Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado is in Oslo, Norway, on Tuesday, the eve of the ceremony where she will officially receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Machado was expected to speak at a news conference at 7 a.m. EST, but it has since been postponed indefinitely. The new time will be announced two hours before, the Nobel Committee said.
This would mark Machado’s first public appearance since she was forced to live in hiding after denouncing electoral fraud in the July 28, 2024 presidential elections in Venezuela.
According to the Committee, María Corina Machado fully meets the three criteria outlined in Alfred Nobel’s will: “She has worked to unite the opposition in her country, has firmly opposed the militarization of Venezuelan society, and has consistently supported a peaceful transition to democracy.”
“She receives the award for her tireless efforts to promote the democratic rights of the Venezuelan people and her fight for a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy,” the Committee stated when announcing the award on Oct. 10.
“María Corina Machado has shown that democratic tools are also tools of peace. She represents the hope for a different future, where citizens’ fundamental rights are protected and their voices heard. In that future, the people will finally be free to live in peace,” the Committee remarked.
Who is María Corina Machado?
Born in Caracas on October 7, 1967, her father, Henrique Machado, was a significant figure in the metallurgy industry, with family businesses later expropriated by the Chávez government.
An industrial engineer from Andrés Bello Catholic University with a diploma in Finance from the Institute of Higher Administrative Studies, she also taught at the university’s Industrial Engineering school.
Machado has played a prominent role in Venezuelan civil society organizations. Alongside her mother, she co-founded Fundación Atenea, aimed at reintegrating at-risk children in Venezuela. She also led Oportuninas, an organization supporting programs for children from extremely impoverished households from 1998 to 2002.
In 2002, she co-founded Súmate, dedicated to defending citizens’ political rights.
As an opponent of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, she met with then-U.S. President George W. Bush at the White House in 2005, attracting strong criticism from the Venezuelan government, which accused her of being a CIA agent.
In February 2010, she resigned as president of Súmate to run in the September elections that year, where she was elected to the National Assembly representing Miranda state, receiving the highest number of votes for a deputy.
In 2011, she ran in the primaries of the opposition platform Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), but lost to Henrique Capriles in 2012. That same year, she founded the party Vente Venezuela, a self-proclaimed centrist-liberal organization.
From her seat, Machado stood as a staunch opponent of Chávez and became known for the phrase “to expropriate is to steal,” interrupting a Chávez speech with it in 2012.
In February 2014, she, along with Leopoldo López and Antonio Ledezma, led a campaign called “La Salida,” which involved organizing demonstrations to unseat Nicolás Maduro, who had been in office for only a few months following Chávez’s death.
Retaliation against Machado
In March 2014, she was removed as a deputy after being accused by then-Chamber President Diosdado Cabello of violating the Constitution by accepting an alternate representative position for Panama at the Organization of American States (OAS).
Also in 2014, she was charged with inciting violence during the anti-government protests of February, and was banned from leaving the country. She was further accused of conspiracy for an alleged plot to assassinate President Nicolás Maduro.
In 2015, Venezuela’s Comptroller General barred her from holding public office for a year due to omissions in her financial disclosures, preventing her from running for deputy that year.
In 2022, she confirmed her participation in the anti-Chavista primary elections set for October 2023. She registered her candidacy in June 2023, and a week later, the Comptroller General extended her disqualification imposed in 2015 to 15 years (till 2030), a decision condemned by her electoral rivals, the OAS, the United States, and the European Union.
Machado maintained her candidacy and dominated the Oct. 22 primary elections with 92.3% of the vote, although the vote was declared “suspended” by the Venezuelan Supreme Court a week later.
On November 30, 2023, the Venezuelan government opened a path for the re-authorization of anti-Chavistas, and in December, Machado requested a review of her case by the Supreme Court. However, on January 26, 2024, the high court upheld her 15-year disqualification.
Machado ceded her position to historian Corina Yoris, who was unable to register her candidacy due to electoral authorities’ restrictions. The Democratic Unity Platform, the main anti-Chavista coalition, then provisionally presented diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia. He was finally confirmed as the presidential candidate for the July 28 elections on April 19, with Machado’s support.
The National Electoral Council (CNE), a body with a majority government allegiance, declared Maduro the winner in July of last year, announcing without evidence that he received 6.4 million votes compared to the 5.3 million for González. The opposition collected and presented 83.5% of the voting records as proof of González’s victory at a 2-to-1 ratio over Maduro, evidence supported internationally by electoral observers such as the Carter Center and the United Nations.
This story was translated from Spanish with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool. An NBC digital editor reviewed the translation.
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