Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado portrait seen amongst photographs of earlier winners on the Nobel Peace Heart in Oslo on Dec. 9, 2025, on the eve of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony.
Odd Andersen/AFP through Getty Photographs
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Odd Andersen/AFP through Getty Photographs
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 a clumsy 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 can 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 by means of peaceable means, and that does not match her very nicely,” says David Smilde, a Venezuela professional 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 Girl,” 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 20 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 an alternative of giving up, she led a nationwide marketing campaign that satisfied thousands and thousands of Venezuelans to vote for a substitute candidate, retired diplomat Edmundo González. In accordance with 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 means.”
Nonetheless, Maduro refused to depart workplace and ordered an enormous crackdown on the opposition that prompted González to flee to Spain. From hiding inside Venezuela, Machado has continued to provide interviews, rally her supporters and denounce the Maduro regime’s human rights abuses, press censorship, and the holding of political prisoners.
In October, she grew to become the primary Venezuelan to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The prize committee lauded “her battle to realize a simply and peaceable transition from dictatorship to democracy.”
Machado known as the prize “a recognition of all Venezuelans” of their battle for freedom and democracy.
However Smilde, of Tulane College, describes Machado as “a really controversial decide.”
He stated Machado has typically 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 known 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 collaborating 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 power.”
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 international 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 top of the Maduro regime is imminent. However Smilde says counting on the U.S. might 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.
“If you constantly say ‘The top is close to, Maduro is weaker than ever,” however there is not any transition, finally individuals suppose both you might be mendacity otherwise you’re so incompetent you can’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 attainable 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 is 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.
