The Nobel “Peace” Prize Rewards María Corina Machado’s Subservience to Imperialist Interests

María Corina Machado, the main leader of Venezuela’s far right, has just been awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. According to the committee that granted her the prize, the award recognizes her “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela, and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”【1】 This description fits neatly within the narrative that has been widely spread in recent times by the major outlets of the international capitalist press, which portray Machado as a selfless defender of democracy and of the Venezuelan people, unjustly persecuted by the supposed authoritarian excesses of Nicolás Maduro’s government. However, her trajectory diverges sharply from such characterizations, and her selection as the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate says much about the current political and ideological climate of the world in this historical juncture.

Last year, amid the flurry of headlines calling for permission for Machado to run as the opposition’s candidate in Venezuela’s presidential elections, Argentine political scientist Atilio Boron offered an excellent recap of her political path.【2】 During the shameful coup d’état that overthrew and kidnapped President Hugo Chávez in 2002, Machado—then one of the leaders of the NGO Súmate—signed the infamous “Carmona Decree,” issued by businessman Pedro Carmona Estanga, who proclaimed himself president after Chávez’s arrest and dissolved all of the country’s democratic institutions. In 2005, she was tried and sentenced to 28 years in prison, not only for signing the “Carmona Decree” but also for the proven receipt of a $53,000 subsidy from the National Endowment for Democracy, funded by the U.S. Congress. That same year, she was received by U.S. President George Bush for a private conversation in the Oval Office, reportedly to discuss seeking U.S. support for the overthrow of President Hugo Chávez’s constitutional government ahead of that year’s crucial Summit of the Americas, where the White House hoped to advance the FTAA. As Boron aptly noted, Machado was eventually pardoned by then-President Hugo Chávez and, contrary to the current narrative, “in no other country could Machado have continued to do politics as she has done in Venezuela to this very day.”【3】 After all, the pardon did nothing to stop her conspiratorial and anti-democratic activities.

When the brutal “guarimbas” erupted—first in 2014 and again in 2017, reminiscent of the violent protest movements typical of CIA-made color revolutions—Machado conveniently accepted the post of “alternate ambassador” of Panama’s government to the OAS, where she asked the Permanent Council to organize a foreign military intervention to overthrow Nicolás Maduro’s government. During the establishment of Juan Guaidó’s self-proclaimed and illegitimate “parallel government,” Machado was likewise complicit in the schemes that resulted in the theft of Venezuela’s public assets by imperial powers. It was in this context that she was disqualified for 15 years from holding public office in 2015. Nevertheless, she remained active, leading a number of campaign activities for her puppet in the 2024 presidential race, retired diplomat Edmundo González. As professor Steve Ellner observed,【4】 Edmundo attended only one of the first ten major opposition rallies ahead of that election—clearly demonstrating Machado’s leadership and prominence in them. His “substitute” candidacy was nothing more than a way to bypass Machado’s disqualification and keep her at the center of attention.

Machado’s political platform has always been the uncompromising defense of economic liberalism, openly declaring her intention to launch a massive privatization process—including PDVSA and the entire set of companies nationalized by Chávez’s governments. Her father, Enrique Machado Zuloaga, was a major businessman in the metallurgical sector and president of Siderúrgica Venezolana S.A. (SIVENSA), one of whose subsidiaries, Siderúrgica del Turbio (SIDETUR), was expropriated in 2010. Unsurprisingly, Machado has consistently championed the reversal of all expropriations carried out under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro.

Following the announcement of the Nobel result, media coverage focused heavily on the alleged discontent of Donald Trump and the White House, given that Trump had openly campaigned to win the prize himself—stating just last month that “it would be a great insult” to the United States if the Nobel Peace Prize were not awarded to him.【5】 However, such sectoral discontent in no way conceals the clear alignment between the interests of the Venezuelan far right and those of U.S. imperialism. After all, Machado was nominated for the prize by a group of Republican senators and congressmen, among them none other than Marco Rubio, Trump’s Secretary of State, and Michael Waltz, the current U.S. ambassador to the UN. Her vision of international politics aligns perfectly with that of Washington’s hawks, and she makes no effort to conceal her extreme aversion to Latin American leftist movements or to sovereign nations striving to build a multipolar world order.

In a March 2022 post on X, Machado declared that “Maduro is now a pawn of Russia, China, and Iran,”【6】 and more recently proclaimed that “once we remove Maduro’s regime, we’re going to liberate Cuba and Nicaragua.”【7】In February, she joined the meeting of the “Patriots for Europe” group, which brought together the European far right in Madrid under the slogan “Make Europe Great Again,” shamelessly parading in an environment echoing the ultra-reactionary slogan of the “Reconquista” (invoking, from a far-right perspective, the “retaking” of Europe by Europeans themselves).【8】 She is also a known sympathizer of Israel’s far right: in 2018, she even asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for military intervention against Nicolás Maduro’s government, promising on that occasion, “I promise that one day we will have a close relationship between Venezuela and Israel, and I believe and can announce that our government will move our embassy to Jerusalem... that will be part of our support for the State of Israel.”【9】

It is therefore deeply ironic that the Nobel Peace Prize should be awarded to an open defender of what is most reactionary and violent in today’s world: the imperialist policies that fuel wars, sanctions, and conflicts across the globe, and the ultra-liberal economic agenda that deprives the majority of access to wealth, concentrating it in the hands of a small group of multimillionaires who sponsor the dissemination of such ideology. Moreover, Machado is not merely an advocate of the far right’s violent agenda but stands as one of the clearest embodiments of the servility and submission of Latin America’s reactionary elites to Washington’s interests, openly supporting humiliating sanctions and even military interventions against her own people.

It is clear that the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to such a notorious reactionary can be seen as yet another case of “old wine in a new bottle.” It is hardly new that the empire’s faithful servants find their place on the altar of hypocrisy. Being complicit in the American bloodbaths and massacres in Vietnam, Cambodia, and across the military dictatorships of Latin America did not prevent Henry Kissinger from receiving the same honor. And the smiles and soft tone of Barack Obama were enough for the committee to grant him the award in his very first year in office—shortly before he backed NATO’s arbitrary military intervention in Libya, which transformed what had been Africa’s highest-ranking country on the Human Development Index into a failed state and a human trafficking route to Europe, culminating in the ruthless assassination of its historical leader, Muammar Gaddafi.

The theatrics of Trump and his acolytes—claiming that the Nobel Committee places “politics over peace”【10】—do not conceal the most evident aspect of María Corina Machado’s award: the growing sympathy among large segments of the global capitalist elite for the far right and neo-fascism. Political interests indeed prevailed over those of peace in the awarding of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize (or should we say, the Nobel of War?), but certainly not against the will of U.S. imperialism. There’s an old saying warning us to beware of “wolves in sheep’s clothing.” In the case of María Corina Machado, there is no such disguise, for this wolf has never been ashamed to show her true skin in broad daylight—marked unmistakably by her support for neo-fascism and her humiliating servility to Washington.

【1】 The Nobel Prize. “Announcement, Nobel Peace Prize 2025.” The Nobel Prize, October 10, 2025. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2025/press-release/

【2】 Atilio Borón. “María Corina Machado and the Betrayal of Venezuela.” Orinoco Tribune, February 13, 2024. https://orinocotribune.com/maria-corina-machado-and-the-betrayal-of-venezuela/

【3】 Atilio Borón. “María Corina Machado and the Betrayal of Venezuela.” Orinoco Tribune, February 13, 2024. https://orinocotribune.com/maria-corina-machado-and-the-betrayal-of-venezuela/

【4】Steve Ellner. “María Corina Machado: What the Mainstream Media Isn’t Saying About Her.” Venezuelanalysis, July 8, 2024. https://venezuelanalysis.com/opinion/maria-corina-machado-what-the-mainstream-media-isnt-saying-about-her/

【5】O Globo. “Trump não ganha Nobel da Paz e Casa Branca reage: ‘Nunca haverá ninguém como ele’; entenda escolha do Comitê.” O Globo, October 10, 2025. https://oglobo.globo.com/mundo/noticia/2025/10/10/trump-e-ignorado-pelo-nobel-da-paz-de-2025-apesar-de-acordo-de-cessar-fogo-em-gaza.ghtml

【6】María Corina Machado. “Maduro es hoy un peón de Rusia, China e Irán.” X (Twitter), March 7, 2022. https://x.com/mariacorinaya/status/1500514790602596352

【7】El Nacional. “María Corina Machado: ‘Una vez que saquemos al régimen de Maduro, vamos a liberar a Cuba y Nicaragua.’” El Nacional, June 13, 2025. https://www.elnacional.com/2025/06/maria-corina-machado-una-vez-que-saquemos-al-regimen-de-maduro-vamos-a-liberar-a-cuba-y-nicaragua/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social&fbclid=IwY2xjawNV8KRleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFzbGxaRmRHZ2F4d2lWMzFSAR7CxAjWeT80_OUD9eJliC29-3R6PLLWqLkPBEW3GnK0-G-vDhKvzQxM6cG5cA_aem_VFke1_aNIn-ZeD4LmuP4cg

【8】Reuters. “Orban, Le Pen Hail Trump at Far-Right ‘Patriots’ Summit in Madrid.” Reuters, February 8, 2025. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/orban-le-pen-hail-trump-far-right-patriots-summit-madrid-2025-02-08/

【9】Fuser News. “María Corina Machado prometió a Israel en 2020 trasladar embajada de Venezuela a Jerusalén.” Fuser News, June 3, 2024. https://fusernews.com/maria-corina-machado-prometio-a-israel-en-2020-trasladar-embajada-de-venezuela-a-jerusalen/

【10】Reuters. “White House Says Nobel Committee Puts ‘Politics over Peace.’” Reuters, October 10, 2025. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/white-house-says-nobel-committee-places-politics-over-peace-2025-10-10/

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