Maria Corina Machado: A Nobel Peace Prize in Favor of War?

The world woke up today to the surprising news that Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize this Friday.

According to the BBC, the Norwegian Nobel Committee stated that Machado won the prize "for her tireless work in promoting the democratic rights of the Venezuelan people and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy."

According to the same source, the committee highlighted its role during the July 2024 presidential election. In that election, the opposition claimed victory at the polls, but the results were rejected by the ruling party, which never presented evidence of its alleged victory.

"Democracy is a prerequisite for lasting peace. However, we live in a world in decline, where more and more authoritarian regimes defy the norms and resort to violence," the Norwegian Committee noted.

"María Corina Machado has dedicated years to working for the freedom of the Venezuelan people. The Venezuelan regime's iron grip on power and its repression of the population are not unique phenomena in the world," the institution emphasized.

And she added: "We are seeing the same trends globally: the rule of law is abused by those in power, press freedom is silenced, critics are imprisoned, and societies are pushed toward authoritarian regimes and militarization. In 2024, more elections were held than ever before, but fewer and fewer are free and fair."

WHAT THE NOBEL COMMITTEE OVERLOOKED

What the Committee overlooked is the relationship that this opposition leader has kept for more than 20 years with the United States government in its quest to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution.

A quick Google search reveals the opposition leader's extensive resume as a puppet of the empire.

- On May 31, 2005, George W. Bush Jr. received her in the Oval Office for a private meeting that lasted just over 50 minutes. The topic of the conversation was supposedly to request help to overthrow the constitutional government of President Hugo Chávez Frías on the eve of the crucial Summit of the Americas scheduled to meet in November of that year, where the White House was awaiting approval of the FTAA.

- In 2005, Machado was tried for her signature on the "Carmona decree," which validated the coup d'état in Venezuela on April 10, 2002. She was also tried for conspiracy because an NGO she created and directed received a $53,000 subsidy. She is part of the National Endowment for Democracy, funded by the United States Congress. She was sentenced to 28 years in prison for both charges, but was pardoned by then-President Hugo Chávez.

- In March 2014, coinciding with the first of the bloody "guarimbas" organized by the Venezuelan right, Machado appeared on the international scene as the unlikely "alternate ambassador" of Panama at the session of the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States, using that platform to attack the government of President Nicolás Maduro. Machado was then a member of the National Assembly of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and in a blatant act of treason, she openly requested before the Permanent Council of the OAS that the organization arrange for a foreign military intervention to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro.

- For years, this "patriotic" Venezuelan leader tirelessly advocated with the governments of the United States and the European Union to impose harsh economic and other sanctions on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Currently, that country is the victim of 930 unilateral coercive measures (UCMs) that have affected all areas of economic activity and caused severe hardship for the entire Venezuelan population.

- María Corina Machado and the "self-proclaimed president" Juan Guaidó handed over companies and assets belonging to the Venezuelan people, such as CITGO in the United States and Monómeros, the largest fertilizer manufacturer, in Colombia, into foreign hands. Both figures were also complicit in the seizure of 31 tons of gold by the United Kingdom, valued at nearly two billion dollars, and also in the blockade of financial assets imposed by Washington and its European lackeys. Conservative estimates of the economic damage caused by Machado and Guaidó against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela amount to approximately US$140 billion.

- During the July 2024 presidential election, she acted as the protective godmother of the new Guaidó, invented by the US government, Edmundo González.

- Recently, Maria Corina Machado has been accused by the Bolivarian government of leading attempts at terrorist attacks to destabilize the country.

- Last Monday, the First Vice President of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Diosdado Cabello, denounced that sectors of the far right insist on promoting acts of violence to generate chaos in the country and thus maintain their funding from abroad.

These statements were made in reference to the recent complaint made by Jorge Rodríguez, head of the Venezuelan Dialogue Processes and president of the National Assembly (AN), who warned the United States government that the extremist opposition is planning to plant a bomb at the US embassy in Caracas, as well as at a European embassy.

The Venezuelan official emphasized that despite their attempts, state institutions have managed to neutralize various terrorist operations aimed at destabilizing the country. "All those involved were captured and confessed their ties to the extremist groups led by María Corina Machado and Iván Simonovis."

The Venezuelan official recalled that in August, "a bomb was planted in Plaza Venezuela, and everything points to extremist groups, linked to these two individuals, as being responsible for this act that sought to end the lives of innocent people."

The NOBEL, TRUMP, and MARIA CORINA

The "peacemaker" Donald Trump has been demanding the Nobel Peace Prize for years. A strange claim, considering that during his first term and so far in his second, Trump has bombed Syria, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Afghanistan. In his first five months back in office, the president sent his bombers to attack foreign targets more than 500 times, as many as Joe Biden in his four years in office, according to the independent ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data) database.

However, the current White House resident has persisted with his obsession. On September 30, in a speech to his generals in Virginia, the president said that if he wasn't awarded the prize: "It will be a great insult to our country, I can tell you that. I don't want it, I want the country to have it."

He made the same point before the UN General Assembly: "Everyone says they should give it to me," and this week he reiterated the issue: "I don't think anyone in history has solved so many [wars], but maybe they'll find an excuse not to give it to me."

Despite repeated US pressure, the Norwegian Nobel Committee asserted its independence from Trump.

"Of course, we see a lot of media attention surrounding some candidates," Nobel Committee Secretary Kristian Berg Harpviken responded in Oslo. But that has no influence at all on the ongoing discussions within the committee."

"The committee examines each nomination on its own merits," he explained in an interview this week with AFP.

"We do our best to organize the process and meetings so that we are not unduly influenced by any campaign," he added.

"Throughout history, there are few people who oriented their careers with the goal of winning the Nobel Peace Prize and ultimately succeeded."

"The Nobel committee acts with complete independence and cannot afford to take these considerations into account when examining individual nominations," its secretary insisted.

"This kind of pressure is often counterproductive," said Halvard Leira, research director at the Norwegian Institute of International Relations (NUPI).

"If the committee were to award the prize to Trump now, it would obviously be accused of kneeling to it" and of renouncing the independence it professes, he explained to AFP.

But by selecting Maria Corina Machado, is Norway really demonstrating that it’s a country committed to the multilateralism that Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) championed in his time, and that Trump's "America First" slogan completely overturned?

It doesn't seem so. By choosing the Venezuelan opposition figure from among the 338 people and organizations competing for the prize this year, the independent Nobel Committee is aligning itself with nothing less than the latest warmongering campaign of the "peacemaker" Trump.

On October 4, according to a headline in Diario las Américas, laureate Maria Corina asserted that "Maduro is the head of the Tren de Aragua," one of the drug cartels that President Trump threatens to destroy by land and sea, and for which the United States has deployed an entire naval and air force, including a nuclear submarine, in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela.

In reality, with this selection, Maria Corina Machado's Nobel Committee demonstrated its independence from Trump but gave him - as a consolation? - a real gift by awarding the prize to one of the US puppets in Venezuela... and not precisely in favor of Peace.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff