Leaders, experts, governments and social movements criticized the choice of Venezuela’s far-right leader for the Nobel Peace Prize. María Corina Machado is known for her support for Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in the genocide in Gaza and has repeatedly called for armed aggression against Venezuela.
Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet described the situation as “the necrosis of a Nobel Prize”.
“Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to someone who constantly defends military invasions, coups d’état, revolts and wars is yet another aberration of the current international disorder. It is the world turned upside down. Orwell’s dystopia, ‘1984’, in which truth is a lie and peace is war, is becoming a reality. A sad and rotten Nobel Prize”, he observed.
For his part, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez stated that “the politicization, prejudice and discredit of the Norwegian Nobel Peace Committee have reached unimaginable limits.”
The Cuban leader described the awarding of this award in 2025 to “a person who instigates military intervention in his homeland” as “shameful”, calling it a “political maneuver” to weaken the Bolivarian leadership.
Former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya Rosales declared that “the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to María Corina Machado is an affront to history and to the people who fight for their sovereignty. Awarding the prize to a coup leader, allied with financial elites and foreign interests, is transforming the symbol of peace into an instrument of modern colonialism.”
“There is never peace when those who promote sanctions, blockades and economic wars against their own people are rewarded,” Zelaya emphasized.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner (1980), Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, highlighted that “Corina Machado is part of the US policy against the Venezuelan government”.
She received the award “not because she worked for peace and for the Venezuelan people. I am worried that the Nobel Committee made this decision,” she said.
Meanwhile, Michelle Ellner, coordinator of the Latin American campaign for the American platform Codepink, stated that María Corina Machado is not a symbol of peace or progress.
“When I saw the headline ‘María Corina Machado wins Peace Prize,’ I almost laughed at the absurdity. But I didn’t, because there is nothing funny about awarding the prize to someone whose policies have caused so much suffering. Anyone who knows her ideas knows that there is nothing remotely peaceful about her policies.”
Ellner believes that the Venezuelan right-wing extremist opposition’s embrace of the US agenda has meant sanctions, terrorist attacks and privatizations for the Venezuelan people, which she compared to the situation in Gaza.
“In Venezuela, this alliance meant coups, sanctions and privatizations. In Gaza, it means genocide and the elimination of a people. The ideology is the same: the belief that some lives are disposable, that sovereignty is negotiable and that violence can be sold as order”, he noted.
Award
Announcing the name of Maria Corina Machado for the Nobel Peace Prizethe Norwegian Committee said she was awarded “for her tireless work in promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela”.
In a statement, the committee said the award was awarded “for the tireless work in promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and their struggle to achieve a fair and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”
“As leader of the democracy movement in Venezuela, Maria Corina Machado is one of the most extraordinary examples of civil courage in Latin America in recent times,” said Committee President Jørgen Watne Frydnes in Oslo.
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