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Machado was the main Venezuelan opposition figure backed by the US. Her platform of extreme neoliberal shock therapy was rejected by the electorate. Most Venezuelans oppose her call to privatize nearly all state institutions serving the people – schools, hospitals, public housing, food assistance, and the state oil company, which funds social programs. Nor is there any popular appetite for Machado’s plan to radically reorient foreign policy to subordination to Washington and support of US imperial wars in Ukraine and Palestine.

Turkewitz reported that Machado won “an overwhelming victory in a primary race.” She uses the weasel-construction “a primary” rather than “the primary,” because Machado’s “primary” was not one conducted by the official Venezuelan electoral authority, the CNE. Rather, it was a private affair administered by the NGO Súmate. That NGO, as the article admits, is funded by the US. Machado prevailed in a crowded field of 13 candidates with a miraculous 92% of the vote. When some of the other candidates called fraud, Machado had the ballots destroyed. She could do so because Súmate is her personal organization.

There were a number of more moderate opposition figures with experience and popular followings. Had the US been interested in simply an electoral defeat of the ruling Socialist Party, they could have backed a less extreme candidate and offered to ease their punishing “sanctions” on Venezuela. Instead, Washington backed the far right, which took the supremely unpopular position of advocating for yet more sanctions on their own country to precipitate regime-change.

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado rang in her Nobel Peace Prize victory Friday by dedicating the award to the people of Venezuela fighting for freedom — and President Donald Trump, who has publicly lobbied for the prize for himself

Shortly after the announcement, Machado publicly addressed President Donald Trump. She wrote, "Hoy más que nunca contamos con el Presidente de los EEUU" ("Today more than ever we count on the President of the USA&quot , signaling that she expects U.S. support for her cause. She also asserted that Venezuela is "on the threshold of victory" in its struggle for freedom.

María Corina Machado’s connections with the Republican Party date back almost two decades, when, in 2002, she was received in Washington DC by the then president of the United States, George W. Bush, with whom she had a meeting at the White House.

The Republican link has become more explicit since the United States launched the political strategy of economic and financial aggression against Venezuela through illegal sanctions, which was followed by an international campaign that tried to present the situation in Venezuela as a "humanitarian emergency" to justify different mechanisms of foreign interference.

María Corina Machado acted as the ideological and political vanguard of the initiatives that Republican Senator Marco Rubio and associated personalities were carrying out, such as the sanctions and other "humanitarian intervention" agendas.

María Corina Machado, the leading figure in the far-right sector of the Venezuelan opposition, has revealed details about her private intervention before the Americas Society/Council of the Americas (AS/COA): a strategy she has dubbed “The Trillion-Dollar Opportunity.”

AS/COA is a New York-based non-governmental organization founded in 1965 by billionaire David Rockefeller and consisting of two bodies. The first, the Americas Society, is a forum for discussion on policy within the inter-American system. Its second component, the Council of the Americas, brings together international business groups promoting neoliberal policies in the Western Hemisphere.

Machado’s offer of millions of hectares of the country for the benefit of foreign companies suggests another avenue of privatization, since such a vast territory encompasses agricultural land in the hands of the state but also vast amounts of land under conventional private ownership and some 14 million hectares handed over to families and peasant organizations over more than 20 years, under the country’s existing land allocation models.

The figure of 30 million “undeveloped” hectares is extremely striking because it declares the country’s fertile territory as idle land, precisely when Venezuela has achieved 97% of its food supply thanks to domestic production. In this way, Machado distorts reality by making a deceptive offer to US capital and puts the country’s agricultural lands, which already have owners and tenants, up for sale.

Machado had heaped praise on Trump earlier this year — thanking the POTUS for his “firm commitment to freedom and democracy in Venezuela”. The comments came soon after the US President decided to end the license for American energy giant Chevron to operate in the other country. She had also received a ringing endorsement from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio after being listed in the ‘100 most influential people’ list by TIME Magazine this year.

Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, the former right-wing presidents of the US and Brazil, congratulated La Libertad Avanza (LLA) candidate Javier Milei for winning Argentina’s presidential elections on Sunday.

“Congratulations to Javier Milei on a great race for President of Argentina. The whole world was watching! I am very proud of you. You will turn your Country around and truly Make Argentina Great Again!” posted Trump on his Truth Social account.

Santiago Abascal, leader of Spanish far-right party Vox also congratulated Milei on social media. “Congratulations, dear Milei on your great victory in the Argentine presidential elections,” he said. “A path of future and hope is opening up for the Argentineans and for Ibero-America, which we celebrate in Spain with a special joy. Long live Spain, long live Argentina, live free of socialism and sovereigns!”

María Corina Machado, the opposition leader in Venezuela, also celebrated on X. “Congratulations to all Argentines for an exemplary electoral project and their president-elect, Javier Milei. The fight for change and freedom moves forward in Latin America. Long live Argentina, long live free Venezuela!”