‘Venezuela will breathe again’: María Corina Machado’s daughter delivers her Nobel Peace Prize speech

María Corina Machado dedicated her Nobel Peace Prize to the political prisoners and human rights activists fighting for democracy in Venezuela in a speech delivered by her daughter at a ceremony in Norway on Wednesday.

“Venezuela will breathe again,” said Ana Corina Sosa Machado, one of the Venezuelan opposition leader’s three children, at Oslo City Hall.

Machado has been living in hiding and has not been seen in public since Jan. 9, when she was briefly detained after joining supporters in a protest in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. She later fled the country.

A spokesperson for Machado didn’t specify her whereabouts, but the Norwegian Nobel Institute had said earlier Wednesday it was “profoundly happy to confirm that Machado is safe” and will be in Oslo at some point soon — just not in time for the ceremony.

Sosa Machado appeared to confirm that with her own comments before the speech, saying that family members would soon be able to hug her mother for the first time in several months.

The 58-year-old’s win for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in her South American nation was announced on Oct. 10. She was described as a woman “who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.”

“More than anything,” Sosa Machado said in her mother’s words, “what we Venezuelans can offer the world is the lesson forged through this long and difficult journey — that to have a democracy, we must be willing to fight for freedom.”

Prominent Latin American figures attended Wednesday’s ceremony in a signal of solidarity with Machado. Those scheduled to attend were Argentine President Javier Milei, Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa, Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino and Paraguayan President Santiago Peña.

Barred from running in election

Machado won the opposition’s primary election and intended to run against President Nicolás Maduro in last year’s presidential election, but the government barred her from running for office. Retired diplomat Edmundo González took her place.

González sought asylum in Spain last year after a Venezuelan court issued a warrant for his arrest.

Sosa Machado described the process on Wednesday.

“To rediscover one another, we travelled by road and by dirt path in a country with gasoline shortages, daily blackouts and collapsing communications,” she said. “Forbidden from advertising, without money or media willing to speak our names, we crossed it armed only with conviction. 

“Word of mouth was our network of hope, and it spread faster than any campaign. Because our desire for freedom was very much alive within us.”

Maduro would ultimately hold on to power in an election criticized by democratic countries and international institutions.

After Machado was announced as this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maduro castigated her days later at an event, saying that she is rejected by “90 per cent of the population” in Venezuela.

Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, earned a standing ovation prior to Sosa Machado’s speech on Wednesday by calling on Maduro to step down.

The ceremony comes at a critical point in the country’s protracted crisis as the administration of President Donald Trump builds up a massive military deployment in the Caribbean, threatening repeatedly to strike Venezuelan soil after a series of deadly strikes on boats that the U.S. alleges were connected to the Maduro administration and were transporting drugs. Maduro sees the operation as an effort to end his hold on power.

Machado has been generally supportive of the Trump administration’s approach, but has denied that she had been in talks with the White House about a regime change or being the successor to Maduro.

Five past Nobel Peace Prize laureates were unable to attend the ceremony because they were detained or imprisoned at the time of the award, according to the prize’s official website, most recently Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi in 2023 and Belarusian human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski in 2022.