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Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has slipped out of hiding for the first time in more than a year to travel to Oslo where her Nobel Peace Prize was awarded, though she did not arrive in time for the ceremony.
Machado, who had been living at a secret location inside Venezuela for 16 months to dodge the regime’s security forces, said in a voice recording posted on the Nobel Peace Prize website that she was preparing to board a flight to the Norwegian capital, where she will be reunited with her children after two years apart.
“I am on my way to Oslo right now,” Machado said. “As soon as I arrive I will be able to embrace all my family and my children that I have not seen for two years.”
Her spokesperson later on Wednesday said the opposition leader would speak at the Grand Hotel in Oslo at 2am local time on Thursday.
Machado’s Nobel Prize comes as Donald Trump has ordered a massive naval build-up off the coast of Venezuela. The US president has ordered the largest military deployment in the Caribbean since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, with a dozen warships that include the world’s most modern aircraft carrier, fighter jets and more than 14,000 troops.
Trump on Wednesday said the US had seized an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast.
Machado has supported US military pressure on Maduro, telling Bloomberg in October that “the escalation that’s taken place is the only way to force Maduro to understand that it’s time to go”.
Machado went into hiding in Venezuela in August last year over fears of her arrest after the country’s authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro claimed victory in what was widely regarded as a stolen election.
The government had banned Machado, a former lawmaker, from running. Known for her tenacity, Venezuela’s “Iron Lady” named retired diplomat Edmundo González in her place and campaigned tirelessly on his behalf.
It is not clear how Machado escaped the country this week en route to Oslo, though US media reported she initially travelled by boat to the Dutch Caribbean island Curaçao, about 40 miles off the coast of Venezuela. The reports said her travel had been delayed by stormy seas.
“So many people risked their lives in order for me to arrive in Oslo,” Machado said in her phone call with the Nobel Prize committee. “This is a measure of what this recognition means to the Venezuelan people.”
The Nobel committee said Machado had done “everything in her power”, including “a journey in a situation of extreme danger”, to make it to the ceremony.
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, said in his opening remarks that Maduro “should accept the election results and step down”.
In reference to criticism over Machado’s support for Trump, Frydnes said: “Many of us — from a safe distance — expect Venezuela’s democratic leaders to pursue their aims with a moral purity their opponents never display. This is unrealistic. It is unfair. And it shows ignorance of history.”
Machado’s prize was collected on Wednesday by her daughter Ana Corina Sosa, who delivered remarks from her mother.
“Venezuela will breathe again,” Machado wrote. “We will open prison doors and watch thousands who were unjustly detained step into the warm sun, embraced at last by those who never stopped fighting for them.”
Machado was awarded the peace prize in October, with the Nobel Committee recognising her “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela, and for a struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy”.
The White House has said its naval task force in the Caribbean — which has carried out at least 22 strikes against alleged drug-smuggling vessels and killed dozens — is aimed at fighting drug traffickers. However, it is widely seen as an effort to press Maduro, who Washington has designated a narco-terrorist, into giving up power.
Maduro’s interior minister Diosdado Cabello on Monday played down Machado’s peace prize, calling it “an auction” that goes to “the highest bidder”.
“Check who the Nobel Peace Prize winners have been and you’ll find the answer,” Cabello said on his weekly television programme. “There’s not much to look for.”
Additional reporting by Ana Rodríguez Brazón in Caracas.
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