Aide to Venezuelan opposition leader returns from exile

A Venezuelan opposition activist close to Nobel peace laureate Maria Corina Machado returned from exile Sunday to a hero's welcome.

Hundreds of cheering people greeted Claudia Macero as she arrived at the airport that serves Caracas.

Machado herself has repeatedly been denied permission to return to Venezuela following the US capture of Nicolas Maduro in January and the installation of a US-aligned government.

Since then, Venezuela has operated under the thumb of President Donald Trump, who demanded and obtained access to Venezuela's vast oil resources and other benefits for US interests.

"It is time to come home. It is time to recover the country," Macero, who ran press operations for Machado, said as supporters sang the national anthem.

Asked about when Machado herself might come home, Macero said she did not know. "Maria Corina is trying every day to come home," she said. "Evidently there is a very difficult process but this will come to an end."

Machado came out of hiding in December to collect her Nobel prize in Norway. After a brief stay in the United States she has settled in Panama City.

Her Vente party says she has tried seven times to return to Venezuela.

Commentators here say it is Washington -- which keeps close tabs on interim president Delcy Rodriguez and all but runs the country as a satellite -- that is barring Machado from returning. The Trump administration denies this.

Macero, 34, is one of seven Machado associates who took refuge in the Argentine embassy in Caracas in March 2024 and stayed there for a year to elude arrest during a wave of repression ahead of presidential elections that year.

In May 2025 those seven people left the embassy and turned up in the United States after a secretive operation that the Trump administration says it engineered but never explained.