In another article, we warned that the greatest danger for the opposition led by María Corina Machado in the lead-up to a transition would be the Venezuelan Armed Forces (FANB) and the United States realizing they can reach an agreement on coexistence, and even on liberalization and democratization, without the opposition having a role.
A first reaction to what Trump has said about Machado would be to recall the growing popularity of the winner of the 2023 opposition primary and her key role in Edmundo González Urrutia’s presidential campaign. Clearly, María Corina is not a leader without support or respect, but it remains true that she will never be able to shake off the specter of her staunch anti-chavismo, which prevents her from becoming a credible interlocutor for the FANB-PSUV in a transition process. In a negotiation for the redemocratization of Venezuela, which would involve discussing an amnesty and an agreement that safeguards the personal integrity of the leaders of both sides, María Corina is the last person chavismo would trust.
A second reaction arises upon noticing the first belligerent pronouncements of Delcy Rodríguez, Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino López, and Minister of Interior Diosdado Cabello. However, in the aforementioned article, we pointed out that in a transition process, the fact that the top party and military leadership maintain a hyper-ideological, anti-imperialist, and doctrinaire discourse is not contradictory to their pragmatism when negotiating with the United States. They maintain this discourse so that the FANB-PSUV can carry out such negotiations, ensuring cohesion within the ruling bloc.
The first not to utter this rhetoric will be denounced as a traitor, as the search is on for those who helped the US capture Maduro. Any change in tone will depend on the bloc agreeing to move forward with the transition. This is already happening, with Delcy Rodríguez delivering a message of dialogue and cooperation without belligerent rhetoric, while presiding over a cabinet meeting, just hours after the US military intervention on January 3rd.
Not without me
Trump and Rubio reiterate that their interest lies in preferential access to Venezuelan oil and curbing the influence of China and Russia in Latin America. There is no mention of the need to bring about the PSUV’s exit from power in the short term. They speak of a transition within a year, but also of observing Delcy’s willingness and capacity to cooperate.
Machado currently lacks both the experience and the political personnel to assume the presidency and manage the Venezuelan national bureaucracy. It is not enough to have technicians trained at the best universities in the West if they cannot navigate the web of middle and lower bureaucratic ranks while contending with the interests of the bureaucrats, the FANB, and the US. Machado also lacks the political cadres today to negotiate governance with a National Assembly, as well as governorships and mayoralties dominated by chavistas.
If María Corina wants to prevent the transition train from leaving without her on board, she will need to become an insurmountable obstacle to that transition for both the US and the FANB-PSUV coalition.
Even with general elections on the horizon, after 26 years out of power, few opposition leaders have the room of maneuver to assume political roles at the local or legislative level.
What the US needs from a transition (ostensibly economic, rather than political), neither Machado nor the opposition can provide. Delcy Rodríguez, on the other hand, can.
However, the price of sidelining the opposition is extremely high for those who desire democratic renewal. The problem is that it is not enough to demand a seat at the table if one does not possess sufficient real-world influence and leverage to assert oneself there. Therefore, if the opposition and María Corina want to prevent the transition train from leaving without them on board, they will need to do something ironically contradictory: become an insurmountable obstacle to that transition for both the United States and the FANB-PSUV coalition.
In other words, María Corina Machado must ensure that the transition cannot happen without her. And to do that, she needs to activate the only instrument that no one but her possesses: the mobilization of the popular masses she managed to mobilize in 2024. This requires us to consider a few things.
What does “street protests” mean in 2026? First, it cannot be a call to street protests with no turning back until the PSUV is ousted. It must establish achievable short-term objectives and rationally and economically rebuild the people’s own confidence in their capacity to intervene in the political system.
One option would be to start with a weekly mobilization scheme, on a predetermined day of the week, to demand the release of all political prisoners.
All-or-nothing calls for action without guarantees of success, such as those of 2014, 2017, or 2019, lacking clear and realistic objectives on the horizon, wear down the population. Ordinary people cannot abandon their sources of income indefinitely to participate in daily mobilizations. Experience shows how their self-esteem is shattered when they realize that no matter how much time passes, the PSUV doesn’t resign, the FANB doesn’t break apart, and nothing changes.
The sensible thing to do in this context, however, is to start with objectives that make the FANB-PSUV coalition uncomfortable, but that don’t pose an existential risk to its leaders. At the same time, that mobilization doesn’t constitute a call for open struggle against the government, but rather a challenge to the new business normality that the FANB-PSUV and the United States are trying to build. Just to test the waters, one option would be to start with a weekly mobilization scheme, on a predetermined day of the week, to demand the release of all political prisoners. This would be done solely with this slogan, with a political organization behind it that seeks to prevent confrontation with security forces, but at the same time, the mobilization begins to disrupt the normal functioning of the country. Demanding something that chavismo can, but refuses to give, until it eventually yields or the United States is forced to incorporate it into its transition agenda, at the risk of opposition mobilization hindering the negotiations Washington is conducting with the FANB-PSUV.
Machado must ensure that the US prioritizes raising the costs of repression and political persecution to the maximum, which brings us back to the first point.
This requires, secondly, a political organization capable of planning and executing this strategy. This organization does not need to be a political party, a union, or an NGO, although its eventual articulation into a coherent movement will make the political mobilization and calls to action more effective. Rather, the key to this organization was already prepared by Machado during the 2024 presidential campaign: the comanditos.
What already served as a structure to circumvent chavista persecution and censorship, and to technically prepare citizens throughout the country to face the campaign, observe the elections, and protect and process the physical and digital records of the July 28th vote, can serve as a model for envisioning a political organization with popular roots, capable of implementing this new political strategy. To achieve this, Machado must also ensure that the United States prioritizes raising the costs of repression and political persecution to the maximum, which brings us back to the first point.
Finally, this organized mobilization of the popular masses will also require Machado to recognize that she will have to challenge and emancipate herself from US interests in order to assert Venezuelan interests. This implies accepting popular organization as her ultimate source of power, but also acknowledging the imperative to solidify alliances with other international actors capable of mediating and interceding on her behalf with the United States: from the European Union to Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, forming an international bloc pressing to guarantee that human rights, free elections, and other popular demands have a recognized place at the transitional negotiating table.