María Corina Machado, former deputy of the Venezuelan National Assembly, was the winner last October 2023 in a primary election to choose the opposition candidate to challenge President Nicolás Maduro in this year's elections. After knowing the results, Machado declared: "What awaits us is an arduous road, we know it. We are clear about the nature of the regime we are facing and these primaries, full of obstacles and challenges, prove it." Days before the primaries to choose the opposition candidate, the U.S. and Venezuelan governments had reached an agreement in Barbados for Maduro to allow internationally supervised democratic presidential elections. Similarly, the United States lifted some economic sanctions on Venezuelan oil exports. With this new measure in place for six months, Venezuela could sell and export oil and gas without restrictions on customers or destinations. However, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement that it was prepared to re-impose the sanctions if Maduro did not comply with the agreements reached with the opposition. Despite this, Venezuela's Supreme Court of Justice ratified on January 26 that María Corina Machado was disqualified from being a presidential candidate for alleged tax fraud, which has been denounced by the opposition as a politically motivated move. In response, the United States imposed sanctions on a Venezuelan mining company and threatened to impose more sanctions if Venezuela does not comply with the agreements reached in October with the opposition to carry out fair and supervised elections. Finally, to these pressures from the United States, Nicolás Maduro declared that they were going to win the elections by hook or by crook. So the questions are: Why is it so difficult for Maduro to leave power? And how did Venezuela get to its current state of political and economic decay?

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