The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to Maria Corina Machado, leader of the democratic forces of Venezuela. The award “for his tireless work in promoting the democratic rights of the Venezuelan people and for his struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy”. In recent days, the name of Donald Trump had also been mentioned as one of the possible winners, due to the efforts made by the American president to bring peace to the Middle East and between Russia and Ukraine.
“I’m in shock!”: Maria Corina Machado declared it after the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize, as revealed in a video from the press team. According to the secretary of the Committee, reported by the Guardian, Machado said: “This is an award for an entire movement.”
Who is Maria Corina Machado
From a good family, with a degree in industrial engineering, Maria Corina Machado could have left her country and like many Venezuelans built a comfortable life abroad. And instead the recent Nobel Peace Prize winner has stubbornly chosen to stay in Venezuela and make the battle for democracy and against Nicolas Maduro her reason for living. It is no coincidence that for everyone she is ‘the steel lady’. Donald Trump is certainly very disappointed, but even though he didn’t win the Nobel, the American president might appreciate that the prize went to the champion of the battle against the common arch-enemy.
Born in Caracas in 1967, the eldest of the four daughters of an important steel entrepreneur, Henrique Machado Zuloaga, and Corina Parisca, a psychologist. He graduated in engineering from the Andres Bello Catholic University and obtained a master’s degree in finance from the Institute of Higher Administration Studies, a sort of Venezuelan Ena, also in Caracas. While still young, he moved to Spain where, in Valencia, he worked for several years in the automotive industry. But in 1993 he returned to Carcas.
Already a mother of three children, in 1992 she created the Atenea Foundation to assist street children in Caracas. In 2002, in the midst of the authoritarian drift of the then president Higo Chavez, he founded the voluntary association Sumate with Alejandro Plaz. “I couldn’t stay at home and watch the country collapse,” he said later. It was Sumate, in 2004, who promoted the request for a referendum to oust Chavez. The president wins 60-40, with accusations of electoral fraud, and Machado ends up at the top of the regime’s list of enemies while Sumate ends up under accusation for having received funds from abroad. In February 2010 Machado resigned from Sumate and ran for parliament, supported by an independent platform: she was elected with 85% of the votes, a record at national level. «As a deputy of the Republic, as a representative of the people, I want to work tirelessly, responsibly and passionately to defend your right to think freely, to defend your right to live without fear», he chanted after the victory.
In 2012 he founded the Vente Venezuela party with a clear liberal, centrist and profoundly anti-communist programme. Meanwhile, Chavez dies and Nicolas Maduro arrives in his place. (AGI)
In March 2014, Machado was removed from her seat as a congresswoman, accused of having violated the Constitution in accepting the position of Panama’s alternate ambassador to the Organization of American States. In 2015, she was banned from holding public office for a year. The “dama de acero”, the lady of steel as she is called, is not discouraged and launches her all-out battle against Maduro. In 2018 the BBC included her in the list of the 100 most influential women in the world.
Despite the persecution of political opponents and the millions of people fleeing Venezuela, Machado is not leaving. His political battle is uphill, not only due to the harshness of the regime but also due to the division of the opposition. Machado succeeds in the arduous task of bridging the differences and uniting the anti-Maduro movements. In October 2023 she won the opposition primaries for the presidential elections with over two million votes and officially became Maduro’s challenger. But once again the courts come to stop it. In January 2024 the Supreme Court, controlled by the president, accuses her of corruption in cahoots with Juan Guaidò and bans her from running in elections and holding public office for 15 years. Machado had to give up running, and the opposition was quickly forced to fall back on Edmundo Gonzalez Utturria as representative of the Unitary Platform. According to the official results, Maduro wins once again with almost 52% against Gonzalez’s 43%. The result is contested by the opposition which, based on extensive electoral observation work throughout the territory, decrees Gonzalez’s victory. “We won,” says Machado. But Maduro is sworn in as President again. The international community does not recognize the official result and Gonalez goes into exile in Spain. Machado remains and continues her battle as a “courageous and committed champion of peace, a woman who keeps the flame of democracy alive in the midst of growing darkness”, is the tribute from the Nobel Committee.
The Committee: “Trump? Let’s decide on Alfred Nobel’s will”
The Nobel Prize Committee’s decision is based solely on the “work and will of Alfred Nobel.” This is how the president of the Nobel Committee, Jorgen Watne Frydnes, responded to a question about Donald Trump’s expressed desire to receive the prize. «In the long history of the Nobel Prize committee – he said in response to a reporter’s question – this committee has seen every type of campaign, of media attention. We receive thousands of letters every year from people saying what, for them, leads to peace. This committee sits in a room full of portraits of all the graduates and that room is full of courage and integrity. So we base our decisions only on the work and will of Alfred Nobel.”