Venezuelan opposition leader and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado said that Venezuela is living through "decisive hours" amid the U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean and growing tensions with President Nicolás Maduro's government.
Her remarks coincided with the arrival of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford to Caribbean waters and the start of new military maneuvers by the Maduro regime.
Speaking remotely at a forum hosted by the IDEA Group — an organization of former Ibero-American presidents — at Miami Dade College, Machado urged Venezuelans and regional leaders to take an active role in the country's political turning point, as Infobae points out. "What is happening in Venezuela is not only a national event; it is a turning point for all of Latin America," she said. "These are decisive hours for Venezuela's destiny."
Machado said she was confident in the strength of the civic movement that backs her. "A united people, like no Venezuelan generation before, is the guarantee of an orderly, peaceful, irreversible transition," she said.
She described the country as being "on the threshold of freedom and an unprecedented transformation," pledging that her government would take control of national institutions "from the first day" to address the humanitarian crisis, ensure transparency in public finances, and begin social and economic reforms.
"From the first day, we will assume control of institutions and the territory, respond to the humanitarian emergency, restore order, transparency, and begin the deep transformations that will make this change irreversible," Machado added.
Her appeal came as Maduro ordered the mobilization of more than 200,000 troops, including units from the Bolivarian Militia, in response to what Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López called "imperial threats." The regime's new National Defense Command Law, approved this week, authorizes increased surveillance and crisis coordination.
Machado, who has previously argued that only escalating international pressure can force Maduro's departure, reiterated her call for unity and regional solidarity. "We need support to achieve a peaceful transition," she said. "Venezuela has the conditions to become Latin America's miracle of the 21st century."
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