María Corina Machado Returns to Venezuela

BREAKING: Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel laureate María Corina Machado returns to Venezuela after nearly 10 months in exile, writing 'I am here. With you.'

María Corina Machado is back in Venezuela.

The opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate returned today after nearly ten months in exile, announcing it herself with four words. I am here. With you. She spent most of this year outside the country, and before that she lived in hiding inside it, moving between safe houses while the government hunted her allies. These are the first pictures of her back among supporters.

Understand what this means. Nicolás Maduro's government has arrested opposition figures for far less than coming home. Machado won the Nobel Prize precisely because she kept fighting an election the world watched being taken from her movement. Returning now, in person, in public, is the biggest challenge anyone has put to Maduro since that vote.

She knows exactly what the regime does to people like her. She came back anyway.

This is Liu Yang, reporting for HIT.