuela, tierra de gracia—land of grace. My longing, as a human, is the return of our children. To bring families back together. This has become the great force that is moving Venezuelans today. This has been breaking the barriers that were imposed on us before.

You should see the amount of chavistas that today come up to me and say, “I believe in you, I support you.” One of the main elements has been this, bringing our children back. They know that they will not come back if they cannot have a good quality of life here. And we have everything to make that possible.

We need a country where the currency has value. Where you live thanks to your work, not to the handouts, the crumbs that the regime gives you with conditions, only if you behave. We can have the best education in the world. I really mean the best in the world.

I want to have a trilingual Venezuela. This means that children will learn Spanish, English, and the digital language. I want our children to compete with those from the rest of the world.

We need a public health system with universal coverage, that is based on valuing the patient. A social security system that allows for individual capitalization. People should be able to use private insurance, but at the same time, everyone should have guaranteed coverage.

People want to live with dignity. From the day when you open your eyes, to the day you die. We must protect families.

So where do we start? We need to set the house in order. Nobody knows what the macroeconomic numbers in Venezuela are. Nobody knows the real size of our debt, how much oil we produce, how large our reserves are! All we know is that they are stealing, that they are looting this country. That we have $23 billion lost, only in PDVSA—the state-owned oil giant.

We need a process, that we call “expansive stabilization”. Just as we stabilize the monetary and fiscal situation, you start putting this country on a path to growth. We need a massive public and private investment program in infrastructure and service.

Which other country can become the energetic hub in the Americas? Only Venezuela. Which other country can offer such a great investment opportunity in the context of near-shoring? Venezuela. Which other country is in a geographic position to bring you oil shipments in just five days? With a perfect match between the types of crudes we have, and the U.S. refining system? Venezuela!

There is so much we can do here. From tourism to renewable energy. We can do a massive carbon capture project, associated with the steel industry. We are also the ninth-largest reservoir of fresh water.

We are living through a tragedy. Venezuela is expelling people, it is creating a migration crisis, the largest in the world. It is creating a process of destabilization of the region. It is becoming a sanctuary for criminal groups, from the Sinaloa Cartel and drug trafficking groups to Colombian guerrillas. Also to extracontinental actors and enemies of the U.S. like Russia and Iran. In Venezuela, they have found the gateway to infiltrate Latin America. If Maduro manages to stay in power, imagine how all of this is going to exacerbate, starting with migration.

What do we offer? A Venezuela with solid institutions, that are inclusive and transparent. This country, that is in ruins, we are going to lift it. It will be full of opportunity, not only for foreign investors, but also for domestic capital and for Venezuelans.

Speaking about institutions, many analysts have been speaking about “the stakes of power” in Venezuela, that elections are about a “winner takes all.” It would seem that governorships, the National Assembly, have lost importance and all that matters is the presidency. What reforms would you carry out on this issue?

There are a few things to unpack there. For 25 years, I have been hearing that we shouldn’t aim too high, that the important part is to win over some spaces. Let me ask you, to this date, in the spaces where the opposition is governing, do people live any different? Are people in Zulia, Barinas, Nueva Esparta, living any better? Are they emigrating less? Do they have better public services, quality of life, or security? For God’s sake!

Here we have a systemic problem, it goes beyond ideas or political names that we give it. Here we need to change things from the roots, this is why people voted for me in the primaries. Now, we have many actors in chavismo getting closer to us. Not only in the base, because we have already won over them, otherwise we would not be in an 80 against 20 situation, for the first time in a presidential election; in the best of cases chavismo has 20 percent. The interesting thing is that we have middle ranks of chavismo that are coming up to us. They are asking me what opportunities they would have in a transition.

I perfectly understand the complexity of this moment, and I will be the president of all Venezuelans. A transition process implies a progressive re-institutionalization, that is very clear. It will be open to all those who are willing to accept the rules of a democratic system. And of course, we will have an autonomous judiciary.

Something I have heard you say many times is that you want to defeat the regime politically first, and only then electorally. What does this mean?

This is a fundamental point. There are three phases. The first is to inflict a social and spiritual defeat on the regime. We did just that last year. In January of 2023, no one would bet on change coming now. They would say “forget about it, resign yourselves, nothing will happen here until 2030. The opposition is divided, people do not have any hope.”

But slowly, we started waking up and organizing the country. We built a movement, that first it was buried; many did not want to see it, or they did not understand it. When you saw polls about how many people would vote in the primaries, they would say “at most half a million people,” and so on. No one ever saw that coming. Do you know what it is to mobilize three million people, with an electoral register that effectively has 13 million? From the 20 million that we have on paper, you should remove 4.5 million that are living abroad, and about 2 or 3 million that have moved within the country.

Just think about that, we had 3 out of 13 million that went to vote without having any resources, any media coverage, many did not know where to vote, we did not have any organized transport, where public employees were threatened. This was a monumental, epic process.

This made the regime see that they were lost. You saw that on December 3^rd, with the Essequibo referendum. Then, with all the fear they induced and all the money they had, nobody went to vote. To me, that is the social and spiritual defeat.

What comes next? The regime refuses to hand over power. The issue with my disqualification is not that they do not like me, or my name or my surnames. The problem is that, today, they do not want to hand over power. And they do not want to compete with anyone, that they feel that could beat them. Anyone that they feel that could win against them, they will ban from running, they will chop their head off.

So what is the political defeat? It is to make the regime understand that their best option is a negotiated transition with me. That scenario, por las malas—the hard way—like Maduro says that he will stay in power, is not viable or sustainable. Neither the country nor the world will accept this. As soon as they realize this, we will have an electoral process and an electoral defeat.

Let’s talk about the elections that are coming now on July 28^th. Just yesterday the CNE—the electoral authority—said on their website that you are disqualified…

Did that surprise you? Nobody was surprised by that. Everyone knew that, because they do not want to lose an election. And they know that if they compete against me, we are going to beat them so badly.

In that case, how do you tackle the vote on July 28^th?

We will work on that day-to-day. Back then, I was told that there would be no primaries, that I would not be able to sign up for the primaries, and then that it would be impossible that I win.

What we need here is coherence from all actors, both national and international. The point here is, are we going to let Maduro pick and choose his rival? In that case, would that be an election? Or do we, as Venezuelans, have the right to pick who we vote for? We still have time, there is a lot of time left before July 28^th.

I know many have asked you this before, but would abstention or an electoral boycott be an option?

Who is boycotting the electoral process? Who is trying to escape it? Over here we have this phrase, mano ganada no se tranca—if you’re winning, you’re not going to stop the game—we use this in Domino. I’m winning 80 to 20. Am I interested in abandoning the electoral route? The one that does not want to compete against me is Maduro. In that case, you should put pressure on him.

He is the one that is not fulfilling his part of the Barbados Agreement. I have complied with the deal to the letter. This electoral calendar, the way it is being put forward, is a violation from the first letter to the last of the Barbados Agreement. I want to hear those who accompanied the Barbados Agreement say this.

Do you mean the facilitators of the accord?

Everyone. All the actors that were involved. And also those that were not part of this process, but have said clearly that the Barbados Agreement must be respected. Even political actors that have been close to the regime, close to Maduro. I am talking about Mexico, Colombia, Brazil. All of them are saying, “the Barbados Agreement must be complied with.” This electoral calendar does not comply with Barbados. So what do we do now? Who should we pressure?

Could we have elections without your name in them, that could lead to a transition? Maybe they would not be clean, but they could still lead to a change.

I do not understand the question. The question is, does popular sovereignty matter or does it not? The Barbados Agreement, in its first point, says that the parties have the right to pick the process to choose their own candidates in the way they see fit. The opposition, and the citizenry, decided to choose with primaries. A primary race where anyone who wanted to run would be able to sign up, where everyone committed to respect the results. Almost 3 million Venezuelans voted, and I received over 90% of the votes. Now, some people say that we need to appease the regime and ignore what happened in the past. But it happened.

Now speaking about sanctions. In the U.S., it has been said that if there are no elections with electoral guarantees, sanctions should be reimposed. Do you see a distinction between sanctions to the regime and to the economy? Because some might say it is fine to target corrupt or authoritarian individuals, but not to go against the economy as that affects everyone.

There are many things in what you just said. Of course, there are people who do not care about the fate of Venezuela. All they want is to whitewash Maduro, so they can do business. But I do not think they are the majority, by the way.

I think that, internationally, many understand that if Maduro remains in power, their own countries will suffer. Beyond their interests in Venezuela, it will affect their countries as well. There are many issues, for example migration, drug trafficking, destabilization of the region, hemispheric security, and so on. There is also a very important sector that worries about this country. They genuinely value human and democratic rights. Both the second and the third group are clear that they need to make the regime understand that it needs to keep its word.

Sanctions are mechanisms that countries use around the world to generate incentives for negotiation. They just approved harsher sanctions on Putin. They exist when there are clear violations of the international legal order. In this case, additionally, there is the signing of the Barbados Agreement, which was associated to a negotiation between the regime and the U.S. government. Maduro committed to do certain things, and he was given certain incentives. It was also made clear that if he did not fulfill his side of the deal, those incentives would be eliminated.

Who is to blame, if the licenses are not renewed? Who signed the document? Who gave their word? It is very easy to pressure the one that does comply, while I see that many are silent before the violations committed by Maduro. Not only did he not comply, but he has been escalating the repression. I have four state-level campaign directors who have been imprisoned. They were forcibly disappeared. I just left Barinas, and hours later they took Emil Brandt Ulloa. Where are they? Those who want to advocate in favor of Maduro. After they expelled the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights? We have 300 political prisoners in this country.

I cannot travel around the country. I cannot book a hotel, eat at a restaurant, hire a sound system, because they will be threatened and persecuted. Wherever I go, the regime follows threatening people. We are under attack. I am not a disqualified candidate, I am a persecuted candidate.

This not only violates the Barbados Agreement as well as all international standards. I want to see those same people speaking with the same strength, about the evident reality. This persecution is not a rumor, it is the evident reality.

Let us think about the day when you would arrive to power. You would have a whole set of institutions and power groups against you; governors, mayors, the courts, and so on. Now they are on the side of chavismo, and we could expect them to put up resistance against you. How would you deal with this situation?

I do not think that will be the scenario. Many of them have realized that this is an irreversible process. The country has already changed. This social control mechanism, of silencing people with the threat of withdrawing the subsidized food box and gas cylinder, saying they will be evicted, or threatening their children… people are beginning to say, “what can you even take away from me? A food box? You already took my children, who had to leave this country.”

People are starting to react. They are realizing that we have been taken to the extreme. This is not an electoral fight, but an existential and spiritual one. The possibility to surrender. We have to keep going. That is why people keep telling me, “do not surrender, do not stop, you are not alone.” I would love for you to come with me, so that you can see what is really going on, what the media is hiding. What is really going on in the soul of the Venezuelan people. Esto es otra vaina. This has never happened before. Some do not understand this, they want to resist this process. They want to pretend that the primaries never happened. It was a moment of union and empowerment of our society.

What do you think that police officers say to me when I go through a checkpoint? Many times I see them cry, they speak to me with the same desperation of any other Venezuelan. Their wives, their mothers, their children have nothing. Their children are leaving the country, or they do not have enough to feed them, or to buy them medicines if they are sick. Everyone is going through this.

To these Venezuelans, we need to sow trust and tell them, “I will be the president for all Venezuelans. We will have justice here, and we will have merit. If you are good, if you prepare yourselves, and are ready to work for this country, you will be recognized.” In this sense, I am the complete opposite of what chavismo has been, a system of exclusion and persecution.

Now, I do not want corruption. There will be no privileges here. This is a radical change for Venezuela, as it has been a looming problem even before the arrival of chavismo. I also do not underestimate the difficulty of a transition. We have a multi-dimensional crisis. It is an economic, financial, security, sovereignty, public services, justice, institutional crisis… All of them simultaneously. We have a devastated country.

What do we have? We have the people. They can try to intimidate, to persecute us, to terrorize us. And they will do a lot of harm. Because they know they have lost the people. We have a robust plan to give this country the value it deserves, and make it grow. We know what we have to do. We have allies that will find in Venezuela a great opportunity, not only to do business—which is completely legitimate—but to integrate with and save a country that will be vibrant, in the reconstruction of democracy in Latin America.

We have many problems to resolve. We not only want to stop migration, we want to make those who have left come back. Did you see that poll published by Bloomberg? It said that, out of Venezuelans in the U.S., 65% would return if I win. Do you know the creative energy that they have? They are in North America, Europe, across Latin America, learning about cutting edge technology. And they are saying, “I want to keep doing this, but in my country.” And the amount of entrepreneurs that have surged in Venezuela with so many obstacles.

Imagine what this country is capable of, when you remove all those barriers that the state has created. Imagine if we turn the state from an anchor into a sail. Imagine how much this country will grow. It will be very hard, but we will have the best talent doing what they do best.

As a last question, I would like to ask what you propose to chavistas; to people that have always voted for Chavez and Maduro.

The thing is, I do not divide the country between chavistas and non-chavistas. They are all citizens. That is the exact same thing that I say to everyone. In my rallies, where I get thousands and thousands of people, even when we change the location at the last minute, without petrol, without media, people know where to find us.

In the towns, everyone knows each other, my rallies are full of chavistas—or that were chavistas until a few hours before—with people working in the CLAP food box network, members of the PSUV party, and neighborhood organizers. And what do I say to them? That we are all Venezuelans, I do not make distinctions. You want to work? I want you to work! I want you to live well, not that they throw a food bag at you in exchange for your silence. I want you to buy whatever you want, with what you earn from your work. That you can get quality products, that you can feed your family well. That nobody will judge you for your ideas. That you will be able to criticize your president—with respect. That you will be treated with respect.

Venezuela will be welcoming those who left. We all have to pitch in with our own effort, where we will all have opportunities to have honest and decent work. This is what all of Venezuela wants. This division that they made, for ideological, religious, racial, or political reasons, it does not exist. This country is not polarized, it is profoundly united. In the pain that it feels, but also in hope. Our hope is certain, it is growing, and they will not stop it.

When I say that this is hasta el final—until the end—I really mean that this is until the end. This goes beyond an electoral process. This has to do with rebuilding a nation, and of a country where we are all proud of being Venezuelan.