On July 28, 2024, Venezuelans voted to elect Edmundo Gonzalez as the next president of the country. Following the election tensions rose as the incumbent president, Nicolas Maduro, failed to recognize the results of the election and cracked down on protesters in the streets. Over 2,400 people have been arrested as Gonzalez fled the country and is now exiled in Spain. The next president following the elections is expected to assume office on January 10, 2025. To discuss the current situation in Venezuela, the Georgetown Americas Institute (GAI) was pleased to host Maria Corina Machado, the head of the Venezuelan opposition, for a conversation with GAI managing director Denisse Yanovich and Alejandro Werner, GAI founding director.
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Maria Corina Machado is a Venezuelan opposition leader, politician, and activist known for her strong stance against the government of Nicolás Maduro. She has been a vocal critic of both Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez. Machado is the leader of the Vente Venezuela party, which advocates for liberal democracy and free-market reforms. She gained prominence as a founder of the Sumate organization, which played a significant role in organizing the 2004 recall referendum against Chávez. In 2010, she was elected to the National Assembly, but her term was cut short in 2014 when she was stripped of her seat for denouncing the government at the Organization of American States (OAS). Since then, she has been a central figure in Venezuela's opposition movement. Machado has a degree in industrial engineering from Andrés Bello Catholic University and a master's degree in finance from Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración (IESA, business school) in Caracas. She was also part of Yale University's World Fellows Program in 2009.
Denisse Yanovich is the managing director of the Georgetown Americas Institute. Prior to joining Georgetown she was the deputy to the president at the Inter-American Dialogue, a leading think tank on Latin America. She also worked at the Embassy of Colombia in Washington, managing their Public Diplomacy program, and Fedesarrollo, an economic policy think tank in Colombia, as a research associate. Yanovich holds a B.S. and M.A. in economics from Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá and M.A. in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University College, London.
Alejandro Werner is the founding director of the Georgetown Americas Institute and a non-resident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute. He recently completed almost nine years as director of the Western Hemisphere Department at the International Monetary Fund. Prior to that appointment, he was undersecretary of finance and public credit in Mexico’s Finance Ministry and held several positions in that ministry and the Central Bank. He also taught at leading universities in Mexico, Spain, and the United States. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. in economics from ITAM.