Venezuela’s Nobel winner says she will appear in Oslo after missing ceremony
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 4 hours ago
- 4 min read
By SIMON ROMERO and HENRIK PRYSER LIBELL
María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader who won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, said Wednesday that she was on her way to Oslo, Norway, after failing to appear at the ceremony to collect the prize. Her trip, she told a member of the Nobel committee, required people to risk their lives to ensure her safe transit.
Machado’s emergence from hiding in Venezuela and the danger involved in being smuggled out of the country in the face of threats by the government to arrest her represent a perilous new phase in the crisis gripping the country. Controversy already shrouded Machado’s selection for the peace prize because she has been an enthusiastic supporter of using U.S. military force to remove Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s authoritarian president.
“As soon as I arrive, I will be able to embrace all my family and my children that I have not seen for two years,” Machado told Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Nobel committee, according to an audio clip of a phone call released by the prize’s organizers.
Machado’s intention to go to Norway immediately raised questions about her future, since returning to Venezuela would place her at risk of being arrested.
Machado’s daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, accepted the prize on her mother’s behalf in Oslo, the Norwegian capital. The Norwegian Nobel Institute had awarded Machado the prize in October for her contributions to advancing democracy in Venezuela.
The confusion surrounding Machado’s whereabouts made this year’s Nobel ceremony in Oslo the most unpredictable in recent years.
Machado is thought to have been living in hiding in Venezuela since Venezuela’s government embarked on a campaign of repression against opposition leaders and protesters angered over Maduro’s move to fraudulently declare himself the winner of a presidential election last year.
Maduro claimed to have won the race despite vote counts, confirmed by independent monitoring organizations, that showed that he lost by a wide margin to Edmundo González, who ran in Machado’s place after she was barred from the election.
Venezuela’s government has said that Machado would be considered a fugitive if she left the country, laying bare the risks involved in traveling to Norway to receive the prize. It is not clear if Venezuelan authorities would allow Machado to return without being detained.
A sense of theatrical suspense as to Machado’s whereabouts arose after Kristian Berg Harpviken, the head of the Nobel Institute, which helps select the recipient of the prize, said over the weekend that Machado had confirmed she would be in the capital for the event.
Machado, 58, is a former lawmaker who rose to international prominence by uniting much of Venezuela’s opposition to Maduro. She is a member of a wealthy Venezuelan family that owns one of the country’s largest steel producers, partially expropriated by Venezuela’s government.
She became a political activist in the early 2000s and founded Súmate, a voter rights group that led a failed effort to recall Hugo Chávez, the former president and founder of Venezuela’s modern socialist movement.
In 2010, Machado was elected to the National Assembly. Although she had significant public support, she was unable to dislodge Venezuela’s leftist leadership through elections. In 2014, she was stripped of her seat.
In 2023, Machado won an opposition primary but was blocked from running for president by Venezuelan authorities in 2024. That was when she opted for the strategy of having González, a former diplomat, run for president instead.
While Machado has been recognized for her activism, she was also a controversial choice for the peace prize as an enthusiastic supporter of using U.S. military force to oust Maduro. The Trump administration has deployed thousands of military personnel in the Caribbean in a pressure campaign targeting Venezuela.
The Norwegian Peace Council, an organization promoting conflict resolution, declined to hold its traditional torchlight procession to honor Machado, saying she did not “align with the core values” of the group.
It was only the second time the organization decided against holding the procession, following a similar decision in 2012 when the European Union was awarded the peace prize.
Machado has aligned closely with President Donald Trump, refusing to criticize his administration’s deadly strikes on boats that U.S. officials claim are carrying illicit drugs.
The strikes, which form part of the U.S. pressure campaign on Maduro, began in early September. So far, they have killed nearly 90 people, according to U.S. authorities.
A broad range of experts in laws governing the use of lethal force say the strikes are illegal, arguing that the Trump administration has not shown that an armed conflict exists between the United States and Venezuela.
Machado has also come under scrutiny for exaggerating Maduro’s ties to drug trafficking as the Trump administration tries to make the case that Venezuela, a minor player in the drug trade compared with Colombia, Mexico or Ecuador, is flooding the United States with deadly drugs.
Machado has also waded into highly contentious political disputes in the United States related to Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 presidential election. In recent weeks, she has amplified debunked claims that Venezuela’s government rigged elections in the United States.
Machado’s last public appearance was at a protest in January after she was in hiding for months; Maduro’s government has threatened to arrest her on multiple occasions.
After Machado went into hiding, her daughter accepted several awards on her behalf, including the Sakharov Prize for the Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament and the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize from the Council of Europe.