Venezuelan opposition leader and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado promised on Wednesday to return to Venezuela and announced that she will inform about the "new steps" to achieve a "victory" in the "coming days".
"In the coming days, we will take new steps, all necessary for our victory. Steps whose detailed explanation I will reserve for now for reasons that I know our people understand better than anyone," Machado said in an audio shared on her X account for Christmas.
"Soon, very soon, I will be back in Venezuela to, together with each of you, finalize the definitive phase of our struggle, a struggle that is already universal," added the opposition leader, without giving further details.
Machado valued the "painful sacrifices" and "very high costs" of Venezuelans, especially, she said, for "politically persecuted" people and their families, as well as for those "who are hungry", unemployed and struggling to get by amidst Venezuela's "economic tragedy".
"This struggle is for each of you, to put an end to this injustice, and that is why we will never leave you alone," promised the former deputy.
In her opinion, Venezuelans are "waging an exemplary struggle" and the "best proof of that" — she emphasized — is the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded this year to Machado "for her tireless work in promoting democratic rights" and "for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy".
The opposition leader indicated that she left Venezuela for Oslo to attend the award ceremony — although she did not arrive in time — after "more than 16 months in hiding", all this, she said, "to represent Venezuelans" and receive in their name a recognition that "belongs to all".
"As I have always told you: physically, I must be there (in Venezuela), wherever I am most useful to our cause. On this occasion, it was necessary for me to be present in Oslo to further visualize our struggle and increase our external support," Machado pointed out.
Machado's last public appearance in Venezuela was on January 9, when she led a protest in Caracas to defend the claimed victory of Edmundo González Urrutia in the 2024 presidential elections, on the eve of Nicolás Maduro's inauguration, proclaimed the winner of those elections by the electoral body, controlled by officials close to chavism.
González Urrutia claims the presidency of Venezuela from exile, asserting that he defeated Maduro, whom several countries, including the United States, consider illegitimate.
