Maria Corina Machado was a member of the Venezuelan National Assembly, elected with the highest number of votes of all the candidates for that election.
Maria Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition leader and activist, has been awarded the 2025 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 is known for her unique voice in Venezuela’s traditionally male-dominated political circuit, and according to BBC, is one of the most 100 influential and inspiring leaders in the world.
Who is Maria Corina Machado
Born on October 7, 1967, Maria Corina Machado is a leader of the Vente Venezuela party. She is an industrial engineer and the current leader of the opposition in Venezuela.
According to Forbes, the Venezuelan leader and activist prefers to be called Maria Corina. Before stepping into the political landscape, Maria was one of the founders of Sumate, a civil society NGO.
Maria Corina is the national coordinator of Vente Venezuela, a liberal political organisation founded in 2013, of which she is also a founding member. She was elected to the country’s National Assembly with the highest number of votes of all the candidates in the 2010-2015 election. She served in the assembly from 2011 to 2014.
As the vice president of Sumate, Maria, in 2004, took on the drive for a recall referendum on the then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. She was at the time under investigation for treason and conspiracy due to funding accepted by Sumate.
In 2001, Maria Corina made notable remarks about Venezuela’s political course. Her words, later quoted in a 2004 Washington Post article, read, “Something clicked. I had this unsettling feeling that I could not stay at home and watch the country get polarised and collapse…We had to keep the electoral process but change the course, to give Venezuelans the chance to count ourselves, to dissipate tensions before they built up. It was a choice of ballots over bullets.”
Maria Corina was also a presidential pre-candidate in 2012, but she lost the race to her fellow primary candidate Henrique Capriles. In the anti-government protests against Nicolás Maduro, Maria was one of the prominent faces.
In 2023, Maria Corina was again a pre-candidate for Vente Venezuela in the primary elections of the Unitary Platform. However, the Comptroller General of Venezuela disqualified her for 15 years. This was an extension of a previously imposed ban because she supported the US sanctions on the Maduro government and backed former opposition leader Juan Guaido.
Following the 2024 presidential election, Maria Corina published a letter in the Wall Street Journal, which she said she was writing from “hiding, fearing for my life, my freedom, and that of my fellow countrymen from the dictatorship led by Nicolás Maduro.
Maria had stated that Maduro did not win the Venezuelan presidential election, claiming that he lost to her party colleague Edmundo González, 67 per cent to 30 per cent.
She said Maduro responded to the protests against him with what she described as “brutal repression”. Maria Corina said that state security forces killed several Venezuelans and imprisoned thousands of others. “Most of our team is in hiding, and even after seven diplomatic missions were expelled from Venezuela, my aides in the Argentine Embassy are being protected by the government of Brazil. I could be captured as I write these words,” Maria Corina had said.
