THE WOMAN WHO GAZES ** By Elizabeth Sánchez Vegas.
There is something deeply revealing in this photograph of María Corina Machado today in Panama. She is surrounded by phones, cameras, voices, people who want to capture the moment, and yet her attention seems to have erased everything else. She leans toward a man who is speaking to her and looks him straight in the eye, with that focus that only emerges when one has decided that, for a few minutes, the story of the person in front of them deserves to take up everything. That gaze moves me deeply. Because we have seen María Corina before crowds, on podiums, among leaders, presidents, and journalists; we have heard her speak of freedom, elections, political prisoners, return, transition, and the future. But there are much smaller moments that also reveal who a person is.
Here, there is no podium. There are two human beings conversing just a few centimeters apart. She listens. And truly listening demands something that politics often loses too soon: sensitivity. It means resisting the urge to prepare your response while the other person is still speaking; it means looking into eyes before a camera; it means understanding that behind every grand word—Venezuela, exile, democracy, reconstruction—there are particular lives, families, pains, losses, and hopes that will never fully fit into a speech. Perhaps that’s why this image carries such power. María Corina is in Panama accompanying a day of solidarity after the earthquake, physically far from Venezuela and, at the same time, inevitably surrounded by Venezuelans.
The country finds her again around every corner. In a conversation. In a request. In someone who needs to tell her something. And she draws near. I like to think that a nation is rebuilt this way too: by learning once again to pay attention to each other. After so many years in which Venezuelan power turned the citizen into a statistic, a file, a suspect, a beneficiary, or an enemy, reclaiming the Republic will also have to mean restoring to each person their most elemental condition: to be seen, to be heard, to matter. That’s why today I linger on this photograph. With hands clasped together. With the body leaning toward the speaker. With that steady gaze that seems to say, without needing to voice it yet: I am listening to you. There are leaders who know how to speak to a country. Far more difficult is to preserve, after so many years of struggle, the ability to look at a single person as if, in that instant, they were the entire country. And perhaps there, precisely there, lies an essential part of Maria Corina Machado: the woman who gazes and feels.
Panama thanks Maria Corina Machado for her time spent in Panama helping out the Panamanian people in their time of need after the earthquake. Devastation in the lives of the locals, many of whom have lost their homes and their personal belongings. We wish Maria well with the hope that she can once again get back to Venezuela and lead her people.
In the face of the adversity Panama is going through after the recent earthquake, the Venezuelan leader @MariaCorinaYA joined the efforts at the collection centers, recognizing the dedication of every volunteer and organization working tirelessly. Just as the Panamanian people extended their solidary hand to Venezuela on that June 24, today we Venezuelans make our presence felt with gratitude, commitment, and empathy.
https://x.com/ConVzlaComando/status/2109016997065335127?s=20
Mayer Mizrachi (@Mayer), mayor of the City of Panama, thanks
@MariaCorinaYA for her visit and the support provided at the collection center set up in the Hatillo Building.
https://x.com/NewsroomPanama/status/2109287588452577758?s=20
