“Vanity made the Revolution; liberty was only a pretext,” is a quote widely attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte — and germane to President Trump’s continued fixation with the Nobel Peace Prize and the political consequences for Venezuela.
As is well known, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to María Corina Machado, the leader of Venezuela’s freedom movement. Her merits? She has fought the Chavista dictatorship ever since Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999 and started dismantling the country’s institutions. At first, she did so through an NGO focused on monitoring electoral processes, then through political participation. Rather than go into exile, this woman, who comes from a well-known family and was trained as an industrial engineer, chose to risk everything for the pursuit of liberty.
She was beaten up, harassed, kidnapped, prosecuted in Chavez’s and Nicolás Maduro’s (his equally despicable successor) kangaroo courts, barred from leaving the country, and prevented from seeing her children — who had to settle abroad, graduate, launch their own careers, get married and have children — and was disqualified from holding public office — first by being expelled from the National Assembly and subsequently by being prevented from participating in any election. Because she was a woman, because she was uncompromising, and because she had classical liberal convictions, she was poo-pooed even by the opposition, who did not take her seriously. Gradually, at an ant-like pace, she earned the respect of the voters. A quarter of a century later, she became a widely admired national figure and her country’s only hope.» Sigue leyendo aquí.