Machado Rejects Amnesty, Demands Justice and 2027 Vote

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado says there will be no amnesty for those who violated human rights, calling such a move “contrary to the Constitution and to all international treaties.” She wants justice, she said, but not revenge.

Machado spoke in an interview conducted in Panama City with Andrés Mompotes of El Tiempo in Bogotá. La Nación of Costa Rica and El Universal of Mexico published the interview on 18 October 2026. Mompotes asked whether an amnesty could be imagined once democracy returns, citing what he described as revelations at Nicolás Maduro’s trial about a machinery of torture and persecution.

Machado said she wants a country that offers justice to everyone, including the people who denied it to her. Her name, she said, appears in an unknown number of case files, and she learns about a new one every day. Asked whether truth or justice should come first, she said they go hand in hand.

Accountability, Not Revenge

Some people involved in repression have written to Machado asking forgiveness. She couldn’t discuss details publicly because lives could be at risk.

Venezuela already has an amnesty law. The National Assembly approved it unanimously on 19 February 2026, EFE reported through swissinfo. It covers episodes of political crisis from 2002 to 2025, a span of 24 calendar years, and excludes serious human rights violations, crimes against humanity, intentional homicide, drug trafficking and armed actions backed by foreign states. The sources don’t say whether Machado supports the law itself.

Who Is Still Behind Bars

The human toll remains under count. Foro Penal counted at least 322 political prisoners on 5 October, down from 687 when the law passed in February, Runrun.es reported on 10 October. Another group, Justicia, Encuentro y Perdón, counted 424 people arbitrarily detained over the same period. Machado said in the interview that more than 700 political prisoners had been freed, though the interview gave no source for that figure.

The gap between those numbers matters. Hundreds remain detained, even by the most conservative count, eight months after the law passed.

The Negotiating Table

Machado asked negotiators for three things: a new National Electoral Council, a new Supreme Court and a date for the presidential vote. “The election date is the liberation date,” she said, repeating the slogan for a protest call on 22 October. Her allies called a nationwide protest for that day, three days after the date of this report.

Dinorah Figuera leads the opposition side of the talks. Jorge Rodríguez, head of the National Assembly, leads the government delegation. Machado urged them to “keep their word.” She said the electoral council should follow the Constitution, include people of good standing and have no party quotas.

She called 24 July 2027 “a powerful initiative and a beautiful date,” because it’s the birthday of independence hero Simón Bolívar. U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio proposed the date, and Machado said Senator Rick Scott, Mario Díaz-Balart and other lawmakers had joined him. Some consider July 2027 too far off, she noted, and say an election could be organized in eight to 10 months. El Diario of Ecuador said the proposed date isn’t an official electoral calendar.

Pointing at the Government

Machado held acting president Delcy Rodríguez “directly responsible” for the crisis and said nobody trusts those who, in her words, had plundered, tortured and looted the country. Those are Machado’s allegations. The sources reviewed included no reply from Rodríguez’s government.

She said Venezuela wouldn’t be moving toward a transition if President Donald Trump hadn’t decided to bring Maduro before the courts. Asked whether the United States had sent a message about her return, she said “not directly.” The interviewer noted State Department messages saying Washington hadn’t blocked her. She had previously said Washington excluded her from talks, and was preparing what the article described as her eighth attempt to return home.

Machado also argued that a democratic Venezuela would serve U.S. goals on hemispheric security, trade and migration. She estimated the country could produce five to six million barrels of oil a day with US$200 billion in investment, and said investors would come only with the rule of law. Her estimates weren’t independently confirmed.

Prediction markets offer a cautious read. Polymarket showed a 9.5% chance that Venezuela would schedule a presidential election by 31 December, with about US$148,000 traded, as of 1 a.m. ET on 19 October. A separate market showed a 25.5% chance that Machado would enter Venezuela by 31 December, with about US$115,000 traded. Those figures are real-money bets, not polls, and neither covers amnesty.

Why This Matters: Machado’s stance puts a hard question at the center of Venezuela’s transition: can a country rebuild trust if people accused of torture and persecution aren’t held to account? Her insistence on constitutional and treaty limits, paired with demands for new electoral and judicial institutions, frames recovery as an institutional project rather than a personal one. The numbers show why it’s urgent. Foro Penal counted at least 322 political prisoners, and another group counted 424 arbitrarily detained, so families are still waiting. The proposed election date remains unofficial, and the sources don’t report whether either negotiating side has accepted her requests. Until they do, people living under the current system carry the cost of the delay.