It was July 2024, and President Nicolás Maduro’s regime had barred Machado, the leader of Venezuela’s opposition, from boarding domestic flights and running in the upcoming presidential election. So she was crisscrossing the country by road to campaign for her chosen replacement, retired diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia. She traveled not with bodyguards but with ordinary Venezuelans —many of them motorcyclists who used to support the regime—to protect her.

As María Corina Machado drove through rural Venezuela to the city of Maracaibo, hundreds of people waited for her along the roadside. She was dressed in white and wore rosaries around her neck, as usual, and Venezuelans gathered to cheer her on, touch her, and hand her their babies for a blessing. They came from afar, despite few resources and the risk of government retaliation, “just to see the caravan of hope pass by,” said María Beatriz Martínez, a politician who joined Machado on the trip.

As María Corina Machado drove through rural Venezuela to the city of Maracaibo, hundreds of people waited for her along the roadside. She was dressed in white and wore rosaries around her neck, as usual, and Venezuelans gathered to cheer her on, touch her, and hand her their babies for a blessing. They came from afar, despite few resources and the risk of government retaliation, “just to see the caravan of hope pass by,” said María Beatriz Martínez, a politician who joined Machado on the trip.

It was July 2024, and President Nicolás Maduro’s regime had barred Machado, the leader of Venezuela’s opposition, from boarding domestic flights and running in the upcoming presidential election. So she was crisscrossing the country by road to campaign for her chosen replacement, retired diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia. She traveled not with bodyguards but with ordinary Venezuelans—many of them motorcyclists who used to support the regime—to protect her.

As I followed Machado on the campaign trail, it was clear that the country had changed since my previous visits, when Venezuelans spoke about politics only in