An Interview with María Corina Machado

YJIA: As a cofounder of Súmate, you helped organize a national referendum on President Chávez in 2004. Although the referendum did not unseat the President, you and several Súmate cofounders were charged by the Chávez administration with conspiracy and treason for having accepted funding from the US National Endowment for Democracy. But now, six years later, you have been elected to the Venezuelan National Assembly on an opposition platform, and you’ve received the highest number of votes of any candidate in the election. Can you describe your decision to seek elected office given these political circumstances?

Machado: I have to start by saying that I’m an engineer.  My postgraduate degree is in corporate finance.  So I actually never imagined myself as a public servant and even less as a member of the Parliament.  But the Venezuelan situation has turned so critical.  In the year 2002, I realized that we had to find a way in which we could peacefully channel the growing social tensions that were happening in my country.  So we decided to stop warring and start acting as citizens.  And a group of friends, mostly engineers, decided to create an organization whose approach was from a more managerial and more technical perspective.  We never imagined that an organization promoted by five engineers could, in less than a year, turn into an organization with more than 50,000 volunteers throughout the whole country.

After the referendum, we realized that citizen participation was critical and that we needed to strengthen that responsibility on the citizen’s side.   Súmate started working as an electoral watchdog, and that was a long way of understanding how important it is to build democracy every single day, to understand our rights and duties and to exercise them.  After many years in this process, I started realizing that unless you have a responsible government, all these efforts won’t produce a better country, a better nation, so I myself thought about the possibility of serving, how to make government more responsible from the government’s perspective.

YJIA: How does your international experience inform your work in Venezuela? At the same time, how does your work in Venezuela have applicability for activists in other parts of Latin America?

Machado: Leadership, political leadership in particular, has to have a global view and a global understanding.  I had the opportunity to be selected as a member of the Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum five years ago which was a first important step in terms of getting to know incredible people that come from all different sectors – science, culture, business, politicians – and I realized there, being part of that network, the importance of understanding the complex processes that are taking place all around the world in order to also understand the potential of my own country.

Being there was a first step to consider coming to Yale as a World Fellow, which was very hard.  It was a very difficult decision because it meant leaving my country in a moment where political tensions were growing, we knew we had a an election for parliament in a year and also because I knew I had to leave my family for a long time.  But certainly a decision such as the one I’ve made changes your life forever.

YJIA: The United States is the largest importer of Venezuelan oil exports and relations between the two countries have been fraught. What unique insights do you think your ties here in the US provide in terms of a roadmap or inform how the Obama administration might best promote democracy and human rights in Venezuela while being mindful of US economic and security issues that the US faces?

Machado:  That’s not an easy question because I think we have to revisit relations over a longer period.  I believe that the US has not quite understood the potential of a mutually beneficial relationship with Latin America.  Today, even under the current administration, Latin America is quite far down the list and I really think that is a big mistake because the cost of opportunity is huge, as well as the costs that this country can suffer because of things such as drug trafficking and immigration and corruption.  We are very close and it’s harder today to separate these problems.

On the other hand, I think that President Chavez has been profoundly misunderstood in terms of what his model represents.  I read not long ago in the New York Times an expression that was “Chavez is a nuisance but he’s not a threat” so why bother.  But the fact is, putting aside the huge destruction and pain that Venezuelan society is suffering in the name of social justice, in the name of inclusion, a democratic society has been destroyed and an authoritarian regime is being imposed.  A government that has no governability, that cannot enforce law and order in its borders, that also promotes and supports certain kinds of groups and activities throughout the region is a problem.  It’s a big problem for the rest of the region – not only for Venezuela – and that means also for the US.I have to insist, though, that I am absolutely convinced Venezuelan problems have to be solved by Venezuelans.

YJIA: With this election, President Chávez’ socialist party no longer holds a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly. You have been quoted as saying this indicates that “Venezuela said no to Cuban-like communism”. What are the implications of this election for Venezuela in its role in Latin America?

Machado: We need to understand how important the issue of legitimacy of origin is in a regime and a model that every day violates and looses legitimacy of exercise.  Going back to elections is a way to give a democratic façade inside and outside.  In the last 11 years, we’ve had 19 elections, so if you want to stay in power indefinitely, which I believe is Chavez’ aim, and you do that through elections, then the next step is that you have to control the electoral process because you don’t want to risk losing the only legitimacy you’ve got left which is that of origin.

The first strategy of an authoritarian regime is to convince those that dissent that they are a minority because you don’t have the incentives to organize and to take risks. If you are convinced “why should we do it, we are very few, we lack majority support”, then most people would stop.  So I think we needed to empower people and make people be convinced that the majority of Venezuelans want to live in democracy with progress and respect.

Our great challenge now is how we can have a process of transition for the country that is inclusive.  We need a new emerging leadership that is an alternative and that understands the good things that we had in the past – the good things that have happened in the last decade – and what certainly are the big challenges we have in front of us.  It is going to be a difficult moment.