Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado greets supporters atop a vehicle during a campaign rally for the opposition presidential candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, in Mérida, Venezuela.
Venezuelan politician María Corina Machado is the conservative opposition leader to Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s United Socialist Party. As the National Coordinator of Vente Venezuela, a political party opposed to the Chavismo ideology, Machado is a conservative capitalist who has been nicknamed Venezuela’s “Iron Lady.”
In 2023, Machado won the opposition primaries to challenge Maduro in the upcoming presidential elections, but Venezuelan authorities subsequently barred her from running. When the Venezuelan Supreme Court upheld her disqualification in January 2024, she endorsed former ambassador Edmundo González Urrutia as the opposition’s candidate. However, Machado continued to lead her party in support of Urrutia’s campaign, using the rooftop of a vehicle as a stage as she toured rallies around the country.
After the election, election authorities in Venezuela declared Maduro the winner, but Urrutia’s opposition party contested the results, citing vote tallies that indicated a victory for González. Allegations of electoral irregularities led countries like the US and the EU nations to question the legitimacy of the outcome and call for the release of detailed voting data. Although Maduro retained power and González was forced into exile, Machado remains in hiding as the leader of the opposition and a key figure advocating for political change in Venezuela.
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