My own version of the Iron Lady
The name of Maria Corina Machado won’t sound familiar to many people. However, in
my opinion she is the most prominent female figure in my country, Venezuela, and I want
to take this opportunity to talk about her work, its relevance and how she influenced me.
Maria Corina was born in Caracas in 1967. She is an industrial engineer with a master’s
degree on finance, but she dedicated her life to politics. She is currently a deputy from the
Venezuelan parliament and received more votes in the election process than any other
candidate in our history. She is the leader of the “Comando Simón Bolvar”, founder of the
extinct non-profit civil partnership “SUMATE” and co-founder of the ATENEA and
OPORTUNITAS foundations, both of them destined to help homeless people, orphan
children and families in an extreme poverty situation in Venezuela. In 2005 she was the
first Venezuelan to be selected as part of the “Young Global Leaders Network” and
received the “Meritorious Achievement Award” from the Ballenger Foundation. In 2009
she participated in the prestigious “Yale World Fellows” program. In 2012 she was a
candidate in the opposition primary elections. She didn’t win but from that moment she
became the head of the international affairs of the MUD (Mesa de la Unidad Democrática).
The first time I saw Maria Corina I was 14 years old and she was standing in front of me,
giving a speech with a big banner that had the inscription “SUMATE”, which means “join
up”, behind her. By the way she was speaking I could tell she was very intelligent and
prepared, so I started paying attention to her. It was 2003 and Venezuela was staggering in
political uncertainty because of the national strike, better known as the “oil strike” that the
opposition to the government of Hugo Chavez organized by the end of 2002 to force a new
presidential election. Since the above mentioned strike was an epic failure, Maria Corina
was traveling around the country trying to gather enough signatures to force a recall
referendum.
I was a kid when Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela and I really don’t
remember how things were before his government. My parents were against his political
approach from the beginning. Yet, they never tried to influence my criteria because there
was no need to. While growing up I witnessed how the violence and inflation indexes
