The Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 goes to a brave and committed champion of peace – to a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 to Maria Corina Machado.
She is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.
As the leader of the democracy movement in Venezuela, Maria Corina Machado is one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times.
María Corina Machado Parisca (born 7 October 1967) is a Venezuelan politician and industrial engineer. A prominent opposition leader to the authoritarian Nicolás Maduro regime, she served as a member of the National Assembly from 2011 to 2014, and has run as a candidate in presidential elections while experiencing repression from the Maduro regime. She is considered as a right and liberal politician.
In 2023, Machado won the opposition primary to become the unity candidate for the 2024 presidential election. The Venezuelan government subsequently barred her from running in the election. […] The opposition’s election results claim that the opposition won the election, while the Maduro government also claimed victory. Shortly thereafter, in August 2024, Machado announced that she had gone into hiding, citing fears for her life and freedom under the authoritarian Maduro regime.
Machado has received international recognition for her activism. In 2025, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy”. Machado was also named one of BBC’s 100 Women in 2018, and listed among Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2025.
Machado is considered right wing, and is a fan of tRump and Bolsonaro, supports Israel, and her neoliberal policies support privatization and foreign intervention.
On several occasions, Machado has identified the United Kingdom’s Margaret Thatcher as the politician she most admires.
Foreign policy Regarding the Israel–Palestine conflict, Machado expressed her solidarity with Israel following the 7 October 2023 attacks. She thanked Israel for its support of Edmundo González as president-elect, and previously of Juan Guaidó as acting president. Machado also planned to reestablish diplomatic relations with Israel, which were cut in 2009 due to the 2008–2009 Gaza war.
In February 2025, Machado addressed a Patriots.eu rally in Madrid. Machado is a strong supporter of United States President Donald Trump, whom she described in 2025 as a “visionary”. Machado praised the Trump administration for bombing suspected drug traffickers in September 2025. She has expressed support for a military intervention to depose the Maduro regime, and reportedly coordinated with the Trump administration to plan the first hundred hours after his deposition.
When I saw the headline “Maria Corina Machado Wins the Nobel Peace Prize,” I almost laughed at the absurdity. But I didn’t, because there’s nothing funny about rewarding someone whose politics have brought so much suffering. Anyone who knows what she stands for knows there’s nothing remotely peaceful about her politics.
If this is what counts as “peace” in 2025, then the prize itself has lost every ounce of credibility. I’m Venezuelan-American, and I know exactly what Machado represents. She’s the smiling face of Washington’s regime-change machine, the polished spokesperson for sanctions, privatization, and foreign intervention dressed up as democracy. […] If Henry Kissinger could win a Peace Prize, why not María Corina Machado?
Others are suspicious of her ties to radical rightwing politicians such as Trump and Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro, and her support for Trump’s widely discredited claim that a Venezuelan gang, the Tren de Aragua – has launched an “invasion” of the US.
Trump and top officials such as Stephen Miller have used that spurious claim as justification for its campaign against Venezuelan migrants – scores of whom were deported to a high-security prison in authoritarian El Salvador – and for strikes on alleged “narco-boats” in the Caribbean that have killed at least 21 people.
Maduro and his allies mockingly refer to Machado as “La Sayona” [“the sackcloth woman”] – the name of a hideous female ghost from Venezuelan folklore who roams the country taking violent revenge on unfaithful husbands.
“Donald Trump is taking the US in an extreme direction, attacking freedom of speech, having masked secret police kidnapping people in broad daylight and cracking down on institutions and the courts. When the president is this volatile and authoritarian, of course we have to be prepared for anything,” Bergstø told the Guardian.
“The Nobel Committee is an independent body and the Norwegian government has no involvement in determining the prizes. But I’m not sure Trump knows that. We have to be prepared for anything from him.” – The Guardian
The Guardian: An Enumeration
Donald Trump’s thuggish campaign to bully his way to the Nobel peace prize should not be the cause for the committee to reject him. There are many more substantial grounds that render him patently unqualified to receive the award.
La Sayona is a legend from Venezuela, represented by the vengeful spirit of a woman that shows up only to men that have love affairs out of their marriages. The name “Sayona” refers to the cloth the ghost wears which is a long white dress similar to a medieval undergarment.
The legend claims that when this woman appears she asks for a ride, and after a while when the victim tries to see her face, he notices that she has instead a skull with horrible teeth.
Legend The legend says that “La Sayona” was a young woman named Casilda. She lived in a small town in the plains of Venezuela and was the most beautiful girl there. She was married to a great man, caring and loving. Casilda and her husband had a baby boy. One day, Casilda was swimming naked in a nearby river and a villager saw her. After that, the man would always follow her and watch her bathe in the river.
One day Casilda saw him and told him to leave her alone; he ignored her, and instead told her that he was there to warn her: “Your husband is having an affair with none other than your mother,” he said. Casilda ran home and found her husband asleep with the baby in his arms. Blind with anger, she burned the house with them inside. Villagers could hear their screams while Casilda ran to her mother’s house. She found her on the patio and attacked her with a machete, striking her in the stomach. As the mother bled to death, she cursed Casilda telling her that from then on she would have to avenge all women by killing their unfaithful husbands. And from that day forward Casilda became “La Sayona”.
Elder G and the WLBOTT creative team are working on a screenplay, tentatively called Privatize Your Soul, where Margaret Thatcher plays the lead role of Sayona.
Title:Privatize your Soul: A Sayona Story
Setting: The misty Venezuelan plains at night, where spectral horse whinnies echo and Thatcher’s Sayona roams in a torn power suit, heels clicking on the dusty road.
Tagline: “Beware the cry of the Iron Lady.”
Thatcher’s Sayona isn’t just punishing unfaithful men; she’s enforcing fiscal austerity on wandering phantoms. Her ghostly whispers: “Privatize your soul.”
