For two weeks, Venezuela’s twin earthquakes have done more than bury homes and devastate families. The disaster has also scrambled opposition politics at a fragile moment, six months after U.S. forces deposed authoritarian Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Venezuela was in the middle of an uncertain political transition when the 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes hit on June 24.
Its political opposition leader, María Corina Machado, had once enjoyed widespread support. But the exiled leader has been sidelined by the Trump administration since the January strike on the South American nation.
Why We Wrote This
Venezuela’s earthquakes have created a new test for its political opposition: try to return and risk being seen as opportunistic, or stay away and hazard the movement’s relevance.
Now Venezuela’s earthquakes, which have left at least 3,685 people dead and tens of thousands more missing, have created a new, uncomfortable test for her. Amid this historic natural disaster, Ms. Machado has pledged to return home. That’s been discouraged by the U.S. government, and could be painted as opportunistic. But staying away could risk her movement’s relevance.
Yet for many earthquake survivors here, the disaster has made political change feel more urgent than ever.
Calls for “radical change”
Twelve days after the earth stopped shaking, Marry Alexander Escobar says his father, brother, and several other loved ones were still trapped under the rubble in coastal La Guaira. The fact that he has been searching without support from the government is proof that Venezuela needs a new path ahead, Mr. Escobar says.
“It’s time we realized that this didn’t work,” he says, referring to chavismo, the political movement that has been in power for almost three decades. “We want radical change in Venezuela. We need to vote massively,” he says, “and soon.”
For more than two decades, Venezuela’s opposition failed to coalesce against former charismatic President Hugo Chávez and his successor, Mr. Maduro. Infighting and disagreements over how to best fight chavismo led to cycles of mobilization, protesting democratic elections, and failed negotiations. But, Ms. Machado emerged as a powerful leader in recent years.
The political opposition movement led by Ms. Machado was internationally considered to be the winner of a disputed 2024 presidential vote, and its top leaders went into hiding and exile after refusing to accept the government’s claims of victory. The opposition movement was praised by U.S. officials.
But after Mr. Maduro’s ouster, instead of turning to the opposition as many expected, the United States backed an interim government led by former Vice President Delcy Rodríguez. She was presented as a stopgap until fresh elections could be called, while Ms. Machado, who won a Nobel Peace Prize last year for her pro-democracy work in Venezuela, was suddenly sidelined by the U.S.
The opposition’s predicament is partly the result of its own strategy, says Edgardo Lander, a sociologist and retired professor at the Central University of Venezuela. Under Ms. Machado’s leadership, the opposition pivoted in recent years to build a democratic transition around an outside force: the U.S. The approach proved successful in the sense that it weakened an authoritarian government’s grasp on power, but it left the opposition dependent on priorities set in Washington, like access to oil, halting migration, and control over the government’s agenda, says Dr. Lander.
Marian Carrasquero/Reuters
“She bet everything on Donald Trump,” he says. “That is always risky.”
A post-quake AtlasIntel poll for Bloomberg News, conducted June 26-30, suggests the disaster has not pushed politics aside. Nearly 46% of respondents said democratic elections are now more urgent than ever, while about 32% said reconstruction should come first. The same poll found Ms. Rodríguez’s disapproval has risen to 63.3%, nearly five points higher than in May, and that 52.4% of respondents described the government’s emergency response as “very deficient.”
Some displaced Venezuelans weren’t aware Ms. Machado had tried to return following the disaster. The former legislator sneaked out of the country last winter to travel to Norway to receive her Nobel Prize. (If she’d been stopped by Mr. Maduro’s government, she could easily have been imprisoned.) But returning home was a challenge even before the quakes, because she doesn’t have a valid Venezuelan passport.
Since 2023, when she was selected as the opposition’s presidential candidate (but later barred by the government from running), her campaign was built around the promise of a return – of exiles coming home after mass migration, of families reuniting, and of the country’s renaissance. For many supporters, she took on an almost spiritual role. At rallies in recent years, people placed rosaries around Ms. Machado’s neck and treated her less like a traditional politician than a figure of protection and deliverance.
Caracas resident María Virginia Marcano believes her return would be a source of emotional and political reassurance here. She trusts the politician because of what she managed to do for the country under the repressive government of Mr. Maduro: organizing voters to use democracy to fight authoritarianism and persuading the Trump administration to take action against the regime.
“Why shouldn’t we trust she has a plan this time?” she asks.
Who is in charge?
Venezuela’s Constitution specifies that a temporary presidential absence can be covered by the vice president for up to 90 days, with one 90-day extension. After that, the National Assembly must declare a permanent absence and hold a presidential election. That timeline expired on July 3, says Blanca Rosa Mármol, a retired justice on Venezuela’s Supreme Court.
Tibisay Zea
A new election should be called, one that Ms. Machado or the 2024 opposition candidate Edmundo González could possibly compete in.
Justice Mármol says that acting President Rodríguez wasn’t chosen by the people she’s supposed to be leading. “No one elected her. Only Trump” wanted her in power, she says.
Many in Venezuela’s diaspora are calling via social media for an estallido social, or mass uprising.
But inside disaster zones, politics is overshadowed by urgent daily needs. The crisis may have made political change more urgent for some; others see politics through a more immediate lens: Who can bring a credible plan for recovery?
In a Caracas tent camp made up of a jumble of donated tarps and camping gear, Marjorie Bonilla says survivors have no idea what’s happening with their damaged homes – or how long they will be living outdoors. “No authority has come here to explain anything” she says. Venezuela needs “a change of administration.”