After María Corina Machado’s failed attempts to return to Venezuela, her communications chief does so instead
Claudia Macedo, the opposition leader’s right-hand aide, landed in Maiquetía on Sunday surrounded by journalists and supporters. ‘I’m opening pathways,’ she said
Claudia Macero, the communications chief for opposition leader María Corina Machado, returned to Venezuela on Sunday night after nearly a year and a half in exile. She landed at Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía, where journalists and dozens of Vente Venezuela supporters were waiting for her with party flags. Her return comes amid growing expectations over the opposition leader’s potential return, after she tried to re-enter the country three times last week without success.
Macero said her decision to return was “personal.” “I’m coming back to Venezuela to give myself confidence, and to restore confidence in others,” she said at Maiquetía’s provisional terminal, built after the earthquakes of June 24. “It’s time to come home. I’m opening pathways, just as others opened them for me.” Henry Alviárez, the national coordinator for organization issues at Vente Venezuela, looked ahead: “This is gradual. What we are aiming for is the arrival of María Corina Machado, who should get closer soon.”
Macero’s arrival coincided with a day of marches that Machado’s platform called across the country on Sunday to demand three things: the opposition leader’s safe return, an electoral timetable, and presidential elections in 2027. There were marches from Zulia to La Guaira. In Maracaibo, Vente Venezuela reported the arrest of one of its members by the National Guard. The mobilization capped a week of unrest in Venezuela’s streets.
Macero was one of six opposition figures who sought refuge in March 2024 at the Argentine embassy in Caracas after arrest warrants were issued against them. They spent more than a year in there, besieged by Nicolás Maduro’s political police, and the pressure intensified after the contested presidential election in July 2024. Fernando Martínez Mottola, an adviser to the Unitary Platform, left the embassy in December 2024 and died two months later. The other five, all Vente leaders, exited the diplomatic compound in May 2025, then under Brazilian guard, in an operation Machado dubbed Operation Guacamaya that Washington described as a rescue.
Macero is the second of those five leaders to return to the country. Omar González, a national party leader, came back on August 28. Pedro Urruchurtu, Magalli Meda and Humberto Villalobos remain outside Venezuela.
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