Competing for Venezuela: Maria Corina Machado & Delcy Rodriguez - with Alexandra Rauscher

Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio speaks to journalist Alexandra Rauscher about her article in which she contrasts Venezuela's two vying political leaders. 

https://theyucatantimes.com/2026/01/in-venezuela-two-contrasting-women-emerge-to-shape-the-future/

Transcript

Jon Bonfiglio: 0:00

Hi everyone, welcome back to Latin America Correspondent, where I'm joined uh again today by journalist uh Alex Alexandra Rauscher. Um obviously Venezuela continues to be in the in the spotlight, it continues to be world news, not just because of what took place and continues to take place, but also because of the sort of international repercussions that um that this may lead to across a wide variety of countries and and regions. Um and um Alexandra uh has put together a really interesting article which sort of cross-references or uh contrasts the two women who are now at the forefront of of um of where Venezuela goes to next. On the one hand, uh opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, and on the other hand, uh former vice president to Nicolas Maduro, Delcy Rodriguez, who is now who's now been sworn in as the president. Um and uh reading through your your article, um Alex, two very different women.

Alexandra Rauscher: 1:04

Hi, Jon. Happy to be here. Yeah, they are, and I think it's super interesting to understand a bit about their backgrounds because that can help us make more sense of their current standing and what might also also characterize an outlook for Venezuela in the future. So Machado on the one side, she comes from a business-oriented background. She grew up in an industrial family. Her father owned the steel producer Sivenza that was later affected by expropriations of the uh Chavez era. So her formation politically was rather conservative, business-oriented, and definitely anti-Chavista. And then we have Rodriguez on the other side, who comes from a strongly leftist Marxist family. Her father was a revolutionary, he was a guerrilla fighter who was also part of the kidnapping of US businessman William Niehaus in '76. He was tortured to death in state custody that same year. And it's said that this is something that may have reinforced uh Rodriguez's leftist position and may have also driven her and her brother to take on a political career.

Jon Bonfiglio: 2:13

And actually, although both women come from diametrically opposed political backgrounds, I think one of the things that's interesting about the now is of course we we know it's pretty well established that Maria Carina Machado was um very pro the opening up of the Venezuelan economy and extractivist uh policies. But actually, kind of, I mean, I I guess it's it's inevitable, but if you look at it politically, politically counterintuitively, Delcy Rodriguez is actually also now at the forefront of this sort of um certainly of the opening up of Venezuela for oil, but also inevitably inevitably that's going to lead to to other um to other areas uh including obviously gold mining, rare earth, minerals and um and so on, which in a way leaves Maria Karina Machado politically little room to maneuver because one of the big things that was in her favor was the sort of the economic argument of what um an opposition-led administration of Venezuela was going to change and the sort of the e the uh socioeconomic policies it was going to bring about in order to bring um economic development um to Venezuela. But she's kind of stuck now, the fact that the the people who are the very opposite of her politically are enacting those very same policies that she's been espousing on her international tour.

Alexandra Rauscher: 3:37

Yeah, I completely agree. So Machado is not in a very easy position at this point. Um she's also been silent by Trump, as we've read a lot over the news, uh, who reference her as a nice woman but uh not having the respect of her country. And at the same time, she's basically in political exile. So she has been bailed several times by the Chavismo regime from the National Assembly, from uh yeah, coming in as a presidential presidential candidate. And right now she has very limited uh political leverage, almost none, um, but is still trying from her yeah kind of cornered position to influence politics towards a democratic transition for her country.

Jon Bonfiglio: 4:26

And I think and I think a um part of the framing which is pretty inescapable is the fact that when we when you think about Chavismo, of course you think about Hugo Chavez from the late 90s up until I think it was 2013, until his death from from cancer, and then Machado uh not Machado, um Maduro, Nicolas Maduro taking over there. And it was a very sort of male-heavy landscape. Um and actually, when Machado, María Corina Machado first came to prominence was in a televised intervention that she made where she in front of uh hundreds of other lawmakers um accused Chavez of running Venezuela into the ground and asked him pointedly when he was going to change his policies. And Chavez at that point, his response, which has gone down certainly in Venezuelan and Latin American history, um, said that um he was an eagle and he didn't have to respond to the sort of the calls of a of a fly. And the reason I mention that is because I think that also was heavily gendered language at the time, um, which uh at least at this moment in um in Venezuelan history, with this sort of the new opposing forces or the two individuals in opposition, which are Delcy Rodriguez and Maria Corina Machado, two women, of course, um has has definitely I think um shifted the needle somewhat.

Alexandra Rauscher: 6:01

Yeah, for sure. So the the term you mentioned with the fly definitely hints at the limited terms in which these women are recognized in this Chavismo male-dominated environment. And taking this into consideration, I think it's particularly interesting how now the political competition centers around these two central female figures as opposed to all these years, almost three decades of male dominance. So Rodriguez, she's the first woman to hold the presidency, even if it's only on an interim basis, and Machado, she's the first woman to consolidate broad opposition support nationwide. And both of these women operate within political structures that are extremely, extremely dominated by men. At the moment, we are not seeing any systemic change yet, but you could say that this could be an indication of a generational change in leadership as focus is shifting from personalities such as Chavez and Maduro to new female actors, at least at the level of representation.

Jon Bonfiglio: 7:02

Yeah, not that I want to sort of focus on physicality with this as well, but also it's been, I think, quite a stark physical representation because of course Nicholas Maduro is a big man. Like you can he's v it's very present even amongst um his sort of uh his his jailers and the police in um in in New York, the DEA agents, like he towers above everybody. And Delcy Rodriguez is really quite she looks very she looks much younger than she is, she's sort of quite winnowy, she's quite bookish, um and and much smaller than than everybody else around her. So I think that's also it's not just the sort of the gendered difference, but it's also the that having a leader who doesn't have a who is the complete antithesis of having uh the physical presence that Maduro had is is also um uh a world away from where we were just a couple of um weeks ago. Um Alex, of course, this is a big week as well. Uh Maria Corina Machado is meeting Donald Trump on Thursday. She's just met the Pope. As you said, she is, I think, arguably, she has been cornered a little bit. She's got very few cards that she can play. Um what what's your sense of what's coming up on Thursday, what we can expect? Uh and does Machado have any uh possibility, do you think, of changing Donald Trump's mind as regards his decisions to to support or to continue working with the the the uh what's left of the Nicholas Maduro administration?

Alexandra Rauscher: 8:40

That's tricky to anticipate what's what's gonna happen on Thursday, but I think what's very interesting to follow over the last days is how uh yeah huge political discussion um also centers a little bit around uh the Nobel Prize of 25, um, because apparently this is something that is still very much on Trump's mind. And I think something that uh Machado has also played with. So Machado already, when taking on the Nobel Prize, dedicated it to Trump, and he almost seemed a bit upset about the fact that she had been awarded with it while he was also hoping to receive this award. So now in recent interviews, um uh yeah, asked by Fox News, um Machado said that she is happy happy to share this prize with him. And who knows what this discussion on Thursday uh will look like if it will be about the Nobel Prize to then jump over to world politics or what focus this meeting has. But one can only hope that at some point uh the focus of discussion will uh center around how Venezuela can move towards a more democratic future.

Jon Bonfiglio: 9:52

Eight wars he's ended. Eight wars, eight entire wars. Um one thing I'll just add is I think politically as well, the fact that um Donald Trump, I mean he moves around a little bit, but he moves around a little bit in a kind of a showmanship kind of way. He he he'll go to Israel, but a particular point of like victory at the point of declaring of a ceasefire. Beyond that, he he doesn't actually really move much from the White House beyond the uh outside of the White House and and uh Mar-a-Lago. And as regards all of these summits that he has, everybody has to go and visit him. Um it's very clear the sort of the the demonstration of power that happens when he's he's sat in the same chair alongside whoever it is that's coming to visit him, and then he fills the room with his with his acolytes, with his political supporters, and also generally media supporters um as well. It's something of a gauntlet that anybody who who goes to to visit Trump at the White House has to run. And you would think by this point as well that they should, having seen interviews with um the South African Premier and also Vladimir uh Zelensky and uh and a number of others, that um that it's fraught with with risk. And of course, uh hypothetically at least Colombia's Gustavo Pedro is going to be undertaking one of these uh visits pretty pretty soon. Um Alexandra, thanks so much for your for your uh time. A big week again. Let's see what happens.