{"id":54103,"date":"2025-12-17T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/?p=54103"},"modified":"2025-12-17T19:03:51","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T22:03:51","slug":"maria-corina-machado-a-controversial-nobel-peace-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/maria-corina-machado-a-controversial-nobel-peace-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"Mar\u00eda Corina Machado: a controversial Nobel Peace Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recently, after living in hiding for sixteen months due to persecution by the Venezuelan government, Mar\u00eda Corina Machado reappeared in Oslo\u2014although she did not arrive in time\u2014to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Her merits in defending democracy in Venezuela are undeniable. The Norwegian Committee cited criteria such as the struggle for democratic rights, a \u201cjust and peaceful\u201d transition, civic courage, and the unification of the opposition through the use of peaceful tools. However, the confrontational discourse of Machado and her international allies raises doubts about the coherence between her merits and the peaceful path that, in theory, earned her the award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A political profile that goes beyond mere activism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Machado lacks the conciliatory traits required to bring together all the country\u2019s different sensibilities. Venezuela\u2019s roster of suitable opposition figures\u2014equally seasoned in the struggle for freedoms\u2014includes figures such as Gerardo Blyde (architect of the Barbados Agreement between the government and the opposition) or Manuel Rosales. Both have been targets of Maduro\u2019s movement and carry in their DNA\u2014and this aspect is decisive\u2014the negotiating gene, an attribute Machado does not display.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And the fact is that Chavismo\u2014no matter how much its detractors may regret it\u2014has many supporters and still retains significant mobilizing capacity. It is therefore impossible to build a new country without its participation. Moreover, Venezuelan society is deeply polarized and perhaps the last thing it needs is a figure who divides it even further, such as Machado\u2014especially when her political affinities are taken into account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Courted in Europe<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Machado has shifted from a conservative tendency (European liberalism\/neoliberalism) to frequenting the global far right. In 2024 she drew closer to the Ibero-American far-right project Iberosphere, linked to Spain\u2019s Vox party. And from February 2025 onward, Machado positioned herself more clearly by participating in \u201cEurope Viva 25,\u201d the summit of the Patriots for Europe (PfE) held in Madrid. The Patriots are a constellation of far-right European parties, very powerful in the European Parliament. At this forum, Machado and Milei were the star guests invited by Santiago Abascal (Vox). PfE includes parties such as Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s Fidesz, Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella\u2019s National Rally (RN), the Dutch Geert Wilders\u2019 Party for Freedom (PVV), and Matteo Salvini\u2019s League (Lega), among others, with Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s Likud as an observer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the convention\u2014whose slogan, \u201cMake Europe Great Again,\u201d leaves little to the imagination\u2014the cream of the continent\u2019s far right was present, seasoned leaders in dismantling European democracies. The speakers\u2019 narrative delved into the old litany of ultranationalist victimhood. Their b\u00eate noires are global multilateral institutions such as the UN, the WHO, or the ICC, as well as the European Union and Muslims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Machado thanked the forum for the invitation and welcomed the \u201cawakening of European societies\u201d and their appreciation of freedom, hinting at a retreat of democracy in Europe. Nor was there any lack of jubilation\u2014shared by those present\u2014over Donald Trump\u2019s return to the White House. As for Netanyahu, the relationship is longstanding: at the time she congratulated him on his \u201cdecisive actions\u201d in the \u201cwar\u201d in Gaza and has promised to move Venezuela\u2019s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which would violate international law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. interventionism, or how to restore a democracy through authoritarianism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Machado firmly supports a return to the old interventionist policies of Uncle Sam in Latin America championed by Trump, whom she considers the best opportunity for \u201cchange\u201d in Venezuela and the bearer of a courageous stance in U.S. policy toward the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Venezuelan leader regards the U.S. Caribbean strategy as \u201cabsolutely correct,\u201d including extrajudicial killings of alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean, which contravenes the Declaration of Human Rights. At the same time, she courts Trump with access to Venezuelan oil and promises multi-billion-dollar business opportunities for the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bellicose rhetoric and calls for \u201cinternational\u201d intervention<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years earlier, in 2018, Machado invoked Article 187 of the Venezuelan Constitution to request \u201can international peace mission,\u201d citing the \u201cresponsibility to protect, applied, for example, in Kosovo in 1998\u20131999.\u201d She also appealed to the TIAR (Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance), a Cold War defensive instrument, to assemble an international coalition to carry out a \u201cPeace and Stabilization Operation\u201d in Venezuela, with a regional allied multinational force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the start of Trump\u2019s second term, Machado has made repeated references to Maduro\u2019s imminent downfall, the near arrival of \u201cfreedom,\u201d and her detailed plans \u201cfor the first 100 hours and the first 100 days of the transition.\u201d She has also promised that Venezuela will \u201csoon be the United States\u2019 greatest ally in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where there\u2019s smoke, there\u2019s fire<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The signs are not few. Trump has declared Maduro a terrorist, closed Venezuelan airspace, and deployed the U.S. fleet in the Caribbean\u2014actions that demonstrate, at the very least, military intimidation. Machado, for her part, appeals to the \u201cactions of President Trump\u201d and to the Venezuelan armed forces to support him. And although she avoids speaking of invasion, her adviser Pedro Urruchurtu believes that Maduro cannot be overthrown without the use of force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After receiving the prize, Machado turned Oslo into a political lectern with scarcely veiled calls for U.S. intervention, urging \u201cdecisive\u201d Trump \u201cactions,\u201d and asserting that \u201cVenezuela is already invaded by Russian and Iranian agents, terrorist groups, and drug cartels,\u201d and that \u201c60% of the population works\u201d for the latter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Nobel Peace Prize certainly does not fit someone who, like Mar\u00eda Corina Machado, projects a decidedly aggressive discourse. The laureate does not exude fraternity, but rather the invasion of one country by another in the name of a supposed struggle for democracy, thereby legitimizing the agenda of the new Monroeism of the Trump administration. Her tools are thus implements of war, not of peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The granting of the Nobel Peace Prize to Mar\u00eda Corina Machado reopens the debate over the coherence between her democratic struggle and a confrontational political discourse aligned with the far right and international interventionism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":843,"featured_media":54062,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16812],"tags":[15635],"gps":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-54103","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-venezuela-en","8":"tag-debates"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/843"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54103"},{"taxonomy":"gps","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gps?post=54103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}