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Thousands of Venezuelan migrants have braved the seas off Falcón state in recent years, fleeing their shattered homeland towards the Caribbean islands of Aruba and Curaçao in rickety wooden boats called yolas. Many lost their lives chasing a brighter future after their overcrowded vessels capsized or were smashed apart by rocks.
This week, the opposition leader María Corina Machado got a taste of that perilous journey herself, as the Nobel laureate began her surreptitious 5,500-mile-plus odyssey from her authoritarian homeland to Norway to collect her peace prize.
US officials say the 58-year-old politician slipped out of Venezuela on Tuesday, secretly travelling to Curaçao, a former Dutch colony that remains part of the kingdom of the Netherlands, by boat before continuing her voyage by plane. “Her journey was delayed for several hours due to bad weather and rough seas,” reported Bloomberg, which said Machado had been aided by the Trump administration as well as rogue members of the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro’s regime.
“So many people … risked their lives in order for me to arrive in Oslo and I’m very grateful to them,” Machado told the chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, by phone on Wednesday before boarding a Norway-bound flight.
The details of Machado’s cinematic maritime escape through the southern Caribbean remain sparse, having been closely guarded to protect her as she emerged from nearly a year in hiding and made her break for Europe.
News of her flight sent the rumour mill into overdrive, with Venezuelans wondering whether Machado had stowed away on one of the fruit ships that ply the trade route between Venezuela’s Paraguaná peninsula and Curaçao, or perhaps hidden on a vessel that set sail from a yacht club closer to the capital, Caracas.
“Everybody speculating has their own favourite … Netflix story about how she was exfiltrated,” said Moisés Naím, a Venezuelan writer and former minister.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Machado started her escape on Monday, wearing a wig and disguise as she fled the Caracas hideout where she had been holed up since Maduro was accused of stealing the July 2024 presidential election from her movement. She then reportedly began a nervy, 10-hour road trip, through 10 military checkpoints, towards the fishing village where she took a boat towards Curaçao. From there, Machado took a business jet to Bangor in the US state of Maine, before flying on to Oslo.
Machado’s decision to flee along one of Venezuela’s most treacherous people-smuggling routes was a highly symbolic one, which shone a light on the migration crisis she has promised to end through her dogged campaign for political change.
More than 8 million Venezuelans have fled abroad since Maduro took power in 2013 and their country was plunged into more than a decade of economic mayhem, hyperinflation, hunger and increasingly authoritarian rule.
During last year’s election – which independently verified data showed was won by Machado’s ally, Edmundo González – her main pledge was to reunite families separated by Venezuela’s collapse.
Carlos Lizarralde, the author of the book One in Four: The Exodus that Emptied Venezuela, said: “Fleeing by boat to a Caribbean island, María Corina Machado joined the millions of Venezuelans who have escaped by sea and on foot to seek better fortunes – or in her case to change the fortunes of the entire country.”
Lizarralde believed Machado had “departed to return as the nation’s leader” as the US campaign to topple Maduro with a massive military buildup in the Caribbean reached “a critical juncture”.
“To fulfil her promise of reuniting Venezuela’s families, she first had to follow the path of the exiles who went before her,” added Lizarralde, who believed Machado would, for now, be better positioned to push for democratic change from outside Venezuela.
Not everyone agrees. Venezuela has a long history of opposition leaders who have lost influence after going into exile, among them Leopoldo López and Juan Guaidó, the young congressman who spearheaded the last major attempt to remove Maduro in 2019. A prominent journalist from Venezuela’s state-run network Telesur called the Nobel ceremony Machado’s “political funeral”.
Some wonder if Machado may also lose sway if she is unable to return home, although she rejected that suggestion after reaching Oslo. “I’m going to be in the place where I’m most useful for our cause,” Machado told the BBC. “Until a short time ago, the place I thought I had to be was Venezuela; the place I believe I have to be today, on behalf of our cause, is Oslo.”
Others are more optimistic about Machado’s chances of sustaining her challenge to Maduro while overseas, pointing to the huge popular support she built while crisscrossing Venezuela by car, motorbike and boat before the 2024 election.
“[Even] before winning the election, she had already become the most popular Venezuelan leader since Hugo Chávez,” said Lizarralde, attributing that appeal to Machado’s longstanding refusal to leave Venezuela and her vow to bring millions of divided families back together – including her own.
“She became a mother figure who had defied the odds, who had stayed, who had sacrificed, who had given up her own family for the Venezuelan family,” added Lizarralde, who thought Machado would continue to be influential, even outside Venezuela.
Naím was also bullish about Machado’s prospects. “She’s the most legitimate politician in Venezuela. She’s one of the most talented politicians in Latin America, perhaps the world,” he said, predicting she would soon return home.
“She may go on a limited international tour … to the main capitals but then that tour ends in Venezuela, [back] in hiding,” he said.
Speaking in Oslo, Machado’s adviser David Smolansky declined to explain how his ally could return home but said: “If there’s one thing María Corina has, it’s an extremely high strategic capacity.”
“Of course I’m going back,” Machado told the BBC. “I know exactly the risks I’m taking.”
Additional reporting by Camille Rodríguez Montilla in Oslo
