Venezuela: Are We Taking María Corina Machado's Secret Insurrection Plan Seriously?

By Clodovaldo Hernández – Aug 2, 2025

Who will form the insurgent groups that will try to overthrow the Venezuelan government when María Corina Machado gives the order? Let us engage in a speculative exercise, leaving aside the fact that, according to a few analysts—and psychoanalysts—on both sides of the political spectrum, this option is nothing more than the already fermented delusions of a capricious rich person.

When someone of Machado’s social class and ideology publicly reveals that she intends to carry out an insurrectionary plan to seize power and asks her supporters to be attentive to her instructions, what can we think? What is this person supposed to do, or at least what is she thinking, given the history of the actions of this sector of the Venezuelan far-right opposition and its allies in imperial power?

My guess is that this plan would be expected to be marked by the presence of the following poisonous ingredients: a) Colombian paramilitaries, b) mercenary organizations made up of US Rambos and related nationalities, financed by some agency of imperialist power, c) former Venezuelan military and police officers belonging to the far-right, and d) Venezuelan criminal groups.

And what about the people themselves, that is, the working and peasant masses and the petite bourgeoisie? Well, at least in my hypothesis, they would be absent, or, going further in my premonition, they would come out to confront the Maricorinista rebellion.

Point by point
Well, since we are on the subject of creating scenarios, let us break down the above point by point. Let us explain why the former would participate and not the latter.

Colombian paramilitaries. This is one of the oldest resources in the Venezuelan far right’s schemes for violent seizure of power. Let us remember that in 2004, in the Daktari Firm incident, the paramilitaries were the protagonists of simulating a military insurrection to trigger a coup d’état, a civil war, or something similar.

More recently, a Colombian paramilitary gang known for its human-scrapping operations (they ran notorious chop shops), Los Rastrojos, served as Juan Guaidó’s “guard of dishonor” when he was in vogue as the so-called “interim president.”

Another clue: the ties between the main political leaders of the Venezuelan far right and the convicted former president of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, are as dark and twisted as only ties between heartless and vile beings can be.

With the “big boss” deprived of his liberty (even if it is only on the 1,500 hectares of his state, El Ubérrimo), his desire to participate in destabilizing events against his arch-enemies in the Bolivarian Revolution must be boiling over.

Mercenary forces. It would not be the first time they’ would intervene around here either. They have done so in the recent past, including with a signed contract, as if instead of killing people left and right, their services had been requested for some noble task. This was the case with the botched Operation Gideon.

In the United States and some of its satellites, companies that are euphemistically called “military contractors” abound. They are, in reality, corporations whose specialty is murder, disregarding international law or the norms that, in theory, govern situations of conflict or war. There must be more than one of these companies waiting for the call from the clandestine Machado, as long as they are paid in advance this time.

Former Venezuelan military and police officers. They were a key component of the 2002 coup d’état because many of them were still active. They later played a starring role in the Altamira Plaza circus that same year.

Their own blunders over the years since those episodes have exposed these figures, each of whom, in their own time, displayed their caste as officers trained at the School of the Americas or as civilian agents trained in US counterinsurgency programs. Many ended up in the hotbeds of opposition hatred in Miami, Bogotá, and Madrid, and from there they continue to speak as if they still commanded troops and weapons.

Some are natural killers, and since they have been repressed for so long, it is possible that they will appear disguised as commandos the day Machado fulfills her prophecy of “it is going to happen!” There is a long way to go from there to actually going into combat mode, but, as the saying goes, “you never know when the fish is drinking water.”

Venezuelan criminal groups. Nor does it take much insight to predict that organized criminal gangs and local thugs would be involved in an armed counterrevolutionary movement called by the far right.

Once again, the main reason for assuming this is both remote history and recent experience. What an orthodox Marxist would call the lumpen proletariat always serves as an opportunistic ally for the anti-people struggles waged by the bourgeoisie and imperial powers.

It has been this way historically, everywhere, but we can find traces of it in our own War of Independence, especially in the bloody period in which José Tomás Boves assembled an army of bandits and robbers to serve the King of Spain.

But of course, we are more interested in what is recent. The extremists have used organized criminals in their foco riots of 2004, 2013, 2014, 2017, and 2024. Let us consider just three examples, so as not to make this article a cumbersome dossier. In 2020, the El Wilexis gang, the scourge of Petare, mounted a diversionary operation for several days to force security forces to move toward that area of metropolitan Caracas, with the aim of facilitating the entry of the mercenaries of Operation Gideon. In 2021, that gang and other gangs in the capital were cooking up, along with the leadership of Voluntad Popular, something called “the Caracas Party,” which, in a nutshell, can be described as a bloodbath. In July 2024, the actions of Machado’s “comanditos” were laced with the evil energy of common criminals. Anyone who has witnessed one of these skirmishes can confirm this.

Would Machado have support from the grassroots?
Let us now review the sectors that would not heed Machado’s call, always hypothetical, of course.

Peasant and working-class masses. Without underestimating the number of votes obtained by the opposition in the 2024 presidential elections, it seems clear that this segment of the urban and rural poor has demonstrated that they would want a change in the country’s leadership, provided it is achieved through elections. Only a tiny fraction of this opposition sector is willing to pursue it through unconstitutional shortcuts.

On the other hand, Machado’s image, despite the great marketing efforts of her advisors, fails to project itself as popular. And that is only natural because she is, in the strictest sense, an oligarch. Additionally, her actions following the 2024 election campaign have been disastrous for her general public acceptance.

First, her lack of solidarity with those arrested in July 2024 has been disastrous. Those who went out to protest against alleged electoral fraud and were arrested were forgotten by the self-proclaimed leader of the riot cells. Under these conditions, who would dare to attempt a violent solution again?

Machado took even less responsibility for the outrages committed by her enraged followers. In the two days following the elections, there were 25 murders, some of them carried out with great cruelty. The deceased were Chavista activists, security forces officers, and bystanders, who were lynched. None was an opposition protester. The far-right leader, like the media machine that supports her, tried to blame the government and never questioned the excessive violence of her supporters.

On the other hand, she has opted for the so-called “underground” card all this time, trying to portray herself as a hero. But she maintains a constant presence in the media and on social media, making her secret location seem like a joke. It is obvious that the authorities know where she is, and if they do not arrest her, it is because they do not consider it appropriate under the current circumstances.

In a social media post, a woman who calls herself a “militant escualida” joked that she is willing to join the clandestine organization, as long as the commander welcomes her at headquarters, that is, at her mansion.

Also weighing against Machado’s ability to rally support is her attitude toward the problems of Venezuelan migrants in the United States. Her support for the arbitrary detention of the 252 Venezuelans who were imprisoned in El Salvador was a hostile gesture, not only for their families but for the entire migrant community in the country.

Expressing support for Donald Trump’s degrading migrant policy has also been a flagrant contradiction of her central campaign promise, which was to secure the return of Venezuelans living abroad. Those plaintive scenes in which a Venezuelan approached her to beg her to bring his relative back, and she, amidst sobbing, assured them that she would, were dismissed as perverse deceptions.

That unfulfilled promise is not the only one. The resounding phrases about winning, going all the way, or predicting that something will happen have portrayed Machado as a figure who offers a lot and delivers little… or nothing.

The petite bourgeoisie. The middle class (real or aspirational) has been the great bastion of the counterrevolutionary struggles of the Venezuelan far right since the beginning of the century. But it is clear that it has lost much of its strength due to the mistakes and crimes committed by the opposition leadership.

The petite bourgeoisie knows that the climate of violence and uncertainty sown by the opposition over the past decade was particularly negative for members of this social class. The blockade and sanctions demanded by far-right leaders led to the ruin of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses and skilled workers. And these far-right leaders are the same people who now, when the winds of economic recovery are in the air, are calling for an uprising.

Both among the masses and among this middle class, the government and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela have developed complex organizational and intelligence systems, which is why it is reasonable to foresee that, in the event of a violent outbreak, at least a part of them, rather than joining the uproar, would be ready to defend peace and stability.

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Does this statement by Machado represent a danger?
It could be. Obviously, this is not out of the question because we are talking about a person who represents the interests of very powerful sectors, both in the country and on a geopolitical scale. And she is someone who is aware that this is the only way she can achieve power.

One could argue against this that Machado no longer has the leadership power to be taken seriously by these national and international bodies, but here we should again look back. We can look back at the recent past and see that these internal and external sectors dared to support a figure as far less prominent as Guaidó, with far less real power, and who did not belong to the wealthy social class at the time (he does now, thanks to his fabulous “profits” as interim president).

Guaidó accumulated a significant amount of power and enjoyed the support of governments, businesses, and prominent figures. Therefore, it is not out of the question that Machado could also have the support for a violent initiative, at some point, despite all the mistakes and failures.

The government is clear on this. State security forces are closely monitoring all these movements; they know this should not be taken lightly. They understand that operations as shady as those that occurred in 2014, 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2024 may well be underway, and that this could pose a significant threat to the country’s political stability and the general tranquility of Venezuelan society, which has been enjoying peace practically since July 31, 2024, following the violent events of July 29 and 30 of that year.

And they understand that the failure of the electoral abstentionist and maximum pressure strategy, with the resulting emergence of a new generation of opposition leaders, exacerbates the plans of the Maricorinista faction, which has locked itself into a violent agenda. After all, it is a general principle of nature, of politics—and of war—that the beast is never as dangerous as when cornered.

(LaIguana.TV)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

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