Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado portrait seen amongst photos of earlier winners on the Nobel Peace Middle in Oslo on Dec. 9, 2025, on the eve of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony.
Odd Andersen/AFP through Getty Photos
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Odd Andersen/AFP through Getty Photos
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Venezuelan opposition chief María Corina Machado plans to just accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Wednesday. However the ceremony comes at an ungainly second as a result of Machado seems to have given up on utilizing peaceable means to dislodge Venezuela’s authoritarian regime.
Machado now claims that elections in Venezuela are a sham that may by no means result in the ouster of President Nicolás Maduro. She has additionally emerged as a full-throated supporter of President Trump’s gunboat diplomacy within the Caribbean Sea, together with his threats to take away Maduro by power.
“Most individuals interpret the Nobel Peace Prize as (going to) somebody who works via peaceable means, and that does not match her very nicely,” says David Smilde, a Venezuela knowledgeable at Tulane College.
But Machado is a revered determine amongst throngs of Venezuelans, each contained in the nation and overseas, who’re determined for change after having watched Maduro crush their nation’s democracy and its financial system throughout his practically 13 years in energy.
“She is our Iron Woman,” says Ana María Ramos, a nutritionist who fled Venezuela 9 years in the past and now lives in Bogotá, the Colombian capital.
Machado, 58, is a right-wing politician who has spent twenty years opposing Venezuela’s more and more autocratic authorities. Whereas many opposition figures have fled the nation, she remained in Venezuela because the Maduro regime’s most charismatic and ferocious critic.
With polls suggesting that she would trounce Maduro within the July 2024 presidential election, his authorities banned her from working. However as a substitute of giving up, she led a nationwide marketing campaign that satisfied hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans to vote for a substitute candidate, retired diplomat Edmundo González. In response to voter tally sheets collected by the opposition, González beat Maduro by a greater than 2-to-1 margin.
Venezuelans in Bogotá, Colombia, rally for opposition chief and Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Corina Machado.
John Otis/for NPR
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John Otis/for NPR
“We performed by the democratic guidelines and we gained the election,” stated Daniel Navarro, a Venezuelan exile who helped arrange a pro-Machado march forward of Wednesday’s Nobel ceremony. “We did our greatest to realize energy in a peaceable manner.”
Nevertheless, Maduro refused to depart workplace and ordered a large crackdown on the opposition that prompted González to flee to Spain. From hiding inside Venezuela, Machado has continued to offer interviews, rally her supporters and denounce the Maduro regime’s human rights abuses, press censorship, and the holding of political prisoners.
In October, she turned the primary Venezuelan to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The prize committee lauded “her wrestle to realize a simply and peaceable transition from dictatorship to democracy.”
Machado referred to as the prize “a recognition of all Venezuelans” of their wrestle for freedom and democracy.
However Smilde, of Tulane College, describes Machado as “a really controversial decide.”
He stated Machado has generally labored in opposition to negotiations aimed toward peacefully eradicating Maduro from workplace. Regardless of her key function in final yr’s presidential marketing campaign, she has usually referred to as on voters to boycott elections which allowed pro-regime politicians to occupy practically all authorities posts. In Might, she enraged many opposition politicians by calling them “traitors” for participating in Venezuela’s gubernatorial and legislative elections.
Machado helps ongoing U.S. navy strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats within the Caribbean Sea regardless that they’ve killed dozens of Venezuelans. What’s extra, she’s been lobbying for American troops to assist take out Maduro.
When requested throughout an NPR interview the day after profitable the Nobel if she supported utilizing American troops to revive democracy to Venezuela, she stated: “You can not have peace with out freedom, and you can’t have freedom with out energy.”
However Machado’s push for U.S. navy intervention helps to solidify the Maduro regime as a result of he stokes nationalist sentiment by elevating the specter of overseas troops coming ashore on Venezuelan seashores, says Vladimir Villegas, a radio present host in Caracas.
“Venezuela has two extremes: Maduro and María Corina,” says opposition lawmaker Henrique Capriles who favors negotiations to finish the disaster. “Each are in an all-or-nothing battle.”
As U.S. warships collect within the Caribbean, Machado is claiming that the tip of the Maduro regime is imminent. However Smilde says counting on the U.S. may backfire for Machado if Trump decides in opposition to navy motion. He factors out that Venezuela’s earlier opposition chief, Juan Guaidó, made comparable guarantees of regime change that by no means occurred. Guaidó’s reputation plummeted and he now lives in exile in Miami.
“While you persistently say ‘The top is close to, Maduro is weaker than ever,” however there isn’t any transition, finally folks suppose both you’re mendacity otherwise you’re so incompetent that you may’t make it occur,” Smilde stated.
But Machado’s hardline method rings true for a lot of Venezuelans who declare that Maduro steals elections, makes use of navy power to crush the democratic opposition, and solely takes half in negotiations to purchase time.
That is why when requested a couple of doable U.S. invasion, Ana Karina García, a Venezuelan activist in Colombia, says: “We have no different possibility on this second in our nation. We have to recuperate liberty in Venezuela.”
It doesn’t matter what occurs, Machado’s work inside Venezuela could also be coming to an finish. The Nobel Institute confirms she’s going to take part in Wednesday’s ceremony, although a scheduled press convention in Oslo on Tuesday was postponed and her staff has supplied no particulars on her arrival.
If Machado leaves Venezuela, it is unsure whether or not the regime there’ll let her return. Her household — together with the presidents of Argentina, Ecuador, Panama and Paraguay — are already in Oslo, whereas Machado’s personal whereabouts stay unknown.
