The Nobel Committee has awarded the 2025 Peace Prize to Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado, a richly deserved honor that recognizes her courageous fight for democracy against a brutal totalitarian dictatorship. She is now the undisputed embodiment of the movement to restore democracy in Venezuela. As not only her accolades but also sacrifices accumulate—family exile, severely restricted freedom of movement, financial challenges—the regime led by Nicolás Maduro has continued to threaten her life and the lives of her associates. And yet, for all the difficulties inherent to navigating Venezuela’s domestic politics, attempting to build and sustain an international coalition united against Maduro may prove to be her greatest challenge yet.
I’ve known Machado since 2005. Poised, clear-eyed from the beginning about the so-called ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ and animated about ways to resist its gathering excesses, she has consistently presented an alternative vision. At first, the regime attempted to ignore her. Then it worked to undermine and oppress her. Then it tried to intimidate and threaten her. And all the while her stature and following grew to the point that, in 2023, she was selected with overwhelming support as the candidate to challenge Maduro in the 2024 presidential elections. Recognizing her as a legitimate threat, the election board arbitrarily disqualified her candidacy, inducing the Venezuelan opposition to rally behind former diplomat Edmundo González as their stand-in for Machado.
The Venezuelan elections of 2024, required by the constitution and midwifed by US diplomats, were neither free nor fair, and yet the United States was still unwilling to deploy its considerable leverage to ensure their fairness. Numerous observers anticipated the elections would amount to little more than an exercise in propaganda for the Maduro regime. But under Machado’s leadership and with the support of a population that saw the elections as their last best chance for peaceful change, on July 28, 2024, González secured a historic, overwhelming victory.
It was a stunning result, enabled by a Machado-led effort to organize observers across the country to capture vote tallies in real time and preserve them for a quick count that the Maduro regime could not credibly dispute. Post-election momentum was lost, however, when the United States, consumed by its own presidential election drama, was unprepared to take the lead in a “day after” strategy, supporting instead a Brazilian-led effort that went nowhere to ensure the results of the election would be followed. Meanwhile, Maduro moved assertively to round up activists, intimidate potential protesters, and create its own victory narrative to be spread by allies and influencers across social networks and regime-friendly media. Washington’s response, or lack thereof, was deeply frustrating, and so shortly after the July 2024 elections failed to produce a change in regime, a campaign to recognize Machado’s heroic leadership was begun, culminating in her being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
And yet, despite her undoubtable worthiness of the Nobel, her award has not been without controversy. Some observers have focused on the fact that Machado was named instead of President Donald Trump, to whom she subsequently dedicated the award. Others have found fault with her privileged background and conservative politics, revealing more about their own biases than meaningful criticism of the Nobel Committee’s decision. Regime apologists both within Venezuela and abroad despise her for unapologetically condemning Maduro’s assaults on human rights and the authoritarianism, criminality, astounding corruption, and economic wreckage endemic to Chavismo, the ideology associated with Maduro’s socialist predecessor Hugo Chavez. Even some of her own supporters regret the Nobel recognition, fearing that it may serve only to make Maduro more determined to silence her, although in reality it should grant her a degree of respite owing to the negative press that would inevitably accompany the silencing of a Nobel winner.
But the most heated criticism so far has come from those who see her alignment with Trump against the Maduro regime, particularly amid the destruction of drug boats out of Venezuela without due process, conducted in the context of counter-narcotics operations. By also thanking Trump publicly, acknowledging his role in leading an international coalition to “dismantle the cartels of drug trafficking and terrorism entrenched in Venezuela,” and using MAGA media outlets among others to promote her messaging, she is, they say, inserting herself into U.S. politics, promoting illegalities, and undermining the bipartisan basis for cooperation on Venezuela. Some have bizarrely suggested that the Prize is actually a warning to her against violence and that she should distance herself from the Trump administration. Others, with breathtaking cynicism, patronizingly hope for a return to negotiations and new elections, which is what Venezuelans tried to do, despite impossible odds, and were denied the results.
But as the old saying goes, if there is no alternative, there is no alternative. The electoral path to change is closed until Maduro makes his exit, and the regime has shown over and over that it will not give up power of its own accord. Negotiations have repeatedly failed because self-preservation is the regime’s overriding value. Predictably, attempts at a negotiated transfer of power have only bought time for the regime, split the opposition, and created greater misery for the Venezuelan people while contributing to Latin America’s worst modern humanitarian disaster. A peaceful rejection of despotism is always best; but what happens when that’s not possible?
Machado’s outreach is tactical. She has one purpose and one goal: to remove Maduro from power and gain the presidential sash for president-elect González. It’s a tall order, and one which, with the Maduro’s ever-escalating levels of repression, cannot realistically be achieved without significant outside help. The Maduro regime has stolen and corrupted a nation. Machado is attempting to claim it back. Condemning her for seeking assistance from the one global leader who has shown an interest in forcing Maduro out and has the capacity to do so is misplaced. By seeking to sully the Committee’s decision, they instead succor the oppressive regime that led her down the path of resistance culminating in winning the Nobel. If nothing else, reactions to Machado’s Peace Prize are proving to be a political Rorschach test exposing the underlying motivations of those engaged in the fight for the future of Venezuela.
What the United States chooses to do vis-à-vis Venezuela is a legitimate topic for debate. Washington’s approach may be to do nothing further, or it may seek to enforce the electoral mandate of the Venezuelan people by removing Maduro and his regime, or something in between. Whatever choice the U.S. ultimately makes, the Venezuelans have made theirs: Maduro must go.