Venezuelan National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez, one of Chavismo’s most prominent leaders, criticized the Norwegian Nobel Institute for honoring opposition leader María Corina Machado with the Nobel Peace Prize, saying the institution rewards a person “who calls for military actions against Venezuela and who celebrates the killing of human beings in the Caribbean.” The leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) made these comments in a speech delivered in the debate hall of the Federal Legislative Palace. “Poor peace, poor Nobel,” Rodríguez said, using a particular rhetorical effort to bargain with opponent Machado on the political content and moral prestige of the prize.
Rodríguez criticized the “hypocrisy of peace organizations” and reprimanded the Nobel Institute for honoring Winston Churchill in the past with the Nobel Prize in Literature for his memorabilia; o Henri Kissinger, former United States Secretary of State, for receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.
In this debate, representatives of the PSUV, who comfortably dominate the legislative chambers of an elected Parliament without the participation of the opposition, began to deliberate on Venezuela’s exit from the Rome Statute, a decision that would deprive the country of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. About the government of Nicolas Maduro weighs several international recommendations in terms of human rights violations.
Rodríguez’s statements constitute one of the first official reactions of the Bolivarian leader’s project to the award given to Machado, whose mere mention of his name is a taboo in the media and in local public opinion. Alongside Rodríguez, Diosdado Cabello, first vice-president of the PSUV and Minister of the Interior and Justice, called for a movement of Chavista activism in Caracas for the 10th, the same day he presented the prize to Machado.
In this “peasant march,” Chavismo once again commemorates the Battle of Santa Inés, a famous battle of the Federal War (a costly civil conflict resulting from the racial hatred and social inequalities of the time) that took place in 1859, in which the peasant forces of leader Ezequiel Zamora (one of the national heroes of the Chavista imagination) defeated the land and conservative army of Pedro Estanislao Ramos.
“We don’t know anything about this substate,” Cabello says, referring to the Nobel ceremony. “It is a subasta al mejor postor. The only thing to do is to revisit the one who already awarded this prize,” he maintained. “We have the best prize, which is the tranquility of this city, the ability we have to decide our destiny. We won it handily.”
Venezuelan state television included Machado’s Nobel Prize news in its newscast, but only to review protests in Oslo by a handful of far-left activists, criticizing the opposition leader’s award and condemning military intervention in the country. “Pusieron proclaims throughout the city: ‘No damn Nobel.’
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