It doesn’t take much imagination to guess it.
MIAMI, United States. – The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded this Friday to María Corina Machado for “her tireless work in promoting the democratic rights of the people of Venezuela and for her fight to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy”, a ruling that places the opposition leader at the center of the international table and ignites the reactions of those who oppose her for ideological reasons, power or political calculation.
In Havana, the state portal CubaYes public an opinion piece that encapsulates the hard line of the Cuban regime against the ruling, presenting Machado as a “puppet of the empire” and the Nobel Prize as a “pro-war” prize, with a narrative that tries to connect the opponent’s career with Washington and with international sanctions on Chavismo.
The text, signed and dated this Friday, is representative of the Cuban state media ecosystem and draws an opposition to the award with an anti-American profile and aligned with Havana and Caracas.
In Caracas, as expected, the official newspaper SEE He was even more stark and described the verdict as “the most recent and cynical manipulation” of an award that, according to its author, serves “imperial policy,” finishing with a phrase that quickly circulated on networks: “Let them keep their Nobel Prize for evil and terror.” This rhetoric places the official Venezuelan rejection in the classic propaganda quadrant of Chavismo: delegitimize the laureate, link the award to “neo-fascism” and reinforce the cult of Maduro as the supposed guarantor of “peace with social justice.”
For its part, in Managua, at the closing of this note there was no clear positioning of the official apparatus, but the usual pattern of communication of Sandinismo regarding “uncomfortable” awards suggests that, if it appears, it will reproduce the anti-imperial framework of Cuba and Venezuela.
Outside the Caribbean axis, the loudest opposition came from the Spanish populist left. Pablo Iglesias, co-founder of Podemos, wrote in X that “to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Corina Machado (…) they could have given it directly to Trump or even to Adolf Hitler posthumously”, a broad stroke that seeks to morally discredit the winner through a hyperbolic comparison with totalitarian regimes and leaders.
On the same rope and also in Xthe general secretary of Podemos, Ione Belarra, described the Venezuelan as a “coup plotter” and assured that “the Nobel Peace Prize is now received by coup plotters and war criminals.” “The degree of discredit that the international institutions that aspired to represent humanity are experiencing in these years is very high,” he added.
Together, this bloc forms a European rejection front of an ideological nature, close to the international allies of Chavismo.
In the United States the film is different. The White House did not charge against Machado, but against the fact that the award did not go to Donald Trump, who had been exhibiting his aspiration for days. At X, Communications Director Steven Cheung accused the committee to put “politics above peace,” making it clear that the official displeasure has to do with the “snub” to the president more than with the Venezuelan woman.
The map, thus, remains clear. To the visceral rejection of the authoritarian regimes directly challenged by the prize – Cuba and Venezuela – is added a European ideological chorus – Podemos – that has been whitewashing Chavismo for years. Meanwhile, the Nobel ruling itself highlights a narrative of democracy versus authoritarianism and places the Venezuelan case as a paradigm of civic resistance in the region, a framework that explains why the systems that feel affected react stridently.
