“Do you know anything about María Corina?” This is the question that is attracting the attention of Venezuelans and journalists who are beginning to arrive in Oslo before the ceremony to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Venezuelan opponent María Corina Machado, which takes place this Wednesday. The 58-year-old leader, a symbol of dissent and opposition to Chavismo, announced a few weeks ago her intention to receive the recognition in person, as did the Norwegian Nobel Institute, which continued its preparations assuming that Machado would be in the Nordic country to participate in all activities planned this week, including a press conference scheduled for this Tuesday.
A few hours before the start of the official events, the arrival of the opposition leader, however, remains a mystery. If this happens, it would be Machado’s first public appearance since August last year, when he decided to continue his political work in hiding after the post-electoral crisis that followed the presidential election on July 28, 2024. “I think so (we will see it), but I cannot guarantee it yet,” Corina Parisca, the mother of the Venezuelan Nobel laureate, told journalist Andreina Flores, upon arrival at the capital’s airport Norwegian. Parisca, who said she had not seen her daughter in more than a year, added that it would be a “miracle” if she managed to leave Venezuela.
Ana Corina Sosa, daughter of the former Venezuelan representative, is also already in Oslo, as are other Machado guests of honor, such as Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino. “I reiterated Panama’s support for the freedom of the Venezuelan people,” the Central American president wrote after meeting with the winner’s relatives, who are part of a permanent group of Venezuelans in the diaspora who traveled thousands of kilometers to meet at a moment they consider historic. “We Panamanians know what it means to face difficult times, we experienced them in 1989,” he added.
Mulino is referring to the United States’ invasion of Panamanian territory that ended with the capitulation of dictator Manuel Noriega in the late 1980s. The Nobel Peace Prize for Machado was announced on October 10, at the height of tensions between Venezuela and the United States due to the military deployment ordered by Donald Trump in the Caribbean waters bordering Venezuela.
The mystery surrounding the arrival of the opponent in Norway entered as another variable in some analyzes of the threats launched by the White House concerning a possible American intervention against Maduro, as Trump has suggested on several occasions. He also anticipates new unknowns, such as the possibility that the leader, constantly in the target of Chavismo, could return to her country or if she will continue her fight, at least for the moment, from her exile. “He is about to make the most important political decision of his life,” wrote Ryan Dubé for The Wall Street Journal.
The number two of Chavismo and Minister of the Interior, Diosdado Cabello, has assured for weeks that María Corina Machado would have already made this decision and that she would have left the country. “We will miss her,” he quipped in one of his last shows where he revealed information about his supposed departure. “The team has been based in Norway for days. And although the media machine says that no one knows where she is, the reality is less poetic. The woman left the hairdresser with the same elegance with which Edmundo González managed his express departure from the country. No disappearances or drama, purely manual logistics and planes that travel in silence with diplomatic immunity,” Cabello revealed last week.
Chavismo speculated about the decrease in his messages on social networks and even about the clothes he wore in the last video, in which he launched his Freedom Manifesto. Appearing in a dark jacket, Cabello assured that he would already be wearing winter clothes, as he would be in another country.
Machado’s entourage was persecuted hand to hand, to the point that more than a hundred collaborators of his party, Sale Venezuela, were arrested by the Chavismo intelligence services. This persecution led the leader to go underground and reduce physical contact with her team to almost zero. Cabello also spread the thesis that Machado remained hidden in the United States Embassy, located in the Valle Arriba urbanization in Caracas, without diplomatic personnel since 2019, and around which Chavismo deployed its police forces.
“We are working, doing everything so that when the day comes we can meet in Norway,” Machado told Norwegian broadcaster NRK last week. The spokesperson for the Norwegian Nobel Institute, Erik Aasheim, told the Efe agency that they had communication with her on Friday evening and that she confirmed that her intention was to collect the prize in person. Sources from the organization, the Venezuelan opposition in exile and Machado’s entourage have said in recent days that the viability of Machado’s arrival is being analyzed on a day-to-day basis and that they are handling every detail in the utmost secrecy so as not to endanger the safety of the Nobel Prize winner.
The delivery ceremony is scheduled for Wednesday at 1 p.m. (local and mainland Spanish time, 8 a.m. in Caracas) at Oslo City Hall. At 5:45 p.m. the traditional torchlight procession will begin, a march which takes place every year in honor of the laureates and which leaves the Nobel Peace Center and ends in front of the balcony of the following where the person awarded the prize is staying. At seven o’clock in the evening, an honorary banquet will take place with 200 guests, chaired by senior representatives of the government and the Norwegian crown. On Thursday, Machado is invited to meet with MPs and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store at the Storting, the Nordic country’s legislative body. The big thing to confirm is the presence of the protagonist of this year’s award.
About The Author
