“The magnitude of what happened that day cannot be dismissed.” From an undisclosed location, opposition leader María Corina Machado is telling me and other international reporters about the Venezuelan election on 28th July, which both the sitting president Nicolás Maduro and the opposition party claimed to have won. “I’m absolutely convinced that it represents the closing of a cycle and the start of a new era.”
I first spoke to Machado in 2011, when she was the deputy for Miranda State and criticised the then president, Hugo Chávez. The next year, Machado unsuccessfully ran for president; in 2014, she led protests against Maduro’s autocratic government. Last year, she was declared the opposition candidate for this year’s elections, but the comptroller general of Venezuela disqualified her from running. She then endorsed and campaigned for her replacement, Edmundo González, a retired diplomat. “It was an enormous effort,” she says. “Town after town, village after village was mobilised.”
After polls closed, without providing evidence, the government-controlled National Electoral Council reported a cyber-attack on its systems and declared the incumbent, Maduro, as the winner. Meanwhile, the opposition led by Machado has collected and published more than 80 per cent of the voting receipts from election machines. These showed that González received 67 per cent of the vote—a landslide.
The Maduro government has refused to give up power. Since the vote it has incarcerated more than 2,000 people and has threatened to open legal proceedings against González and Machado for allegedly instigating disobedience and insurrection. On 1st August, Machado wrote that she had gone into hiding, fearing for her life. In September, González fled to Spain.
From her hiding place, Machado is arguing that Venezuela isn’t a particularly polarised country. All its citizens desire the same thing: “Rejection of the corrupt regime and the wish for a united country where one can work with dignity. A country where open markets and private property can be respected.”
She credits the armed forces for cooperating and allowing the opposition to collect the voting tallies from polling stations. But now the same armed forces, under direction from the state, have been involved in a brutal campaign of persecution and arrests without warrants. There have been reports of electricity being cut off and other acts of intimidation. “We are facing a brutal suppression,” Machado says. “This is the situation in Venezuela today. There are over 200 women who have been held illegally. They have been subject to sexual assault and torture. Many employees in the public sector have been fired for expressing allegiance to the opposition. We are facing tough times with regard to what ordinary people can express publicly.”
The fight for Venezuelan democracy and freedom needs to become a global cause, Machado says. “Every day, the cost of living with violence and repression will increase.” But she hopes the brutality will lead even Maduro’s allies to distance themselves. “How can Maduro think that he can kill one, 10 or hundreds of us and nothing will happen to him? He must be held accountable, and there are mechanisms in the international community to do that.” The Argentine Foreign Ministry has said it would petition the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Maduro and his team.
Machado’s own life is still in danger, she says. “Is there a risk that I could be put in prison? Yes, certainly. They are intensively looking for us. They have put in prison people who they thought knew where I am.”
But she is convinced that the opposition is making progress. “The main challenge is to stay alive. This is an existential struggle. Even a spiritual one. And we are not going back.”
