The mystery of María Corina Machado’s departure from Venezuela

María Corina Machado reportedly left Venezuela on Tuesday with U.S. support. The opposition leader departed on a boat from Venezuela’s western coast bound for the island of Curaçao, according to U.S. officials who spoke to The Wall Street Journal. Her apparently clandestine escape occurred just one day before the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, meaning Machado was unable to arrive in time to accept the award, which was presented to her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa Machado. Machado promised to appear in Oslo, as she herself told the Nobel Peace Prize organizers, thus allaying concerns about her whereabouts and safety.

This is the most concrete information published so far regarding the departure of the Venezuelan opposition leader from the country. Rumors about the operation have been circulating for days, fueled even by Chavismo itself, which spread the word that Machado had already been out of Venezuela for some time. Speculation has placed her in a diplomatic vehicle crossing the border into Colombia and even on one of the U.S. planes that landed in the country to return deported Venezuelan migrants. There has also been speculation as to whether or not her departure had the regime’s complicity.

Her journey to Oslo was never going to be easy. Machado has been in hiding for 16 months to avoid arrest by Nicolás Maduro’s government. More than 100 of her associates are imprisoned, and many others have had to go into hiding or exile to avoid being captured by the Chavista intelligence services.

Adding to the difficulties of her departure is the uncertainty of whether she will be able to return to Venezuela. In addition to the direct persecution she has faced over the past year, the Chavista regime issued a travel ban against her more than a decade ago, when she was a member of parliament.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the opposition leader’s allies went to great lengths to keep the trip secret to protect her safety. In a phone call with Nobel Committee chairman Jørgen Watne Frydnes, published on the Peace Prize website, Machado stated that “many people” had risked their lives to enable her to travel to Oslo.

“I am very grateful to them. And this is a testament to what this recognition means to the Venezuelan people,” she said, adding that she was about to board a plane. “We feel very emotional and very honored, and that’s why I am very sad and very sorry to tell you that I won’t be able to arrive in time for the ceremony, but I will be in Oslo. I am on my way to Oslo right now.”

The Nobel Committee did not specify when the phone call took place or where Machado was at the time. Hours earlier, the institute’s director, Kristian Berg Harpviken, told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK that getting Machado to Oslo had been more complicated than expected. “She lives under a death threat from the regime, pure and simple,” he said. “It extends beyond Venezuela’s borders, from the regime and its associates around the world.”

In May, five of Machado’s top aides, who had taken refuge for a year in the Argentine embassy in Caracas, which was heavily guarded by Maduro’s police, managed to escape in a secret operation supported by the United States, the details of which are still a mystery.

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