The clandestine life is over for María Corina Machado. After more than a year in hiding for security reasons, the leader of the Venezuelan opposition, winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, arrived in Oslo at midnight on Thursday. The leader will have her first official event at the Norwegian Parliament this Thursday, which includes a meeting and press conference with Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store. Highly anticipated and with enormous symbolic weight, Machado’s arrival in the Norwegian capital marks an important step for the opposition to the regime of Nicolas Maduro and for millions of Venezuelans who have followed minute by minute all the clues revealed in recent days on the fate of the opposition leader. His departure from Venezuela also represents a challenge for the Chavista government and raises new unknowns for the future at a critical moment in the country’s political history.
Over the past 24 hours, the story of Machado’s journey from Venezuela to Norway has undergone an endless series of unexpected twists and turns. Early Wednesday morning, the Norwegian Nobel Institute announced that this year’s laureate would not be present at the presentation at Oslo City Hall. However, about an hour before the gala, the institution said in a statement that the Venezuelan opponent had undertaken “a trip in a situation of extreme danger” and that “she had done everything possible to attend the ceremony.” “We are deeply happy to confirm that she is safe and will be with us,” he added. A few minutes later, a call was broadcast between the leader and the president of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jorgen Watne Frydnes.
“I will be in Oslo, I am on my way,” assured Machado during the telephone conversation. “I know that there are many Venezuelans who were able to reach Oslo, as well as my family and my team,” continued the opposition leader. “As soon as I arrive, I will be able to hug my family and my children, whom I have not seen for two years, as well as so many Venezuelans and Norwegians who, I know, share our struggle and our efforts.”
Amid a sea of doubts and mixed emotions, it was the winner’s daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, who had to show up, collect the prize on her behalf and read her acceptance speech. “To our political prisoners, to the persecuted, to their families and to all those who defend human rights,” said the opposition MP in her message, “this honor belongs to them. This day belongs to them. The future belongs to them.”
During the event, his daughter expressed the enthusiasm of those awaiting the Venezuelan Nobel Prize. “I must say that my mother never breaks a promise. And that is why, with all the joy of my heart, I can tell you that in a few hours we will be able to hug her here in Oslo,” Sosa said during a ceremony in which, although she was not present in person, the figure of María Corina Machado was omnipresent.
There were his family members, his closest collaborators and allies, his message, his determination to continue the fight. “This is the story of a people and their long road to freedom. “What an honor to hear my acceptance speech for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize in the voice of my daughter and to know that very soon I will be able to hug her and my family again,” Machado wrote in his first message on Twitter after three days of silence, when it was already dark in the freezing cold of Oslo and shortly after hundreds of Venezuelans were took to the streets to participate in the traditional torchlight procession, a symbol that is repeated year after year after each Nobel Prize to remember how light makes its way through darkness.
“Freedom, freedom, freedom, Venezuela, freedom!” » » shouted the Venezuelan diaspora in front of the Grand Hotel in Oslo, where the following The Nobel laureate was still waiting for this year’s winner to arrive. Ana Corina Sosa came out of her balcony. Torches rose into the sky. A huge Venezuelan flag was placed on the steps of the Norwegian Parliament. And the crowd shouted, sang, cried. The Nobel Prize marked the greatest symbolic achievement of the Venezuelan opposition after two decades of obscurity, repression and powerlessness. And then, finally, María Corina arrived.
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