OPINION. Why we trust María Corina

The best way to understand what may happen in Venezuela in the coming months is to first understand how we got here.

What occurred on January 3 was neither an isolated nor an improvised event. It was the result of a sequence of developments that had been unfolding for at least three years, under the leadership of a key figure: María Corina Machado.

Before explaining why I believe we can trust her, allow me to explain who I am and from where I speak.

I was 18 years old on April 11, 2002, and had already spent five months protesting the abuses of Hugo Chávez’s government. That morning, during a demonstration near the Miraflores Palace, a person standing next to me was shot in the leg. I ran to help, and together with other demonstrators, we managed to carry her to a place where she could be safe.

When I returned to the spot where everything had happened, a friend asked me, “Did you see the person who was killed?”

I turned and saw a lifeless body lying on the ground, exactly in the same place where I had been standing just minutes earlier. That day I understood, directly and without metaphor, the real price of fighting for your country, for democracy, and for freedom. I also understood that even knowing that cost, one chooses to continue, perhaps to honor those who lost their lives precisely where you managed to survive.

That was, without a doubt, the true beginning of my struggle for Venezuela. The point of no return.

Twenty four years have passed since then. Today I am forty two years old and have spent ten years living in exile. During this time, I have moved through different stages of democratic activism and organization. I helped found and coordinate student movements. I was part of the massive protests of 2007, when more than two hundred thousand students took to the streets. I contributed to the creation of a human rights organization, Un Mundo Sin Mordaza, which coordinated international protests in more than three hundred cities. I helped drive global campaigns such as SOS Venezuela. I also documented crimes against humanity and served as secretary of the Panel of Experts created by the Organization of American States in 2017 to assess the international responsibility of the Venezuelan regime.

I do not mention this as a résumé or as a list of personal achievements. I mention it so that the reader understands the level of commitment, sacrifice, and persistence this struggle has required. I have also been a political prisoner. Like so many Venezuelans, I have paid personal and family costs for refusing to normalize dictatorship.

And yet, despite all of this, among the most difficult aspects of these years have not been repression, exile, or persecution alone. They have been two very concrete things. The first, continuing year after year without knowing when the dictatorship would end. The second, and perhaps the most complex, learning to trust the opposition’s leadership.

This is where this article comes from.

I do not seek to discredit all the leaders who have assumed responsibility throughout this long struggle. Each has contributed from their own position. But I do want to speak about María Corina Machado. History shows that great liberation movements, political transitions, and national reconstructions do not happen spontaneously. They occur when leadership emerges with exceptional characteristics and with a coherence that withstands the passage of time.

I believe that was the case with Václav Havel. I believe that was the case with Nelson Mandela. And I believe that this is the case today with María Corina Machado.

I first saw her in person in 2004, after the fraud of the recall referendum. That process was carried out using electronic voting machines that became a true black box, without credible audits or access to electoral truth. That episode permanently marked Venezuela’s democratic history.

Even then, María Corina was standing up for the country. She was thirty seven years old and assumed an enormous political and personal cost. I mention this because twenty years later, that same woman would lead the most important political milestone of our recent history: politically defeating the regime of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro by winning the July 28 election. Without that victory, verified, documented, and recognized by international actors, Venezuela would not be where it is today.

The inevitable question is how she got there.

To get there, María Corina had to confront a deeply hostile system. Latin American politics is structurally misogynistic, and Venezuela is no exception. She was systematically excluded. Her party was marginalized. Opposition unity platforms were built without her and without her organization. Today it sounds almost absurd that the person who would go on to win more than ninety percent of the primaries was not even part of the opposition’s unified platform.

Years earlier, in 2014, she was expelled from Parliament after publicly confronting Chávez, when she uttered a phrase that would become historic: “Expropriation is theft.” That confrontation cost her a political disqualification. The seat taken from her party was handed to another opposition party. Not even her allies demanded its return. She was left alone.

And still, she continued. Even when she was banned from leaving the country, she continued. When they tried to erase her politically, she continued.

When all avenues seemed exhausted, the decisive moment arrived: the primaries. In a dictatorship, even an internal opposition election depends on conditions imposed by those in power. María Corina won with more than ninety percent of the vote. That day marked a rupture. Chavismo, in its excess of control, made a strategic error by allowing the opposition to organize around a real, legitimate leadership, and above all, one incapable of negotiating away the fundamental values of democracy.

But winning the primary was not enough.

After her victory, she was once again disqualified. She won the primaries, but was not allowed to be the candidate. For many, that would have been the end. For her, it marked the beginning of another stage. She built a complex political exit and achieved something that seemed impossible: articulating a unified candidate.

She first attempted this with Corina Yoris, but the regime did not allow that either. Perhaps it seemed too dangerous to face two Corinas. The search continued, and María Corina arrived at Edmundo González. She did so with strategic precision, preventing the regime from imposing an “acceptable” false opposition candidate. That was her second major achievement.

The third was even more difficult: transferring trust. Convincing an entire country to vote for someone it did not know. And something extraordinary happened. Millions of Venezuelans voted for Edmundo González not only because of him, but because María Corina asked them to. Because they trusted her judgment. Because they saw in her a leader who, up to this point, has not failed.

The victory was decisive: more than sixty seven percent of the vote.

Then came the crucial question: how to prove it. In 2004, that had not been possible. This time it was. María Corina learned the lesson. She organized, documented, and proved the victory before the world. The regime could never demonstrate otherwise and instead turned to the Supreme Court, bypassing its own National Electoral Council, to declare itself the winner without reviewing the votes.

Then came the fourth decisive moment. In just forty eight hours, the regime killed more than twenty five people and detained more than one thousand. María Corina then made a profoundly human decision: to protect Venezuelan lives. She was criticized. But that decision draws a radical distinction between her and the regime. While they govern through death and terror, she acted with moral responsibility.

Two weeks later, detentions rose to two thousand and did not stop. Political prisoners were tortured, and those who survived faced a reality with only two possible paths: exile or going underground. María Corina Machado chose clandestinity, not as someone hiding, but as someone who decided to continue operating under the harshest conditions, without abandoning the objective or delegating responsibility.

No one can fully grasp what that last year meant for her. A full year confined, isolated, under constant threat. I can only attest to two things. The first occurred in Oslo, on the day she received the Nobel Peace Prize. She had a fractured vertebra and visible physical deterioration. In that moment, I understood the silent cost of a year in hiding and the strength it takes not to break. The second is even clearer: the events of January 3 showed that she did not rest for a single day. Even from the shadows, she continued pushing the process to that inflection point.

I do not know the details of the conversations with the United States administration. But the central argument was clear and understandable to any international observer: security, drug trafficking, and regional responsibility. Venezuela ceased to be an internal problem and became a factor of continental destabilization, with direct impacts on mass migration, transnational crime, neighboring economies, and authoritarian precedents that threaten all of Latin America. On January 3, the United States acted. That day did not mark the automatic end of the regime, but it did mark the beginning of a different phase: the start of its real dismantling.

For many Venezuelans, that date will be remembered as a national milestone. Because even though the dictatorship has not yet completely disappeared, the idea of an immovable regime, like Cuba’s, was broken for the first time in decades. I want to say this with absolute clarity: Venezuelans will be eternally grateful to President Donald Trump and to Secretary of State Marco Rubio for the decision taken that day. It was a risky decision, but a necessary one. The decision that no one else dared to take and that prevented Venezuela from being condemned to additional decades of dictatorship.

Of course there is concern. Seeing figures without legitimacy, responsible for crimes against humanity and representing the continuity of the regime, such as Delcy Rodríguez, presented as interim solutions generates uncertainty. But even with all its imperfections, the current scenario is infinitely better than that of just weeks ago. For the first time, Venezuela stopped confronting the regime alone and began interacting with the United States as an interlocutor. That change alone transformed the collective mood. The scenario shifted from a dictatorship advancing without consequences to a regime in retreat, under real pressure.

Why recount all of this?

Because if we have reached this point, it is thanks to María Corina Machado, who has achieved what no one else has in twenty six years: articulating a social majority, sustaining ethical coherence under extreme pressure, and turning an electoral victory into a verifiable fact before the international community. This is not about charisma or rhetoric. It is about strategic consistency. The Nobel Peace Prize was not a symbolic gesture, but recognition of a form of leadership that prioritizes life, legality, and democratic responsibility.

That is why I state this with conviction: there is no credible political exit for Venezuela that does not have María Corina Machado’s endorsement. Not because she concentrates power, but because she concentrates trust. That trust, earned rather than imposed, is the scarcest resource in any democratic transition. Recent experience shows that she does not endorse scenarios that compromise the central objective: dismantling the dictatorship and restoring democracy. And when she allows a move, it is because she knows how to carry it forward.

This message is not only for Venezuela. It is for Latin America. For Brazil, for Colombia, for an entire region that has learned, sometimes too late, that normalizing dictatorships does not bring stability, but more authoritarianism, more organized crime, and more forced migration. The real news for the continent is not only that Venezuela is leaving a dictatorship behind, but that this process may mark the beginning of the end for those that still persist, particularly in Cuba and Nicaragua.

I do not believe that Cubans or Nicaraguans will remain indifferent to a free Venezuela. And I can say this with certainty: Venezuelans will not rest until they see them free. Latin American history shows that real change does not occur in isolation. When one country breaks the siege of fear, others begin to imagine that it is possible.

For more than twenty five years, Venezuela was a factor of regional destabilization. It exported political crisis, mass migration, illicit economies, networks of corruption, and authoritarian alliances that harmed the entire hemisphere. That cycle is coming to an end. 

A free Venezuela will not only close one of the darkest chapters in the region. It can become a force for balance, growth, and predictability in a continent that urgently needs them. This is not only about recovering a country, but about reordering a region. And this time, for the first time in decades, that future is no longer distant.

Rodrigo Diamanti is the founder and president of Un Mundo Sin Mordaza (A World Without Censorship). @RodrigoSinMordaza Instagram; @Rdiamanti Twitter. 

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