On Saturday, December 6, thousands of supporters of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate María Corina Machado took to the streets of various cities throughout Europe and Latin America to demonstrate their solidarity with the winner. Machado arrived in Oslo hours late to the award ceremony after having narrowly escaped from Venezuela, ultimately displaying a strong show of heroism, leading to praise from her supporters. Although Machado has amassed international support for winning the prize, she has simultaneously received strong criticism for her selection: According to the New York Times, protestors were outside of the Nobel Prize Institute on Tuesday waving signs that read “No Peace Prize for Warmongers.” Ultimately, Machado’s arrival at Oslo will continue to prove contentious for both Venezuelans and international citizens alike. 

The Nobel Peace Prize committee officially presented Machado with the award “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.” According to Laura Gamboa, a Latin America specialist at the University of Utah, “Machado’s prize recognize[s] thousands of Venezuelan activists and campaigners — people who risked their lives for democracy at a time when it seems to be under threat across the world.” Machado’s international supporters rally around this idea: that she is a symbol against anti-democratic practices everywhere. Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia and an ally of Maduro, has said regarding Machado: “For me, a despicable person is one who invites others to invade their own country — a traitor, period.” Other opponents of Machado, typically international ones, believe her not to be worthy of the peace prize because she supports President Trump’s military intervention to force Maduro out of power. 

Machado has been active in Venezuelan politics since the early 2000s, when she was involved with various political groups promoting democracy and standing against then-President Hugo Chávez. Machado became significantly more popular in the Maduro era: according to AP News, she slowly gained support after promoting herself as a hardliner against Maduro’s regime. As other Maduro dissidents fled, she stayed fighting, which led to her winning 90% of the popular vote in the 2024 election’s opposition presidential primary. Maduro loyalists then kept her name from appearing on the ballot, so she offered her support to another opposition candidate, Edmundo González, according to AP News. González ultimately won the election, but Maduro was still announced as President. Since then, Machado’s voice has simultaneously been emboldened by Maduro’s blatant authoritarian works and diminished by her failure to win and her support of U.S. President Trump’s military intervention in the Caribbean. Machado herself has said in response to these criticisms: “The one who has declared war on Venezuelans is the Maduro regime… In criminal systems, we need the world’s democracies to support our citizens.”

Machado is not wrong in that she has actively been promoting peaceful regime change since the Chávez era. According to AP News, she worked to promote the referendum to recall Chávez in 2004; worked as part of the National Assembly to actively combat Chávez and later Maduro’s over-reaching power, and worked on anti-Maduro initiatives and election boycotts after being ousted from the National Assembly in 2014. However, her growing ties with President Trump demonstrate that her priorities are shifting from a peaceful transition to a violent transition. Ultimately, a violent overthrow of the Maduro regime at the hands of the U.S. would only serve to anger Maduro sympathizers and potentially the general population; Maduro is undoubtedly terrible, but violent foreign intervention will only serve to raise tensions, not quell them.

Machado’s reception of the Nobel Peace Prize could give international justification to U.S. military operations to overthrow Maduro. Machado’s contentious win represents an increasingly divided world, and overall serves to increase tensions both in Venezuela and the greater international community.