Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate María Corina Machado believes “hundreds of thousands” of Venezuelans will return to their country from all over the world once the socialist Maduro regime goes.
“The day Maduro goes, you will see tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants coming back home from the United States and all over the world,” Machado on Sunday told CBS News. “I mean, our diaspora is desperate to go back to Venezuela. So even from that perspective, it is a win, win situation to have democracy in Venezuela.”
Machado arrived in Oslo, Norway last week to receive the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize after spending over a year in hiding facing threats of arrest by the Maduro regime. Hours later, she confirmed that the Trump administration helped her escape from Venezuela.
On Sunday, she spoke with CBS News’ Margaret Brennan on Sunday. She expressed her support of President Donald Trump’s pressure policy against the Venezuelan socialist regime when asked about the recent seizure of a sanctioned oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.
“I absolutely support President Trump’s strategy, and we, the Venezuelan people, are very grateful to him and to his administration, because I believe he is a champion of freedom in this hemisphere,” Machado answered.
“And that’s why, and I say this from Oslo right now, I had dedicated this award to him because I think that he finally has put Venezuela in where it should be, in terms of a priority for the United States national security,” she continued.
She has also called upon the international community to weaken the Maduro regime by cutting its oil black market, drug, human, and arms trafficking income streams.
Asked if further financial pressure on the Maduro regime would pose a risk of hurting Venezuela’s impoverished population, Machado stressed that the resources Maduro presently gets are not going to the country’s people.
“The sources, the cash the regime gets from these illegal activities goes to buy arms, to pay gang members to spy and infiltrate and to even further increase their illegal narcotics activities and so on. So these resources are not going for, towards the people. They’re going for corruption and crime,” Machado said.
“We want every legal action through law enforcement a- approach, not only from the United States, also from other Caribbean, Latin American and European countries that further block the illegal activities of the regime. Why? Because we need to increase the cost of staying in power by force,” she continued.
Machado asserted that “Once you arrive to that point in which the cost of staying in power is higher than the cost of leaving power, the regime will fall apart, and it’s the moment where we, you know, advance into a negotiated transition.”
It is estimated that some eight million Venezuelans have so far fled from socialism since 2015. Despite no war having taken place in Venezuela, the nation’s migrant crisis rivals that of other war-torn countries such as Ukraine and Syria.
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