The Nobel Institute announced this Tuesday that María Corina Machado travels to Oslo but he will not make it to the Nobel ceremony this Wednesday.
Shortly before, the institution, which awards the Nobel He said he did not know the whereabouts of the award winner this year with that of Peace, the leader of the Venezuelan opposition, María Corina Machado.
The presentation of the award was delegated to his daughter. Machado has been living in hiding since August 2024 and has not appeared in public for eleven months.
“The Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Corina Machado, has done everything possible to attend today’s ceremony. A trip in a situation of extreme danger. Although you will not be able to attend the ceremony or today’s events, we are very happy to confirm that He is fine and will be with us in Oslo,” the Nobel Institute announced in a statement on Tuesday.
Since October, when the award was announced, it was a mystery whether Machado would be able to travel to Oslo.
“I just don’t know where it is exactly,” said Nobel Institute director Kristian Berg Harpviken. “It will be her daughter Ana Corina Machado who receives the award in his mother’s name,” he added.
Over the weekend, the Nobel Institute announced that Machado would receive the award in personendowed with a gold medal, a diploma and 1.2 million dollars. He also organized a press conference and interviews with different international media, which ended up being cancelled.
Relatives and allies of Machado in Oslo told AFP that they hoped to see her on Tuesday in Oslo, where dozens of exiled Venezuelans and the presidents of Argentina, Panama, Ecuador and Paraguay have traveled.
Her former campaign manager, Magalli Meda, let it be understood on Tuesday that the opposition He had already left Venezuela and will return.
“How can we think that María Corina is not going to return and is going to stay in exile,” Meda said in a statement published in X.
The Nobel ceremony is scheduled for 1:00 p.m. (9:00 a.m. in Argentina) at the Oslo Municipality. In addition to receiving the award from his mother, Ana Corina Machado will also speak “the speech that María Corina herself has written,” said the director of the Institute.
While the Nobel Peace Prize will be delivered in Oslo, Those in Literature, Medicine, Physics, Chemistry and Economics will be awarded in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden.
In October, the Nobel Committee awarded the award to this trained engineer for her efforts in favor of “a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy” in Venezuela.
Machado went into hiding after these elections that granted a third term to Nicolás Maduro. These election results They were not recognized by the United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries.
The opposition leader maintains that Maduro he stole the elections from his candidateEdmundo González Urrutia, and published copies of the votes cast in the voting machines as proof of fraud. Chavismo denies the accusations.
Praised for her efforts in favor of democracy in Venezuela, opponents reproach her for her ideological affinity with US President Donald Trump, to whom she dedicated her Nobel Prize.
The award ceremony coincides with a major US military deployment in the Caribbean and US attacks against alleged “drug boats” that have left 87 dead.
For his part, Maduro assures that the true objective of these operations is to overthrow him and seize Venezuela’s oil reserves.