María Corina Machado, leader of the Venezuelan opposition, was unable to attend the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony. However, he will arrive in Oslo in the next few hours, according to the Norwegian Nobel Institute and his daughter, who collected the award and gave the acceptance speech on his behalf.
After a period of uncertainty, in which Nobel Institute officials had reported the absence of the winner and unknown her whereabouts, it has been confirmed that she is safe and on her way to the Norwegian capital.
“The Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Corina Machado, has done everything possible to attend the ceremony today. A trip in a situation of extreme danger. Although she will not be able to attend the ceremony or today’s events, we are deeply pleased to confirm that she is safe and that she will be with us in Oslo,” the institute said in a statement.
Machado was scheduled to attend the ceremony at Oslo City Hall, which was led by Kings Harald and Sonja, and Latin American leaders including the presidents of Argentina, Javier Milei, and Ecuador, Daniel Noboa.
During the previous week there was speculation about the presence of the winner and, early this Wednesday, it was said that she would not be at the ceremony and that her whereabouts were unknown.
Although Machado did not arrive at the event, the ceremony went ahead and her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa Machado, received the award and gave a speech on her mother’s behalf.
In October, the Nobel Prize Committee decided to recognize the opponent for her “tireless efforts to promote rights and freedoms in Venezuela” and for favoring “a just and peaceful transition to democracy.”
“María Corina Machado has dedicated years to working for the freedom of the Venezuelan people,” the institution stressed, adding that “the tight control of power by the Venezuelan government and its repression against the population are not unique phenomena in the world.”
“My God… I have no words,” was the opponent’s first reaction when she heard the news last October that she became the first Venezuelan to receive the award.
“This is the achievement of a movement, of a society. I certainly do not deserve such an award, but I receive it with humility and gratitude on behalf of the people of Venezuela,” he added during the telephone conversation he had with Kristian Berg Harpviken, president of the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize Committee.
Machado’s presence had been announced weeks ago by the Nobel Institute. And, therefore, it was thought that he would be able to travel to the Norwegian capital.
The opponent has not been seen in public since last January 9, when she led a demonstration in Caracas against the swearing-in of Nicolás Maduro for a third consecutive term.
At the end of 2024, Machado announced that he would go underground, amid the wave of repression with which the Venezuelan authorities responded to the protests unleashed in the country after the disputed results of the presidential elections, which left more than 2,000 detained, including dozens of opposition leaders.
The leader has become the main voice of dissidence against the Maduro government, who assumed power in 2013 after the death of Hugo Chávez.
In October 2023, she was elected as a unitary opposition candidate in a primary election, but the authorities prevented her from participating in the presidential elections held on July 28, 2024.
However, Machado did not sit idly by and supported the diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia, who, according to the minutes collected by the opposition, won the elections with 66% of the votes, although the National Electoral Council (CNE) proclaimed Maduro the winner without showing evidence to support that decision.
The figure of Machado became familiar to Venezuelans starting in 2003, when the organization Súmate promoted the process of activating a referendum that sought to revoke the mandate of then-president Chávez.
In 2010, she was elected deputy and in 2012 she had a tense exchange with the late president, whose company nationalization policy she questioned.
“To expropriate is to steal,” he snapped, while Chávez replied: “He even called me a thief. He called me a thief in front of the country.”
“We are going to miss her”
The Venezuelan attorney general, Tarek William Saab, warned the opposition a few weeks ago that, if she left the country, he would consider her a “fugitive” and would seek to arrest her if she tried to return.
Since 2014, Machado has been banned from leaving the country imposed by a Venezuelan court in response to his alleged participation in the violent events that led to a march held in Caracas on February 12, 2014.
For this case, the former mayor and former presidential candidate Leopoldo López was imprisoned.
Although more than a decade has passed since those events and Machado was never criminally prosecuted, the judicial measure has been maintained.
The Minister of the Interior, Diosdado Cabello, who has spent the last few days announcing Machado’s departure, was less harsh.
“We are going to miss her,” he said in the program he hosts on state television.
“The team has been installed for days in Norway. And although the media machinery is telling the story that no one knows where it is, the reality is less poetic. The woman left the hairdresser (left) with the same elegance with which Edmundo González managed his express departure from the country. No disappearance or drama, pure textbook logistics and planes that travel in silence with diplomatic immunity,” he declared.
*With latest information from the Reuters agency
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