Machado’s two-front insurgency for legitimacy

In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here.In January, Maria Corina Machado walked into the Oval Office and handed Donald Trump her Nobel Peace Prize medal, a gift, by her account, “on behalf of the people of Venezuela.” Two weeks earlier, U.S. special forces had seized Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, ending 25 years of Chavista rule. Machado and her supporters believed the democratic transition they had fought for was finally beginning.Seven months later, Machado is paying Washington lobbyists to get herself back into a conversation that is happening largely without her. Trump backed Delcy Rodriguez, Maduro’s former vice president, to lead the interim government, and U.S.-backed negotiations have proceeded without Machado at the table. Even Machado’s attempted return to Venezuela was stopped after Washington told her it was not the right time. It is tempting to see this as Machado’s struggle for relevance. But it misses the real story: She represents something inconvenient in the emerging Venezuelan settlement, democratic legitimacy.Washington’s decision to work through Rodriguez was not irrational. A classified CIA assessment reportedly concluded she was better positioned to hold the country together than Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez, who would struggle to command the security services in a nation that remains heavily armed and institutionally weak.Rodriguez can do this because she comes from the system Washington is trying to dismantle. She ran Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy and understands its security apparatus. Those credentials look terrible on a democratic resume and considerably better on a stabilization plan.That is Machado’s paradox: The qualities that made her Chavismo’s most credible opponent also make her less useful to those managing its remains. She never commanded its generals, distributed its patronage, or ran its oil industry. Rodriguez did, so Washington is negotiating with the people who hold power, not those who hold democratic legitimacy.Machado has responded with a political insurgency, the weaker actor challenging an increasingly established arrangement from outside its institutions and trying to keep it from becoming permanent. Her battlefield is no longer just Caracas. It is also Washington.In July, Machado registered Ed Rogers of BGR Group as a Washington consultant. At CERAWeek in Houston, she told oil executives the Venezuelan state would “get out of the way” of full privatization and has since run a media campaign to remain the political author of a transition others now manage.That insurgency just met its hardest test. On Aug. 28, Trump announced a deal with Rodriguez granting a U.S.-led entity 55% ownership and a 100-year lease on 17 fields holding 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan crude. The arrangement runs through Alejandro Betancourt, an oil trader investigated by U.S., Spanish, and Venezuelan authorities over alleged money laundering tied to state oil funds, which he denies.Harvard economist Ricardo Hausmann called it “an asset grab, an unconstitutional deal with an illegitimate oppressive government” that neither Venezuelans nor major oil companies “will respect” because “they know it will not last.”That uncertainty surfaced almost immediately. A day after Trump’s announcement, Rodríguez said the arrangement would run for 25 years, not a century, and target 1.5 million barrels a day across the same 17 fields. She said Venezuela retained “ownership of and sovereignty” over its resources and made no mention of the 55% U.S.-led stake Trump described. Neither government has published the contract.Three days later, the White House published a fact sheet, not the contract. It said Venezuelan authorities had granted 100-year concessions on the 17 fields to North American Blue Energy Partners, Betancourt’s private operator. NABEP had given the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital a 35 percent stake in its corporate parent. The State Department would have the right to buy 20% of output at cost. Plus, it would have first refusal on the rest, with a U.S. veto over the board. Rodríguez has not adopted that description. Neither government has published the signed instrument. Two governments had produced two accounts of the same agreement within a day. The later U.S. term sheet filled in Washington’s side. It did not make the accounts the same.That contradiction sharpens both fronts of Machado’s insurgency. In Washington, it raises questions about the durability of contracts signed by a government whose legitimacy remains contested. In Venezuela, it reinforces Machado’s argument that a settlement built around Rodriguez lasts only as long as the political arrangement supporting her.But this is about more than Machado. She remains the most visible symbol of Venezuelans who spent years demanding the right to choose their government. The danger is that those people gradually disappear from a transition supposedly undertaken on their behalf.Every transitional arrangement creates interests committed to its survival. Oil companies want predictable contracts, security officials want guarantees, Chavismo’s remnants want political survival, and Washington wants stability. Even opposition negotiators acquire a stake in keeping talks alive. The constituency demanding an election can become the least convenient one in the room.Machado’s exclusion raises a question larger than whether Trump likes her or Rubio trusts her: At what point does a temporary arrangement become a political settlement Venezuelans never chose?There are uncomfortable precedents. In Afghanistan, Washington became so focused on a deal with the Taliban that those capable of destroying it gained the greatest leverage. Iran shows the same pattern, with a strategy focused on regime elites while ordinary Iranians become spectators once talks begin. Diplomacy gravitates toward people who control things.Machado controls remarkably little: no military, no oil fields, no ministries. What she possesses is a claim to represent Venezuelans who rejected Chavismo and risked a great deal doing so. That may be why her insurgency matters commercially as well as morally. A long-term oil bet is only as durable as the government that signed it.None of this means Washington should install Machado in Miraflores by helicopter. A transition that fractures the military or collapses the state would serve Venezuelans poorly. But stabilization and democracy are not the same thing, and the danger comes when stabilization stops being a bridge and becomes the destination.Machado is inconvenient because she keeps asking what comes afterward. Her real insurgency is not for acceptance in Washington. It is against the possibility that a temporary settlement, now accompanied by a generational oil agreement, becomes permanent before Venezuelans decide what replaces it.America has encountered versions of this problem before. We insist that policy is about people living under authoritarian governments. Then negotiations start, stability becomes paramount, and authoritarian institutions turn out to be easier to deal with than the populations they govern. The people become the abstraction.SEAN DURNS: WINDS OF CHANGE IN LATIN AMERICAThe oil agreement captures that problem. Trump described a 100-year lease with majority U.S. ownership. Rodríguez described a 25-year arrangement in which Venezuela keeps sovereignty and made no mention of any U.S. stake. A contract that its own signatories cannot consistently describe within 24 hours is not evidence of a settled transition. It is evidence of the absence of the legitimate process that Machado has been demanding.Machado’s significance is not simply that she is Maria Corina Machado. Somebody still has to represent the Venezuelans who were supposedly the reason for this transition. Washington may decide that Rodríguez is necessary to get Venezuela from dictatorship to democracy. It should be careful that necessity does not become permanence, and that a generational oil claim does not rest on the assumption that no Venezuelan will ever get a vote.