“The Paradox of the Nobel Peace Prize: Rewarding War in the Name of Peace”

 “The Paradox of the Nobel Peace Prize: Rewarding War in the Name of Peace”

On the politicization of the Nobel Peace Prize:

the case of María Corina Machado

Notes from the Ground

Dr. Lenin Torres Antonio

The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to the person, group, or organization that has carried out “the greatest or best work for fraternity among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the holding and promotion of peace congresses,” according to Alfred Nobel’s will. These are the criteria we must keep in mind when discussing the Nobel Peace Prize.

A major stir, fueled by the international press, has been caused by the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Venezuelan activist María Corina Machado, a staunch rival for years of Chavismo, which emerged with Hugo Chávez’s rise to power in 1999. Since then, Machado, hand in hand with the United States, has sought by all means to overthrow the Chavista regime of Nicolás Maduro, the current president of Venezuela, supporting the illegal and devastating economic embargo, promoting and financing violent protests, backing armed intervention under the pretext of fighting drug trafficking, and even encouraging direct actions by the United States against the Venezuelan government. In short, her political activism, far from being peaceful, has been belligerent. Gandhi would be left speechless in the face of such a method of achieving peace through violence and war—and even more so, of being rewarded for it.

However, an analysis of what the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to María Corina Machado represents goes beyond the criteria that contradict the very foundations Alfred Nobel himself envisioned. It concerns the factional use that the international right has made of the award, reaffirming its thesis that only through intervention and force can its vision of what social and political normality should be imposed. Thus, the Mexican right has drawn an absurd parallel between what is happening in Mexico and in Venezuela, when it is evident that they have nothing to do with each other: Mexico lives in a full democracy, a regime of freedoms where the excesses of the right demonstrate this, waging—since the very first minute it lost power to Obradorist progressivism—a permanent media war and inciting violence in order to return, as the “illustrious” PRI member Fidel Herrera (+) said, “to the fucking power.”

It is regrettable to witness the deterioration of public and private institutions, which should resolve conflicts through dialogue and peace, and to see how prizes that should be awarded to figures who fight peacefully for peace in the world—especially in these violent times—are given instead to those who promote confrontation.

If everything goes as Donald Trump plans, we will soon see María Corina Machado sworn in as the new president of Venezuela, promising to safeguard the interests of the aristocracy that governed the country after the death of Simón Bolívar and, of course, those of the United States. Oil is the great prize Washington has in its sights.

How can one understand that the Maduro regime is labeled a dictatorship while the Saudi monarchy (Saudi Arabia) is not touched even with the petal of a rose, despite its repressive nature—where there are no human rights, homosexuals are persecuted, female university students must attend lectures via videoconference in auditoriums separate from men, labor rights do not exist for thousands of Pakistani, Indian, and African immigrants, and wealth remains in the hands of royal families?

That biased vision, normalized by Western media to conceal the contradictions of the dominant system, fails to mention that the laureate María Corina Machado promotes armed and violent means both inside and outside Venezuela to overthrow Nicolás Maduro’s regime. If she were truly interested in equality, freedom, democracy, and the well-being of Venezuelans, why did she not protest against the corrupt regimes prior to Chavismo? The daughter of a steel magnate, educated abroad, she remained silent when the oligarchy lost power with Hugo Chávez. As a parliamentarian, she said nothing about the aggressive U.S. interventionism against the Chavista regime nor about the economic embargo as a tool to subdue those who think differently, despite the fact that Chávez promoted social programs for the fair distribution of wealth. Her right-wing gene silenced her and, together with her peers, she began to wear down Chávez’s regime until his death and now Maduro’s. They have done everything except promote peace: their activism has been bellicose and unpatriotic, an unconditional ally of the United States, fighting to overthrow the current government. Her narrative about recovering freedoms and democracy clashes with her personal and group interests and ambitions.

The Nobel Peace Prize has been prostituted. María Corina Machado appeals to violence and U.S. military interventionism. Her biography is that of an opposition figure seeking to return to power in order to maintain the status quo that allowed Venezuela’s natural resources to end up abroad and enrich the business elite. Here we can indeed draw a parallel with Mexico: the Mexican economic elite, which represents less than 1% and controls more than 50% of GDP, together with international interests, seeks to overthrow the Obradorist regime for the simple reason that it stripped them of their lucrative profits and privileges. Thus, the true parallel lies in the obscene and unpatriotic behavior of the Venezuelan and Mexican right. In other words, if the struggle for democracy were the true driving force of Machado’s activism, she would have challenged the corrupt regimes prior to Chavismo. However, her silence in the face of U.S. interventionism and her alignment with economic elites reveal an agenda aimed at restoring the status quo that has historically concentrated wealth in the hands of minorities. This pattern finds an echo in Mexico, where business and political sectors seek to reverse the redistributive policies of Obradorism through media campaigns and international pressure.

Finally, the Nobel Peace Prize has ceased to represent the values of its founder Alfred Nobel (1833–1896), who left his fortune to reward those who promoted peace for a better world—not war or military interventionism, as María Corina Machado does.

December 2025.