Caracas, Venezuela (Associated Press) Maria Corina Machado I walked overpasses, I trekked along highways, I rode motorcycles, I took refuge in the homes of supporters, I met with my closest allies. Detained and PersecutedShe has traveled the length and breadth of Venezuela, holding the calloused hands of crying men, wearing dozens of rosaries that had been given to her, and listening to the pleas of men and women, young and old.
The ruling party blocked Machado from running in Sunday's election. Fiercely contested presidential electionBut the ban gave her motivation. Major opposition coalition For millions of Venezuelans, Machado is a symbol of hope, courage and perseverance. Once a political outcast, Machado was a Venezuelan freedom fighter and President Nicolas Maduro aspirations for reelection.
Supporters shout “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” As she arrived and spoke at the rally, some were overcome with emotion and in tears. The crowd of several thousand included both opponents and supporters of the ideals of the self-proclaimed socialist revolution launched by former president Maduro at the turn of the century. Venezuela's ongoing crisis.
Because she has the power to control millions of votes, Venezuela's ruling United Socialist Party Threatening Machado and his supportersthe government Arrested collaborators They have also closed businesses linked to her, from the hotel where she stayed during the campaign to the woman who sold empanadas from her home, and her campaign manager has been hiding out in the embassy in the capital, Caracas, for months.
And Machado's name, her face and her party will not appear on the ballot. Maduro appears 13 times.
Machado won the presidential primary in October with more than 90% of the vote, cementing his position as leader of the main opposition faction, the Unity Platform coalition.
But Machado's path to leadership was long and winding. Just months before the primary, he refused to negotiate with the Maduro regime and harshly criticized those who did, leading even some opposition lawmakers to view the free-market firebrand as an extremist. As recently as 2021, he called on voters to boycott the elections, arguing that participating on an uneven playing field implicitly legitimized the ruling party.
Ms. Machado, an industrial engineer and daughter of a steel magnate, began challenging the ruling party in 2004 when a nongovernmental organization she co-founded, Sumate, pushed for a referendum to remove then-President Hugo Chavez from office. The move failed, and Ms. Machado and other Sumate officials were indicted on conspiracy charges.
A year later, she traveled to Washington and met with President George W. Bush in the Oval Office, again incurring the wrath of Chavez and his allies, whom Chavez viewed as an enemy.
She officially entered the political arena in 2010 when she was elected to Congress. She received more votes than any other candidate running for the legislative branch. From this position, she boldly interrupted President Chavez while he was speaking in Congress, calling his corporate expropriation theft.
“Eagles don't hunt flies,” he replied, in an exchange burned into voters' memories.
Machado is “a symbol of resistance to the regime,” said Michael Shifter, a scholar and former president of the Washington-based think tank Inter-American Dialogue. Her efforts to challenge the ruling party have won her the praise of many voters who see her as “an instrument of change in Venezuela,” Shifter said.
Machado, 56, a father of three, made her presidential ambitions known two years later. She came in third in the Democratic Unity Roundtable's presidential race. Henrique Capriles, a former governor of the northern state of Miranda, represented the opposition coalition but was defeated by Chavez. When Chavez died of cancer in March 2013, Maduro became interim president and defeated Capriles in elections held in the wake of Chavez's death.
The ruling party-controlled National Assembly ousted Machado in 2014, and a few months later the Court of Audit suspended him from public office for a year for failing to fill out asset declarations. That same year, the government accused him of plotting to assassinate Maduro, a charge he denied and said was an attempt to silence him and opposition members who rallied tens of thousands of protesters into the streets, sometimes violently.
She kept a low profile over the next nine years, supporting some anti-Maduro initiatives and criticizing opposition efforts to negotiate with the government, but by the time she announced her candidacy last year, her measured messaging had softened her image as an elitist hardliner and helped her connect with skeptics on both sides of the aisle.
Days after she officially ran in the primary on the United Platform opposition coalition's ticket, the Court of Audit announced a 15-year ban on her running for office, a decision the country's Supreme Court upheld in January. Far from thwarting Machado's challenges or weakening her voter support, she has used her difficulties to connect with the Venezuelan people, and many have drawn parallels between her struggles and Venezuela's electoral campaigns. Their daily struggles.
Felix Seijas, director of the Venezuela-based polling firm Delfos, said the attacks on Machado and the obstacles ahead “led her to success,” describing her as a “political phenomenon.”
Her rapid rise was also fuelled by the vacuum left by other opposition leaders. Exiled.
Since the presidential campaign officially began this month, the 61-year-old Maduro has stepped up his criticism of Machado, calling her an “old woman with hateful and fascist ideologies” and accusing her of wanting to “fill the country with hatred and violence.”
Unable to overcome the ban preventing him from running, Machado initially chose a university professor as his proxy for Sunday's vote, but she too was barred from registering to run. Machado ultimately endorsed the former diplomat. Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutiaand they have been campaigning together in recent months.
Thousands of supporters rallied in the once-industrial city of Valencia this month, with cheers and chants of “Freedom! Freedom!” heard as people drove by in trucks.
One rally participant, Alejandro Veliz, 22, said he planned to drive seniors to polling stations on Sunday. He sells homemade Chinese food on the street after financial difficulties prevented him from earning an associate's degree. His two brothers are among the more than 7.7 million Venezuelans who vote in the election. The immigrants He has wanted a change in government over the past decade. There's no need to leave.
“People are tired of their oppressed lives. They cut down trees and moved dirt to block pedestrians, buses and even the Maria Corina,” Bellis said of the roadblocks preventing access to the rally. “People are tired of it.”
