Venezuela’s “Iron Lady” Wins 2025 Nobel Peace Prize

María Corina Machado, Venezuelan political activist and former presidential candidate, was nicknamed the “Iron Lady” due to her unwavering resilience and strength in challenging the 27-year rule of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). However, she pivoted to jumpstart her political career as a founder of Súmate, a non-governmental organization whose goals were to monitor the fairness of Venezuela's elections and to promote voting rights. She opposed then-President Hugo Chavez, calling for his resignation due to his “authoritarian policies.” Following this, she was accused of treason by the government and received numerous death threats. After more than 20 years of political activism, Machado, leader of the opposition party coalition against the Venezuelan government, won the Nobel Peace Prize on October 10, 2025. The Nobel Committee announced that the prize was awarded in acknowledgment of "her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela." Throughout her career, Machado has fought to restore the democratic process, hoping to make Venezuela safer and encourage emigrants to return home. She is staunchly anti-communist. Her policy goals include creating a more transparent democracy via free and fair elections, privatizing state-run industries such as oil, and implementing welfare programs for Venezuela's poor. Machado has continually claimed that Nicolas Maduro’s regime is a “criminal structure,” and this Nobel Peace Prize recognition has the potential to attract international support, especially from the U.S., to pressure the current Venezuelan government into stepping down and accepting their loss in the recent presidential elections. 

During Venezuela’s most recent presidential election in July 2024, the dispute grew–Machado claimed that the election was neither free nor fair and that the opposing party was blatantly cheated out of victory.

At the start of her campaign trail, in 2023, Machado won the presidential primary for the Unitary Party, a coalition of parties that are opposed to the ruling PSUV and its allies. However, in January 2024, the Supreme Court barred Machado from running, leaving the opposition scrambling to find a new nominee. The Court’s ruling came after Attorney General Tarek Saab accused three members of Vente Venezuela, Machado’s own party, of being involved in a conspiracy to carry out an act of violence on a Maduro-supported state governor. After being barred from the presidential race in January 2024, Machado shifted her efforts into campaigning for the new nominee for their party coalition: Edmundo González Urrutia. After the people cast their votes on July 28, 2024, the National Election Commission declared victory for President Maduro, who continued his 12 year term. Machado maintains that Urrutia and the opposition party were the rightful winners, and warns that this is a harbinger of the continual democratic erosion of the state, explaining that this “loss of democratic values” will threaten other “liberal democracies of the West.” The election results caused mass protests and increased repression from the state. Currently, Urrutia is exiled in Spain, and Machado has been in hiding in Venezuela for the past year. Her supporters have acknowledged her bravery at staying in the country where she has long faced threats of retaliation from allies of the regime. 

Throughout her career, Machado has criticized the Maduro government, calling Maduro himself a “narcoterrorist” and his regime a  “criminal structure.” She says Venezuela does not operate under a traditional dictatorship, but is subversive instead, using measures such as threatening political enemies and false elections to keep power. Since the election, Machado has increasingly lost hope in the democratic process as a way to upend the authoritarian government. She has openly supported U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, affirming her support for President Trump’s recent strikes on boats in Caribbean international waters, close to the coast of Venezuela, where Trump claimed drug smuggling is occuring. Machado argues that the Venezuelan government participates in all types of trafficking, and that it is a major hub for drug flows to the United States. She also asserts that they are allies of the transnational gang Tren del Aragua and protectors of the Cartel of the Suns. 

In an interview with CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour, María Corina Machado thanked Trump for his work “opposing the tragic situation” in her country. As of October 16, 2025 Trump has confirmed that there are covert CIA operations taking place in Venezuela in order to fight specifically drug trafficking, though government officials in both the U.S. and Venezuela believe that it is the first step in initiating regime change against Maduro. According to the Guardian, “Venezuela’s vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, said she was convinced one of Trump’s “strategic objectives” was “what they call ‘regime change.’” When asked about how Trump’s recent plans may play into Latin America’s violent past with U.S. military and CIA intervention, Machado insisted that it was the right path forward. In her mind, there was no more negotiation possible between the people of Venezuela and the government. In her eyes they have declared “war” on the people. 

Critics have argued that the values of the Peace Prize, mainly non-violence, working towards disarmament and cooperation between nations, is not reflective of her activism. David Smilde, Professor of International Relations at Tulane University, argued that her use of “misinformation” to convince members of the U.S. government to incite violence against Maduro’s regime is not emblematic of her Peace Prize win at all. Furthermore, the Machado-led Opposition Party underscores the simplicity of a transition should the Maduro administration be removed, where in reality, many armed groups and drug cartels will prove this a difficult switch. She has largely avoided officially supporting an U.S. invasion into Venezuela but has supported seemingly non-democratic tactics for removing the Maduro regime, leading many to question the ethics of her Peace Prize win. 

Machado says her Nobel Peace Prize win brings hope to the people of Venezuela for their fight for fair elections and democratic institutions. In an interview with BBC Mundo, she said the Peace Prize “ infuses energy, hope, strength on the Venezuelan people because we realise that we are not alone.” She hopes that the award motivates the global democratic community to quickly move to pressure the Maduro regime because we all “share [the] struggle.”