CARACAS, October 23, 2026 — Thousands of protesters took to the streets in Venezuela on Thursday afternoon to demand presidential elections and call for the return of exiled Nobel Prize-winning opposition leader María Corina Machado. The demonstrations filled Plaza Venezuela in Caracas and spread across several states, marking a major escalation in public pressure for a democratic transition following years of political turmoil.
Protests Erupt Across Venezuela After Years of Repression
In the capital city of Caracas, crowds gathered in Plaza Venezuela and called for presidential elections to be scheduled as early as 2027, alongside demands for the release of all political prisoners in the country. Former congressman Piero Maroun attended the protests and stated, according to independent local news organization Efecto Cocuyo, that the country will have presidential elections very soon with María Corina Machado as president. The Machado-led activist group Vente Venezuela spearheaded the protests, which led to the closure of some streets in Caracas. Demonstrators also staged protests in the states of Nueva Esparta, Táchira, and Zulia. Meanwhile, the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela staged a gathering near the opposition demonstrators in Caracas for a women’s march honoring Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Protesting has become common for disgruntled Venezuelans since the forced end of Nicolás Maduro’s presidency. Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez heavily cracked down on political dissent during their time in power. But since Maduro’s removal in January by U.S. forces, protesters have taken to the streets with increasing frequency, according to the international civil society alliance CIVICUS, citing data from the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict. The observatory recorded 1,101 protests during just the month of September, which averages about 37 demonstrations per day. These protests, however, have not necessarily been large in scale. Thursday’s demonstrations shifted that dynamic, with Reuters describing the events as the first nationwide opposition protest in nearly two years. The date coincided with the third anniversary of the opposition’s presidential primary elections, in which Machado emerged victorious.
Venezuela has a population estimated at 31.8 million in 2025 and stands among the most urbanized countries in Latin America, with an estimated urbanization rate of 88.4 percent in 2022. The vast majority of Venezuelans live in urban areas in the north, including the capital of Caracas. The territory was colonized by Spain in 1522 amid resistance from Indigenous peoples. In 1811, it became one of the first Spanish American territories to declare independence from Spain and form part of the first federal Republic of Colombia, known as Gran Colombia, before separating as a fully sovereign country in 1830. During the nineteenth century, Venezuela suffered political turmoil and autocracy, remaining dominated by regional military dictators until the mid-twentieth century. From 1958, the country experienced a series of democratic governments, but economic shocks in the 1980s and 1990s led to major political crises and widespread social unrest, including the deadly Caracazo riots of 1989, two attempted coups in 1992, and the impeachment of a president for embezzlement of public funds charges in 1993.
Political Transition Talks and Stalled Negotiations in Caracas
Confidence in existing political parties collapsed during the 1998 Venezuelan presidential election, in which Hugo Chávez was elected and initiated the Bolivarian Revolution. During the 1999 Constituent Assembly, a new Constitution of Venezuela was written and ratified. The government’s populist and social welfare policies were temporarily bolstered by soaring oil prices, which increased social spending and reduced economic inequality and poverty in the early years of the Chávez government. Poverty began to rapidly increase, however, in mid- to late 2014. The 2013, 2018, and 2024 presidential elections were all widely disputed, with opposition candidates being arrested or exiled, leading to widespread protest and international condemnation. In 2026, U.S. forces captured Maduro, and Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as acting president. Since this intervention, the country has been described as a puppet state of the U.S. in terms of its finances and domestic policy.
Machado remains the opposition’s most prominent figurehead in the transition toward a democratic government. An AtlasIntel survey conducted for Bloomberg News showed María Corina Machado receiving 52 percent support, compared with 19 percent for acting President Delcy Rodríguez. Despite this strong public backing, Machado faces a complex political terrain. The recent street demonstrations unfolded concurrently with closed-door meetings inside the Venezuelan presidential palace between Rodríguez and Dinorah Figuera, the opposition representative backed by the U.S. State Department in negotiations for a political transition. Three rounds of U.S.-backed talks between the Venezuelan government and Figuera’s faction have yet to yield an agreement on elections. In a statement reported by El País after the meeting, Rodríguez appeared to reference the opposition protests, saying in Spanish that very small groups still resist and believe that trying to set the country ablaze and block streets is the way forward, while recognizing the good Venezuelans who are promoting necessary changes through dialogue.
International Agreements and the Diplomatic Path Forward
The diplomatic push for a democratic transition also intersects with sweeping economic realignments involving foreign governments. In late August, U.S. President Donald Trump announced what he called the biggest oil deal in world history. ProPublica reviewed a copy of the 18-page strategic partnership agreement signed for the United States by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The document grants the U.S. sweeping access to Venezuela’s oil reserves and cements the power of a small group of people handpicked by the Trump administration to govern and profit from the deal. One of the most criticized aspects of Trump’s announcement has been his choice of a partner, Alejandro Betancourt, a Venezuelan oligarch who has faced money-laundering investigations in three countries. The Trump administration is taking a 35 percent stake in Betancourt’s firm, North American Blue Energy Partners, by acquiring shares in a Barbados-registered parent company. The deal document provides little information about the owners and investors behind the parent company, who could receive enormous wealth from the arrangement.
The agreement safeguards Betancourt’s position as chief executive of NABEP and establishes that the U.S. government will work with the parent company to appoint a powerful seven-member board to govern the venture for an initial 15-year term. According to people with knowledge of how the agreement came together, these aspects were designed to prevent future U.S. and Venezuelan leaders from dismantling the enterprise. Orlando Alvarado, a name not disclosed by the Trump administration as a party to the accord, signed the agreement on behalf of the parent company alongside Betancourt, Hegseth, and Rubio. Alvarado has held senior roles in multiple Betancourt businesses, including as chief financial officer of an energy firm that became embroiled in scandals a decade ago. According to the Miami Herald, federal prosecutors identified Alvarado as an unindicted co-conspirator in a scheme to embezzle money from Venezuela’s national oil company. A NABEP spokesperson, Terry Wade, stated that neither Betancourt nor Alvarado has ever been charged with any crime in any country, and that any claims against them are baseless.
For international diplomats and multilateral bodies seeking to support a peaceful democratic transition, options remain tied to the leverage established by U.S.-backed negotiations and economic accords. With civil society alliances documenting thousands of protests and public support heavily favoring exiled leaders like Machado, foreign governments face the challenge of aligning economic frameworks with popular democratic demands. As talks between Acting President Rodríguez and Figuera continue without a finalized agreement on elections, the path forward for international intervention relies on whether diplomatic pressure can bridge the gap between ruling authorities and an increasingly vocal public demanding systemic political change.
Sources
- Venezuelans Take to the Streets to Demand Democracy
- Venezuela
- The Secret Terms of Trump’s Venezuelan Oil Deal
Photo: Kevin Payravi (CC BY-SA 4.0)
