‘The degree of destruction of this regime goes beyond the economy and the oil industry. They have absolutely destroyed every democratic institution in our country,” says María Corina Machado from an undisclosed location in Venezuela, where, at the time of our interview this June for The Essence of Success, she had been on the run for 11 months.
“We have an extraordinary challenge, opportunity and responsibility to restart completely from scratch, to build a new relationship between citizens, between citizens and the state, and institutions that will last for a century to come.”
This month Machado became the latest Nobel Peace laureate. The international honours keep flowing. The previous year she had been awarded the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize.
Her status abroad reflects her iconic role at home, and the importance of her country’s struggle for democracy for others.
The long-time Venezuelan opposition leader was already in hiding at that time from the regime, her leadership of the country’s opposition having made her a prominent enemy of Nicolás Maduro’s ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela. Maduro and his fellow travellers had succeeded over a quarter century in making a country with the world’s largest reserves of oil one of the poorest countries. Venezuela’s economy had shrunk by an estimated 80% in less than a decade, the largest decline outside war, revolution or state collapse.
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While the government in Caracas would prefer to label its government as democratic and the system as revolutionary, this is mythical fantasy. Society is not free, and the only revolution is in the income of a tiny elite at the expense of the majority.
Little wonder that Machado leads a life akin to fiction.
In the second season of the eponymous Amazon series, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan investigates political unrest and conspiracy in Venezuela. Ryan uncovers a plot involving the fictional Venezuelan President Nicolás Reyes, who blatantly rigs an election against Gloria Bonalde. Reyes is eventually overthrown and Bonalde comes to power after a landslide election victory.
Machado could be Bonalde. She probably would have won the July 2024 election had she been permitted to take part, since she was disbarred from standing for public office for 15 years in 2023 on the grounds that she called for sanctions against the regime. Despite winning the opposition primary, she was replaced by Corina Yoris, who was in turn prevented from registering as a candidate and who was replaced by Edmundo González Urrutia. Even though most had him winning the election easily, he was forced to flee the country into exile in Spain.
It’s no surprise why Venezuelans voted for change.
Venezuela’s economic freefall is due to a combination of hyperinflation, violent crime, political repression, food shortages, narco-trafficking and, above all else, woeful government and ruinous policy. It is the outcome of the Bolivarian Revolution, so admired by the ANC and the EFF, exposing in the process the true colours of a populist regime, less intent on social redress than the pursuit of raw political power and control.
The economic collapse has paralleled social distress. Rising crime has made Venezuela one of the most dangerous places in the world. There is a narco-dimension to this, too, with Venezuela becoming a preferred route for traffickers, reflecting the state’s involvement in the trade along with its erstwhile Colombian political allies in the various guerrilla movements, some of which have had bases in Venezuelan territory.
Controversy surrounded Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian Republic from the start in 1998. But he was popular, in part because he promised (and, initially, partly delivered) prosperity to the poor, who were long neglected by Caracas’s elite. While inefficiencies were plain to see, a high oil price papered over the obvious cracks. Chávez did not invent a rentier system of patronage in Venezuela, he took it to new heights – and then lows. His Bolivarian Revolution used state resources to buy support and a combination of the military and international relations to cement it. His methods were feudal in buying political support through subsidies, state jobs and seizures, fed by a temporary oil bonanza of more than $1-trillion. His economic programmes provided a textbook study of statist folly: nationalisation in an age of privatisation.
Then, as the oil price went down, so did the economy. The cracks in the Bolivarian plan were already beginning to show at the time of Chávez’s death from cancer in March 2013. His successor, Maduro, once a bus driver, lacked Chávez’s rough charm and guile, not to mention the institutional credibility of a former military officer. To stay in power, he had to ride increasingly roughshod over constitutional niceties, narrowing the space for opposition politicians.
Machado gained government notoriety when she co-founded the election watchdog Súmate, which encouraged people to vote in a 2004 referendum to recall Chávez. The government brought charges against her for conspiring to “destroy the nation’s republican form of government”. Described by Chávistas as la candidata contrarevolucionaria (the counter-revolutionary candidate), she ran for congress in 2010 under the banner Somos mayoría (“We are the majority”). “I hold two records as a member of congress,” she laughs. “I am the one with the most number of votes ever, and the one, too, with the shortest number of days in congress.” She was expelled from the assembly on account of her appearance at an Organization of American States summit.
Laughs aside, the work of an opposition politician is tough, she acknowledges. “I have been called a romantic and a loser. But this is an ethical fight, to do with values.” Since August 2024 she has been in hiding, moving from place to place in Venezuela, unwilling to leave the country. “I love my country. I have trust in my people. I only see my life in Venezuela.”
Even before the last election she was bitterly aware of the regime’s likely response. “It is clear that they won’t accept an electoral exit. They won’t let go. They know the crimes they have committed. This is the psychology of criminals whose dynamic is to gain time, even a fraction, all the time.”
The regime has reached a tipping point. “This has turned into a cultural movement, not just an opposition,” she says, “a much stronger society in terms of values – to do with human dignity, work, marriage, justice and private property, for instance. It has become a different and much more generous society, with greater concern for freedoms, which we previously took for granted.” And the regime, a supporter of Vladimir Putin and of Iran, is, she argues, unsustainable given the alignment of society around these values.
“Freedom and democracy are fragile if taken for granted,” Machado explains. “I have learnt so much with such a high cost for myself and my family, and have been through such moments of pain, persecution and humiliation. But all this reminds me to speak with the truth.”
Time magazine described her as “the Venezuelan Iron Lady… the personification of resilience, tenacity and patriotism”.
“Transformational leadership” is defined by Oxford scholar Archie Brown as “one who plays a decisive role in introducing systemic change, whether of the political or economic system of his or her country or (more rarely) of the international system”.
The defining contribution of such leadership lies in strategic change: demanding an ability to look ahead at the bigger objective. This requires a long view, driven by patience and firm commitment. To achieve such change, it is necessary to assess things as they are, and not as you would like them to be.
The future is, however, not only down to what the government does, or does not do, but how the opposition responds.
Machado agrees that the opposition needs a narrative. “We shouldn’t be guilty. We should be audacious. We should be emotional in terms of connecting with the self-esteem of Venezuela, which has been so damaged. It has to offer a dramatic change from that we have. This is a huge challenge for the opposition’s message, which has to compete with the populism of Chávez and Maduro. It should not undervalue what the working class of Venezuela is expecting, and what they demand, and the opportunities that they seek.”
And she is clear about her sympathy with the plight of ordinary Venezuelans, and the need for the opposition to develop its message and plans to address their plight. “We need to fight against the origins of this drama, which links with the solution.”
The Nobel Peace Prize is an inspirational moment for those fighting for democracy, in Venezuela and elsewhere. María Corina has said that the award means hope, that the world has not forgotten about Venezuela. Or as Luis Franceschi, the Venezuelan-born but Kenyan-domiciled Assistant Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, adds, “It means that courage is still fashionable in a world where most political leaders bend their will to convenience, compromise and comfort, where the common good has been exchanged for the good of a few. It means,” he says, “a lot.”
María Corina Machado may not be a transformational leader, yet. But she has stayed with her mission, inspiring many along the way. Gloria Bonalde would be proud. DM
Maria Corina Machado is among more than 250 political figures, sportspeople, soldiers and business figures interviewed in Dr Mills’s latest book, The Essence of Success, written with Emanuele Pirro, which is being launched next week in Johannesburg and Cape Town.