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. 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. Likewise, the United States lifted some economic sanctions on Venezuelan oil exports. With this new measure in effect 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 presumed tax fraud, which has been denounced by the opposition as a move with political motivations. In response, the United States reimposed 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. "Maximum union and civic-military mobilization because the team wins and we are going to win by hook or by crook. We are going to win, always to win." So the questions are: why is it so difficult that Maduro leaves power? And how did Venezuela get to its current state of political and economic decline?

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