María Corina Machado has been outside the Venezuelan opposition’s strategy for some time. The policies of the most radical wing of the right had become one of the most critical voices against the movements of democratic forces in recent years. This opposing position could benefit you now. The crisis facing the opposition, made even more confused after the end of the so-called caretaker government in December, has propelled Machado to the top of the polls for October’s primary. A key position that will produce the candidate who will face Nicolás Maduro in the 2024 presidential election.
The founder of the Vente Venezuela party was the most visible leader of the most intransigent sector of anti-Chavismo in those years. She has refused to enter into political negotiations with the Bolivarian leadership; she did not want to form formal alliances with certain sectors of the opposition, which raises ethical reservations; and has maintained an irreducible discourse in defense of private property. She usually describes members of the official political class as “criminals” and seems convinced that at some point a return to democratic legality will not be possible without violence.
As you might expect, Chavismo hates her with particular bitterness (it has filed several lawsuits against her and imposed a ban on her leaving the country), although Nicolás Maduro has chosen to ignore her in recent years. For the humble Chavista fighters, Machado is the ambassador of US interests and the upper class. It also gathers antagonisms in the softer sectors of the opposition, who are mostly inclined to negotiate some demands with Maduro in exchange for certain improvements and stability. However, a coherent discourse about time has now earned the sympathy of many people.
María Corina Machado (Caracas, 1967) is an industrial engineer with a specialization in finance from the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración, IESA, the country’s most important business school. She is the eldest of four sisters, divorced and has three children living abroad. She has a sentimental relationship with the lawyer Gerardo Fernández. He belongs to a family with long local ancestry. His father, Henrique Machado Zuloaga, who has just passed away, was a major businessman in the metallurgical sector and his family were the founders of the old Electricidad de Caracas, one of the great national corporations of the 20th century. The Machado family’s businesses, notably the Sivensa and Sidetur steel companies, were expropriated and destroyed by the Chavista government. His mother, Corina Parisca, known and respected in civil society, is a psychologist.
Former deputy at Vente Venezuela headquarters in Caracas Andrea Hernandez Briceno (Bloomberg)
Machado was one of the Venezuelan politicians who has most methodically cultivated an openly anti-Communist discourse. This enabled him to attract many followers from the Venezuelan diaspora. On social networks, their positions are defended by the wild pronouncements of the national right, the so-called “Magazolanos”. In 2012 he founded a party, Vente Venezuela, and tried to give it programmatic foundations: market economy, minimal state, social guarantees, privatization, corporate governance, with a nationalist discourse deeply rooted in the country’s traditional upper class.
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Machado’s speech, sometimes referred to as an expression of “Venezuelan far-right,” is not religious, nor does it promote prejudice, stigmatize minorities, or make conservative arguments in the social sphere. Although it is true that some of his followers do. “She doesn’t like being contradicted,” says a source close to her. “He has a lot of appeal and personal charm in conversation. She is very disciplined, demanding but respectful. She is surrounded by a group of activists who admire her greatly. Young leaders who have made full use of their postulates.”
Lately he has ditched his smart attire to walk almost constantly in jeans and sneakers, wearing a t-shirt with his party’s logo, and visits popular cities and neighborhoods. He has a very wide smile, which he is used to in his private conversations. Behind her polite manners hides an iron epicenter, a kind of liquefied steel: a person with a very strong character, rigid in her interpretations, with a predestined vision of herself, preferring personal worth as an attribute. A person who finds it difficult to give up their positions and negotiate.
Machado has soured ties with most of the key leaders of the current Venezuelan opposition. Her critics accuse her of confusing the Single Agreements with proposals that are unworkable and of undermining popular confidence in voting for her own benefit. In 2010 she was elected deputy with a large number of votes.
In 2004 he founded Súmate, an organization that marked his entry into public life and which became a well-known NGO with links to the opposition, famous for its position as auditor in the early years of Hugo Chávez. Germán Carrera Damas, historian and prominent intellectual, has long been close to him as one of his mentors. He also attends the council of Carlos Blanco, economist and opposition politician, former minister in the 1990s.
“He was clear very early on what the true face of the Chavista regime, as later revealed in the 2017 crisis, is that needs to be recognized,” says a prominent financial analyst who now sympathizes with his postulates. “We tended to see her as someone sabotaging opposition unity. And no, she knew what some opposition politicians were up to, the deals with Chavismo, the corruption. I did not agree. There’s a full point for that.”
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