If by some chance Nicolas Maduro is dislodged from his tyrannical hold over Venezuela, will Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado play a part in the country’s next chapter? At Foreign Policy, Mie Hoejris Dahl discusses Machado and the future of Venezuela, writing:
It was July 2024, and President Nicolás Maduro’s regime had barred Machado, the leader of Venezuela’s opposition, from boarding domestic flights and running in the upcoming presidential election. So she was crisscrossing the country by road to campaign for her chosen replacement, retired diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia. She traveled not with bodyguards but with ordinary Venezuelans—many of them motorcyclists who used to support the regime—to protect her.
As I followed Machado on the campaign trail, it was clear that the country had changed since my previous visits, when Venezuelans spoke about politics only in whispers—or not at all. Now, they turned out en masse to support Machado and her movement. Criticism of the regime suddenly seemed to be everywhere: on buses, in the street, even in front of armed security forces.
“A very powerful cultural and social rupture has already taken place—one that many people still haven’t understood,” Machado told me on the campaign.
More than a year later, support for Machado and her movement has not translated into political change in Venezuela. González likely won the July 2024 presidential election with about 67 percent of the vote, based on tally sheets collected from polling stations. Yet election authorities declared victory for Maduro, who has clung to power ever since by tightening repression against political opponents and dissenting voices. As for Machado, she now lives in hiding in Venezuela, where she faces death threats and criminal investigations from Maduro’s government.
On Oct. 10, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to Machado 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.” Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has intensified its campaign against Maduro’s regime and threatened military action inside Venezuela.
Together, these moves have fueled hopes of regime change in the country. But for Machado and millions of Venezuelans, the fight for democracy remains far from finished. While elections and protests have not been enough to make Maduro relinquish power, the question now is whether rising international pressure could spur genuine—or even democratic—change on the ground.
Read more here.
