Find out who María Corina Machado is, who will receive the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize this Wednesday

• Context: María Corina Machado will receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, says the director of the institute responsible for the prize
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Announcing María Corina as the winner in October, Nobel Committee President Jørgen Watne Frydnes said she was awarded “for her tireless work for the democratic rights of the Venezuelan people and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

– I don’t think so! — reacted the opposition leader in a conversation with her ally Edmundo González Urrutia after learning of the award. — I’m in shock!

Dressed in jeans and a white shirt, María Corina, born in Caracas 58 years ago, traveled the country during the presidential election campaign of July 28, 2024, with a message of change after 25 years of Chavista governments.

In the opposition primaries leading to the July 28, 2024 elections, she won more than 90% of the vote. However, she was prevented from running due to a controversial political disqualification and had to abandon her presidential bid in favor of diplomat González Urrutia, a last-minute candidate. Yet she was the lifeblood of the opposition campaign.

— She is our liberator — declared Trina Rosales, 60, during the electoral campaign, after a huge caravan in San Cristóbal (west of the state of Táchira). — She is our hope, our freedom.

The National Electoral Council (CNE), the highest electoral body in the country, proclaimed Nicolas Maduro’s victory in July without presenting the minutes proving the result. The opposition, on the other hand, showed copies of more than 80% of the ballots attesting to the election of González Urrutia. International researchers and observers, such as the Carter Center, have corroborated the result presented by opponents. Since then, several countries have recognized the opponent as elected president of Venezuela, such as the United States.

María Corina is in hiding after being the target of arrest threats from the Chavista regime, accused of an alleged conspiracy to destabilize the country, and was temporarily detained earlier this year, which the Maduro government considers a lie. González Urrutia, in turn, is in exile in Spain.

An industrial engineer who graduated from the Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas, she made a name for herself in the early 2000s by founding the Súmate organization, focused on electoral transparency and the promotion of free and fair elections. The group was responsible for monitoring votes and exposing fraud committed by the government of Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), which made it one of the best-known faces of the Venezuelan opposition.

One of the main organizers of protests against Maduro’s government, her mandate was revoked in 2014 by Venezuela’s National Assembly, led at the time by Chavista Diosdado Cabello, number two in the regime. Then, in 2015, she was politically disqualified and banned from leaving the country.

In recent years, he opposed both the self-proclaimed interim government of Juan Guaidó, which sought to end Chavismo through confrontation, and the moderate sector of the opposition, which defended the strategy of returning to the electoral route to defeat the government in elections.

However, his name was diluted in the following years among other opponents. In 2022, and after the end of Guaidó’s international recognition, the “iron lady” once again attracted voters, this time filling rallies in popular neighborhoods, former Chavista strongholds.

In June 2023, his disqualification, which had expired in 2016, was extended to 15 years, just as his campaign was beginning to take off.

She is also accused by the Chavista regime of being a “lack” of the United States for having defended a market economy and proposed the privatization of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the country’s main source of income. His slogan “until the end” became his mantra.