Before Maduro’s ouster, opposition leader Mariá Corina Machado said Venezuelans should run their country: ‘We know what we need to do’

• In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady revisits her interview with Venezuela’s opposition leader
• The big story: Foreign investors circle Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.
• The markets: Mostly up, with big gains in Asia.
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. A little over two months ago, I interviewed Venezuelan opposition leader and 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner Mariá Corina Machado at the Fortune Global Forum. She spoke to us from an undisclosed location, later escaped to Norway, and remains in hiding. One of the most prominent advocates for reform in a country that was praised as a stable and affluent democracy just a generation ago, Machado was blocked from running for president in Venezuela’s 2024 election. Edmundo González ran in her place and won, according to independent observers. 

With Donald Trump’s surprise invasion of Venezuela to arrest President Nicolás Maduro and his wife on drug trafficking charges, many might have assumed that Machado would be chosen to lead. Instead, Trump picked Maduro’s deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, saying Machado lacked the respect needed.

Of course, much can change in the coming days. Rodríguez described Trump’s move as a criminal military intervention that violated international law while Machado thanked the U.S. for its action in a letter posted on X. But anyone who leads Venezuela right now faces a Faustian choice, as Trump has said the U.S. will temporarily “run” the country and boasted that Americans are “going to be taking a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground” from the country’s vast oil reserves.

Rodríguez refuses to accept any violation of national sovereignty, despite Trump’s threats, and Machado won’t, either. The Nobel Prize winner said as much in her letter and was clearly hesitant to endorse the administration’s methods when we spoke in October. At that time, the U.S. was deploying war ships to the Caribbean and had blown up ten Venezuelan boats because of suspected drug trafficking. When I asked her if it was right for the U.S. to take such unilateral action, she deflected to accusing Maduro of criminal actions. While Machado welcomes U.S. support—“Maduro started the war; President Trump is ending the war”—she made it clear that Venezuelans could handle it from here.

“We are ready to take over; we know what we need to do,” she told me back in October, predicting a $1.7 trillion opportunity for foreign investors. “Venezuela will be the single biggest economic opportunity for decades to come in this region.” You can watch the full interview here. And be sure to check out Jeff Sonnenfeld’s memo to CEOs on the aftermath of U.S. action in Venezuela.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com