The Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado would have tried to return to Venezuela on three occasions, all of them unsuccessful, during the day of September 21 and always departing from Panama, according to what the advisor for international relations of the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Pedro Urruchurtu, has reported this Wednesday.
"Attention: They prevent María Corina from returning to Venezuela. In the last hours, there have been three attempts, by sea and air, from Panama, without success," he has pointed out in a message spread on social networks, in which he added that in this way "they total seven attempts" to return to the country "in recent weeks."
"They do not let her return to her own country," Urruchurtu has emphasized. For the moment, Panamanian authorities have not offered any public explanation about Machado's attempts to return to Venezuela, which occur at the same time as the trip of the acting Venezuelan president, Delcy Rodríguez, to the United States to attend the 81st General Assembly of the United Nations.
In this context, Rodríguez has met in recent hours with the President of the United States, Donald Trump, in a gesture that symbolizes the rapprochement between Caracas and Washington after the offensive launched in January by U.S. troops against the South American country, an operation that left more than a hundred dead and resulted in the capture of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Clia Flores.
Machado, founder of the opposition party Vente Venezuela, left the country in December 2025 heading to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. However, she did not arrive in time for the event and the recognition was finally collected by her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa. Since then, the opposition figure has reiterated on various occasions that her purpose is to return to Venezuelan soil.
After the devastating earthquakes recorded in June, Machado publicly raised her return to the country again. However, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State indicated in early July, in statements to Europa Press, that Washington did not consider her return appropriate at that moment, given that the priority of the Trump Administration was "the progress" of its "response efforts" to the earthquakes.
In that line, the spokesperson emphasized that the option to "add to the mix such sensitive political issues" as the return of Machado "would be counterproductive" for those efforts after the catastrophe, to which is added the rapprochement between Rodríguez and Trump, reflected in several bilateral agreements, including one in the field of hydrocarbons.