Less than 24 hours after stepping back onto Venezuelan soil following eight years in exile to kickstart new negotiations over the country’s political future, opposition figure Dinorah Figuera has announced she will travel to the United States for a series of strategy meetings, the opposition leader confirmed to AFP in a Friday interview.
The former lawmaker, who enjoys U.S. government backing for a plan to advance democratic transition after the ousting of longtime authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro, made an unannounced arrival in Caracas on Thursday, where she held a landmark sit-down with the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly. In audio messages sent to AFP via WhatsApp, Figuera explained that the trip to Miami is intended to assess next steps in the political process, though she declined to name the parties she will meet with during her U.S. visit.
The meeting between Figuera and National Assembly leader Jorge Rodriguez marks a critical opening milestone in a deliberate, long-term effort to build a free, inclusive democratic society for Venezuela, U.S. State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott emphasized in an official statement released after the talks.
The current political shift in Venezuela follows a major development in January, when Maduro, the country’s former president, was apprehended during a U.S. military operation and taken into custody on federal drug trafficking charges. Since his arrest, the country’s executive branch has been led on an interim basis by Maduro’s former vice president, Delcy Rodriguez.
In the days following her return, Figuera has already drawn a clear line between her political initiative and that of fellow opposition figure Maria Corina Machado, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who recently rolled out her own separate framework to negotiate a democratic transition for the crisis-battered nation.