Posted on by Randy Slovacek

Nobel Peace Prize Awarded To Venezuelan Activist María Corina Machado

María Corina Machado, the leader of a powerful social movement in Venezuela challenging the country’s authoritarian president, has been award the Nobel Peace Prize today.

From the New York Times:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised “her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

Ms. Machado emerged from Venezuela’s political sidelines and corralled the country’s fractious opposition behind her before the 2024 election. That followed years of political apathy in Venezuela, where President Nicolás Maduro’s government crushed protests and arrested dissidents, helping to spur an enormous exodus from the country.

After being barred from running, she backed an opposition candidate against Mr. Maduro in the presidential race. Mr. Maduro won what was widely regarded as a rigged election, and Ms. Machado went into hiding.

David Scheffer, an international law scholar at Arizona State University, said that in choosing Ms. Machado, the Nobel committee had “elevated a courageous hero of peacemaking — someone who works among her own people to protect them against repression and atrocity crimes in order to shape a more peaceful and democratic world.”

From the official press release:

Maria Corina Machado has led the struggle for democracy in the face of ever-expanding authoritarianism in Venezuela. Ms Machado studied engineering and finance, and had a short career in business. In 1992 she established the Atenea Foundation, which works to benefit street children in Caracas.

Ten years later she was one of the founders of Súmate, which promotes free and fair elections and has conducted training and election monitoring. In 2010 she was elected to the National Assembly, winning a record number of votes. The regime expelled her from office in 2014.

Ms Machado leads the Vente Venezuela opposition party and in 2017 helped found the Soy Venezuela alliance, which unites pro-democracy forces in the country across political dividing lines.

In 2023 she announced her candidacy for president in the 2024 presidential election. When she was blocked from running, she supported the opposition’s alternative candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.

The opposition mobilised widely and collected systematic documentation that it was the true winner of the election. The regime declared victory and tightened its grip on power.

Ms Machado is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize first and foremost for her efforts to advance democracy in Venezuela. But democracy is also in retreat internationally.

Democracy – understood as the right to freely express one’s opinion, to cast one’s vote and to be represented in elective government – is the foundation of peace both within countries and between countries.

Fun fact – Secretary of State Marco Rubio was among eight Republican members of Congress signing a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee last year nominating Machado for the Nobel Peace Prize.

I think it’s safe to say – after Trump has spent years of campaigning for the honor (out of wild jealousy of former President Barack Obama) – no bottle of ketchup is safe today at the White House.

White House spokesperson Steven Cheung has already tweeted his bitterness over his boss not being awarded the honor.

Because nothing says “Nobel Peace Prize” like deploying the military against your own innocent citizens, amiright?

Nobel Peace Prize

(lead image: María Corina Machado – photo credit: Alexcocopro, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons)

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