Machado vows return to Venezuela as twin quakes death toll tops 1,430

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado declared Sunday that she plans to return to the country in the wake of two devastating earthquakes that have killed more than 1,430 people and injured thousands more.

Speaking to Fox News, the exiled Nobel Peace Prize laureate said the “time has come” for her to go back. “It is my duty to accompany my people. We need to be together, to embrace, to grieve and mourn together,” she said, adding that she intends to be in Venezuela “very soon.”

The back-to-back tremors — magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 — struck on Wednesday, leveling buildings across several states. Rescue crews are still digging through rubble, with authorities estimating that thousands remain trapped. The death toll is expected to rise.

Machado has repeatedly signaled an imminent return over the past several months, but each time she has delayed. A report in The New York Times indicated the U.S. government views a swift homecoming as ill-timed, given the volatile political landscape.

She left Venezuela in December to accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. In early January, the United States launched a military operation inside the country that resulted in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro. Since then, acting President Delcy Rodríguez — Maduro’s former vice president — has been running the government.

The earthquakes have plunged the already reeling nation deeper into crisis. Humanitarian groups warn that the combination of collapsed infrastructure, a fractured government and the looming rainy season could produce a secondary disaster. Machado's return, if it materializes, would inject a fresh dynamic into the uncertain political transition — though it remains unclear how the Rodríguez administration would respond to her arrival.