{"id":488393,"date":"2025-10-10T13:08:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T13:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/488393\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T13:08:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T13:08:11","slug":"venezuelan-politician-maria-corina-machado-wins-nobel-peace-prize-nobel-peace-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/488393\/","title":{"rendered":"Venezuelan politician Mar\u00eda Corina Machado wins Nobel peace prize | Nobel peace prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Venezuelan opposition politician Mar\u00eda Corina Machado has won the Nobel peace prize<\/a> for her dogged struggle to rescue the South American country from its fate as \u201ca brutal, authoritarian state\u201d.<\/p>\n

Machado, 58, a conservative often described as Venezuela\u2019s Iron Lady, has spent the last year living in hiding after her political movement was widely believed to have beaten the country\u2019s president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a>, in the July 2024 presidential election.<\/p>\n

Maduro refused to accept he had lost to Machado\u2019s ally the former diplomat Edmundo Gonz\u00e1lez and launched a ferocious political crackdown that forced Gonz\u00e1lez into exile and Machado to go underground.<\/p>\n

In one of her last public appearances in Caracas, Machado said she was convinced Maduro\u2019s days in power were numbered after his apparently stinging defeat. \u201cI would say his departure is irreversible,\u201d she told the Guardian<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More than a year later Maduro remains in power and, crucially, has retained the support of Venezuela\u2019s military and key international backers such as China and Russia. Donald Trump has ordered a major naval buildup off Venezuela\u2019s Caribbean coast in recent weeks which some suspect could be a prelude to some kind of regime change operation.<\/a><\/p>\n

Machado reacted to her Nobel prize in a video that Gonz\u00e1lez posted on social media in which the pair celebrate the news. \u201cI can\u2019t believe it! My God!\u201d an incredulous Machado tells her ally. \u201cIt\u2019s fucking incredible!\u201d replies Gonz\u00e1lez.<\/p>\n

The Norwegian Nobel Institute shared a video<\/a> of the moment its director, Kristian Berg Harpviken, woke Machado up with the news. \u201cOh my God!\u201d she said. \u201cI have no words … But I hope you understand that … I am just one person, I certainly don\u2019t deserve this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Nobel committee celebrated Machado\u2019s long struggle for democracy in a statement that called her \u201cone of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times\u201d.<\/p>\n

It also paid tribute to the Venezuelan opposition\u2019s \u201cinnovative and brave, peaceful and democratic\u201d push for change during last year\u2019s election, when hundreds of thousands of volunteers mobilised to observe the election and collect detailed tallies showing that Gonz\u00e1lez had won.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cBut the regime refused to accept the election result, and clung to power,\u201d the committee said, painting a dire picture of life in Venezuela<\/a>, which has gradually sunk into dictatorship since Maduro was democratically elected in 2013 after the death of his mentor, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez.<\/p>\n

\u201cVenezuela has evolved from a relatively democratic and prosperous country to a brutal, authoritarian state that is now suffering a humanitarian and economic crisis,\u201d the committee said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost Venezuelans live in deep poverty, even as the few at the top enrich themselves. The violent machinery of the state is directed against the country\u2019s own citizens. Nearly 8 million people have left the country. The opposition has been systematically suppressed by means of election rigging, legal prosecution and imprisonment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Machado, who many Venezuelans know simply as MCM or Mar\u00eda Corina, has been involved in politics for more than two decades and was a member of Venezuela\u2019s national assembly from 2011 to 2014. She famously clashed<\/a> with Ch\u00e1vez over Venezuela\u2019s economic tribulations in 2012, earning the rebuke: \u201cEagles don\u2019t hunt flies.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it was in touring the economically devastated country in the lead-up to the 2024 election that she cemented her reputation as Chavismo\u2019s most effective and influential adversary. Her rallies drew huge, ecstatic crowds, with many supporters declaring an almost religious devotion to the charismatic Catholic politician.<\/p>\n

Machado had originally hoped to run for president, but Venezuela\u2019s pro-regime supreme court banned her from doing so, leaving Gonz\u00e1lez, a little-known former ambassador, to fill her shoes.<\/p>\n

The committee commended Machado as a \u201cbrave and committed champion of peace\u201d who had kept \u201cthe flame of democracy burning during a growing darkness\u201d. It also celebrated her as \u201ca key, unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided\u201d. For all her popular support, however, Machado is not universally liked.<\/p>\n

Some Venezuelans distrust her as a result of thinly veiled calls for a foreign military intervention to unseat Maduro in the past. She argued in 2019 that only a \u201ca real, credible severe and imminent threat\u201d<\/a> of the use of international force would convince Maduro to leave power.<\/p>\n

Others are suspicious of her ties to radical rightwing politicians such as Trump and Brazil\u2019s former president Jair Bolsonaro.<\/p>\n

Christopher Sabatini, a senior research fellow on Latin America at Chatham House, said Maduro would be furious at the Nobel committee\u2019s decision. \u201cThe question is, what now? Will it prompt public demonstrations in favour of Mar\u00eda Corina Machado that [heap] some sort of public pressure on the government? Perhaps,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they would be hard pressed to crack down with the international community [watching], but they did it in July 2024.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Venezuelan opposition politician Mar\u00eda Corina Machado has won the Nobel peace prize for her dogged struggle to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-488393","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115350031899641561","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}