When she was growing up, writes Machado, Venezuela regularly held elections with peaceful transfers of power and enjoyed a degree of prosperity greater than many of its Latin American neighbors, thanks to abundant oil. That changed when Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999. He “began by focusing on controlling the judicial system,” replacing longtime jurists with his lackeys, and enriched himself while immiserating his people. The universities were islands of resistance, she writes, but now “even private universities…have been compromised by the regime.” Despite winning election to Parliament, she had to fight to take her place there, and, when she ran for president, she was cheated out of victory by Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro. She also won the Nobel Peace Prize (which she later gifted to President Trump, who is not mentioned in the book). Machado’s “manifesto” is a brief set of principles, most unobjectionable on their face: “Our individual liberty will forever be fully realized within a Venezuelan ecosystem booming with liberty. …The people of Venezuela deserve a duly elected government that maintains the will and capacity to guarantee the safety of every citizen.” She remains out of power for all that, Maduro having been kidnapped by the U.S. but with his lieutenant installed in his place. Machado’s book certainly gives insight into her antisocialist views and the agenda that might follow should she in fact take office one day, but the book is a bit of a hodgepodge—a chronology, a little autobiographical essay, the manifesto itself, and testimonials by various opponents of the regime—that seems done in a hurry.
