Conor here: We featured details on Machado the past few days in Links, but the fact that the “opposition” leader Nobel Peace Prize winner is lobbying for more US sanctions that have already killed tens of thousands of Venezuelans and more American military involvement that will kill many more really deserves more attention.
The following is a good reminder of not only how ridiculous are all the Trump administration’s claims on Venezuela, but also what worthless propaganda the Nobel Peace Prize is. While the absurdity of both might be increasingly transparent, nowadays that is unfortunately a near guarantee that the situation is about to get much worse.
By Joseph Bouchard, a journalist and researcher from Québec covering security and democracy in Latin America. His articles have appeared in Responsible Statecraft, Reason, The Diplomat, Le Devoir, and RealClearPolitics, among others. Originally published at Common Dreams.
The United Nations General Assembly, held in late September, offered a stark panorama of competing global visions. US President Donald Trump’s address was a characteristically bombastic, comically terrifying display of imperial nostalgia and hate-filled paranoia, including claims that climate change is a con and that London is no longer London because of Muslim immigration and “sharia law.”
In contrast, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Chile’s Gabriel Boric each used their time on the international stage to defend democracy and humanism, take action against climate change, and oppose rising global authoritarianism.
Meanwhile, the Venezuelan opposition, led by former presidential candidate María Corina Machado, the far-right extremist who just won the Nobel Peace Prize, used the UN General Assembly (UNGA) as a lobbying platform, courting the Trump administration and sympathetic foreign governments to support a coup to depose President Nicolás Maduro. She has been part of multiple calls for US interventions in Venezuela, including to, in her words, secure the “total asphyxiation of the Venezuelan economy.”
The opposition organized demonstrations in front of the Secretariat Building to denounce Maduro and call for the world to intervene. Pedro de Mendonça, Press Director for Machado’s campaign, hosted a protest saying, “Maduro is not the legitimate president of Venezuela, but the head of the Cartel of the Suns and the Tren de Aragua.” Mendonça called for “a free Venezuela and a secure West” through an “international coalition.” This is as direct a call for intervention as you could get. Machado retweeted it.
Hoy #27Sep, desde la ONU, los venezolanos lo decimos claro: Maduro no es presidente legítimo de Venezuela, sino el jefe del Cartel de Los Soles y del Tren de Aragua. Por eso, esta delegación que ha venido con el nombre de Venezuela no representa al país, sino a la droga y al… pic.twitter.com/z69usMAzkB
— Pedro Antonio de Mendonça (@PedroDeMendonca) September 27, 2025
Machado has been a central figure to the Venezuelan opposition for more than two decades, helping push the opposition much farther to the right.
She says she models herself on Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and has championed “Popular Capitalism,” a philosophy pioneered by dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile, seeking to privatize all sectors of the state, and would give priority to American oil, gas, and mining companies in “free Venezuela.”
She has herself met with American oil executives during her campaign. Her proximity to the US is crystal clear; she has previously worked with the US Agency for International Development, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the International Republican Institute in Venezuela, and served as a Yale World Fellow. She was quite close to the George W. Bush administration during this period.
Machado was also part of the 2002 coup attempt against Hugo Chávez, signing the Carmona Decree to suspend the constitution, dissolve the National Assembly, and appoint oligarch Pedro Carmona as president. The coup collapsed within 48 hours due to immense popular backlash (some anti-coup protesters were also killed in the process).
Parallel to the UNGA sessions, representatives of the opposition allegedly met with members of the Trump administration, while Machado herself and prominent opposition figures saturated social media with calls for a global movement to remove Maduro.
During the UNGA, Juan Guaidó, the former opposition leader whom the US was pretending was the legitimate president of Venezuela, also met with Trump administration officials to lobby for more “counter-narcotics” operations in Venezuela and to depose Maduro. Machado and Guaidó have recently labeled the Venezuelan government “criminal” and “illegitimate,” and Maduro a “drug trafficker and terrorist.” Dozens of tweets, press statements, and interviews echoed the same talking points during the event; and urged the world to end his “regime.” To an American audience, this all sounds eerily familiar. It’s no coincidence that the Trump administration has merged the War on Drugs with the War on Terror. This is why calling Maduro a “narco-terrorist” is so dangerous (and wrong), and can open the door to more military action by the US.
Despite what the opposition wants to portray, these protests are not organic, and neither has been the US response. In fact, many of them are rooted in American energy and defense profits, and backed by hawkish think tanks. They circulate these postures within their circles to give an allure of a global movement, but most Americans and Venezuelans oppose US military involvement in Venezuela.
The allegations that Maduro heads the “Cartel of the Suns” (debunked by the very InSight Crime that receives State Department funding, as well as several Latin American governments) serve as a cudgel against any measured approach to dealing with Venezuela, reminiscent of how any opposition to intervention in the Middle East post-9/11 was met with accusations of support for terrorism.
Never mind the fact that Venezuela is nowhere near the most important drug trafficking port in Latin America, that the War on Drugs doesn’t work, that the US is allied with bigger drug-supplying countries, or that this all comes from the fact that the US can’t decrease its own demand for drugs.
Earlier this year, in February, the Trump administration officially designated Tren de Aragua (TDA) as an international terrorist organization, claiming it operates with support from the Maduro government. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, one of Washington’s most vocal Venezuela hawks, has himself called Maduro a narco-terrorist and an illegitimate dictator, and has long lobbied for regime change. Attorney General Pam Bondi has also echoed these claims, as have many other key members of the Trump administration.
This kind of rhetoric by the Trump administration, echoed by the Machado camp, has helped legally justify actual military operations on both American and foreign soil, including a series of drone strikes against fishing boats, which, yes, are war crimes.
The Trump administration has cited alleged TDA ties (without much evidence) to carry out deportations of Venezuelan migrants, with the deportation advertised by Homeland Security through cruel and disgusting meme videos they share on social media. Machado and her ilk have helped make all of this a reality.
We also have to remember that all of this is not in the name of democracy or protecting against drug trafficking. The Trump administration is invested in dismantling American democracy at home and supporting tyrants abroad. Until two seconds ago, the Trump administration was signing numerous deals for cheap oil and for deportation flights with Maduro, the very dictator it now wants to depose.
The US has a long history of supporting drug traffickers when it serves their interests. This includes the Contras and the far-right Paramilitaries in Colombia, now the largest drug traffickers in South America. The American security state has shown no interest whatsoever in pursuing actual solutions to the drug crisis, including decreasing demand, making supply less appealing by providing better ways of life, improving safe supply, or drug legalization.
The opposition’s proposed total economic surrender to US corporate interests would doom Venezuela to the same conditions that led to Chavez’s rise to power.
This is about protecting power and profits, including the profits of big oil, gas, and mining companies (Venezuela has some of the world’s largest reserves in all), and those of the military-industrial complex. A full coup would be a disaster and another bloody coup added to the United States’ long history of calamitous military interventions in Latin America.
She says she models herself on Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and has championed “Popular Capitalism,” a philosophy pioneered by dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile, seeking to privatize all sectors of the state, and would give priority to American oil, gas, and mining companies in “free Venezuela.”
Well, isn’t that wonderful.
I think that in the Anglosphere (and evidently in the Norwegiosphere) there seems to be some real difficulty coming to terms with the fact: An oppressor is an oppressor is an oppressor.
Poor Juan Guaidó didn’t work out, even after Nancy “Fancy Gelato” Pelosi dragged him around the Congress and presented him as the “real” president of Venezuela. Now, we have Juan Guaidó in a bra.
I am not here to defend the problems of the Venezuela government — although bullying by the US of A is likely a factor — but I also know the permanent damage that Pinochet and the Chicago Boys caused to Chile.
An oppressor is an oppressor is an oppressor.
Seems to me that she models herself on Yeltsin. Fashionwise, she models Zelensky in lighter colors. We would know things got serious, when she switches to camo.
Latin American Vidkun Quisling in skirts. Norwegians should know the type and that they gave her the award tells us all we need to know about today’s Norway.
I think Vidkun Quisling gave Norway a mild occupation, so perhaps some fond memory of him persists.
Machado also promised to move the Argentinian Embassy to Jerusalem so obviously that makes her even more qualified. And she is ready to sell off all the country’s assets just as long as she becomes the boss. Expect the poverty rate to go up into the stratosphere if she is imposed on Argentina. Still, Maduro has armed the populace which makes any calculations kinda dodgy. She may have to do a Zelensky and rule from a bunker or in front of a green screen.
I think you mean Venezuela.
Don’t cry for me Argentina. :)
It seems to me that the award fits neatly into the West’s Age of Vast Corruption in which our élites are free to do as they will while the rest of us see our liberties draining away until the only choice we have is between “obey or torture and death”.
Now, we have Juan Guaidó in a bra.
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You owe me a new keyboard!j
Was she in the front row at Javier Milei’s recent concert?
I would expect her to be nothing less than a groupie.
1. “seeking to privatize all sectors of the state”
2.”economic surrender to US corporate interests”
Seems like I see this happening in the USA.
I would substitute “US corporate interests” with -Multinational corporate interests-
It’s almost like (clutches pearls) the Nobel Peace Prize is just propaganda. Seriously, I lost all respect for that organization when Obama won just for getting elected. Time to go read some more Camus.
I lost all respect for the Nobel Peace Prize (the only one of the Nobels awarded by Norway) when they gave it to war criminal Henry Kissinger, and even more so when unrepentant terrorists Rabin and Arafat were awarded.
Thanks Conor. Perhaps the problem is that genuine peaceniks are so rare that the Norwegians struggle to find any. As usual I turn to Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_peace_prize
But at least Kissinger did participate in (slowly) ending a war whereas this new award goes to those who are planning to start a new one. It may suit upside down Trump world but that’s a world many of us are trying not to live in. Perhaps Trump should add Norway to Greenland and Panama as potential acquisitions.
The Nobel Committee has taken seriously the Orwellian doublespeak that “War is Peace”.
You are being much too generous by assuming that a contemporary committee of Norwegian parlementarians give a tinker’s shit about peace. The Peace Prize is merely a figleaf in the attempt to conceal the brutal reality of a continent swaying on the edge of the moral, political and economic abyss. I’m surprised they didn’t give it to Netanyahu as a reward for his finetuniing the concept of using genocide to create peace in a stolen land, far surpassing the genocides of the Cathars, the indigenous nations of Amerca, and Hitler’s genocidal campaign against the Slavs and Gypsies..
The Nobel Peace Prize should be renamed the “Norway-U.S. Prize.”
Kissinger assisted in ending the war? In an Orwellian sense yes, so that is fitting. He and Nixon infamously carpet-bombed Laos and Cambodia and did not inform Congress. Multiple high crimes were committed, yet no one was held to account. So yes, escalating the war crimes and high crimes against the US constitution and then being seen to “end” the war is fitting. The rank hypocrisy just adds more to the tragic humor.
I’m not endorsing Kissinger but saying even he came closer to the alleged criteria than the current pick.
He only “ended” the Vietnam War after having extended it with empty promises to the North to ensure that peace couldn’t be declared before the 1968 elections. Had LBJ been allowed to end the war it’s likely that Humphrey would have been president instead of Nixon, we wouldn’t have had the embarrassment of Watergate, and several hundred thousand people in Southeast Asia would have been spared horrible deaths.
So does that make Kissinger a bigger villain than LBJ, Eisenhower and yes even the sainted JFK? When it comes to Vietnam they were all villains in my book.
It’s funny how US political debates converge towards personal choice of lesser evil.
When Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Prize in October 1973, Tom Lehrer said it made political satire obsolete and never performed again. Le Duc Tho, unlike Kissinger, turned down the prize knowing that peace had not been achieved.
Thanks Conor, few have commented on the large number of deaths that resulted from the US siege warfare (euphemistically known as “sanctions”) on Venezuela. And of course the war on Venezuela has bipartisan support.
I’m no legal expert, but I would think that unilateral “sanctions” against a recognized sovereign nation is a criminal act on more than one level. The resultant deaths of many thousands of innocent people at least should be viewed as immoral and criminal if nothing else. Alas, few even know about it.
The undercurrent working definition of “democracy”- Colonized Imperial Subjugation…AND “peace”- Subjugated Acquiescence, e.g., Nobel “peace” as “noble” lie, where “peace” is established by might-is-right to subjugate and presented as right-to-defend the subjugation.
In any context outside of the colonizing narrative, this Nobel karen would be viewed as a traitor to her country. A so called “activist” that actively calls for death and suffering (of “lesser” Venezuelans) via “sanctions”, a euphemism for illegal coercive measures, AND more death and suffering via Illegal foreign military invasion.
The major and unforgiveable “sin” of THEIR revolution has been a refusal to be subjugated by foreign powers and a demonstrated commitment to the legal framework of THEIR constitution. Their constitution is their real dictator. All this with an “opposition-grifter-complex” that offer mid-field picnics from the distant bleachers while sabotaging at every opportunity…without ever engaging honestly in their legal constitutional processes, but quick to cash in on nobel prize, USAID etc…
The Norwegian Parliament, in abject craven subservience to the global hegemon, proudly presents this year’s Vidkun Quisling Imperialism Prize to Maria Machado.
Another historical tragedy recycled as farce. (hat tip to Marx and Hegel)
The irony, it burns.