María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader who won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, said on Wednesday that she was on her way to Oslo after failing to appear at the ceremony to collect the prize. Her trip, she told a member of the Nobel committee, required people to risk their lives to ensure her safe transit.
Ms. Machado’s emergence from hiding in Venezuela and the danger involved in being smuggled out of the country in the face of threats by the government to arrest her represent a perilous new phase in the crisis gripping the country. Controversy already shrouded Ms. Machado’s selection for the peace prize because she has been an enthusiastic supporter of using U.S. military force to remove Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s authoritarian president.
“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,” Ms. Machado told Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Nobel committee, according to an audio clip of a phone call released by the prize’s organizers.
Ms. Machado’s intention to go to Norway immediately raised questions about her future, since returning to Venezuela would place her at risk of being arrested.
Ms. Machado’s daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, accepted the prize on her mother’s behalf in Oslo, the Norwegian capital. The Norwegian Nobel Institute had awarded Ms. Machado the prize in October for her contributions to advancing democracy in Venezuela.
The confusion surrounding Ms. Machado’s whereabouts made this year’s Nobel ceremony in Oslo the most unpredictable in recent years.
Ms. Machado is thought to have been living in hiding in Venezuela since Venezuela’s government embarked on a campaign of repression against opposition leaders and protesters angered over Mr. Maduro’s move to fraudulently declare himself the winner of a presidential election last year.
Mr. Maduro claimed to have won the race despite vote counts, confirmed by independent monitoring organizations, that showed that he lost by a wide margin to Edmundo González, who ran in Ms. Machado’s place after she was barred from the election.
Venezuela’s government has said that Ms. Machado would be considered a fugitive if she left the country, laying bare the risks involved in traveling to Norway to receive the prize. It is not clear if Venezuelan authorities would allow Ms. Machado to return without being detained.
A sense of theatrical suspense as to Ms. Machado’s whereabouts arose after Kristian Berg Harpviken, the head of the Nobel Institute, which helps select the recipient of the prize, said over the weekend that Ms. Machado had confirmed she would be in the capital for the event.
Ms. Machado, 58, is a former lawmaker who rose to international prominence by uniting much of Venezuela’s opposition to Mr. Maduro. She is a member of a wealthy Venezuelan family that owns one of the country’s largest steel producers, partially expropriated by Venezuela’s government.
She became a political activist in the early 2000s and founded Súmate, a voter rights group that led a failed effort to recall Hugo Chávez, the former president and founder of Venezuela’s modern socialist movement.
In 2010, Ms. Machado was elected to the National Assembly. Although she had significant public support, she was unable to dislodge Venezuela’s leftist leadership through elections. In 2014, she was stripped of her seat.
In 2023, Ms. Machado won an opposition primary but was blocked from running for president by the Venezuelan authorities in 2024. That was when she opted for the strategy of having Mr. González, a former diplomat, run for president instead.
While Ms. Machado has been recognized for her activism, she was also a controversial choice for the peace prize as an enthusiastic supporter of using U.S. military force to oust Mr. Maduro. The Trump administration has deployed thousands of military personnel in the Caribbean in a pressure campaign targeting Venezuela.
The Norwegian Peace Council, an organization promoting conflict resolution, declined to hold its traditional torchlight procession to honor Ms. Machado, saying she did not “align with the core values” of the group.
It was only the second time that the organization decided against holding the procession, following a similar decision in 2012 when the European Union was awarded the peace prize.
Ms. Machado has aligned closely with President Trump, refusing to criticize his administration’s deadly strikes on boats that American officials claim are carrying illicit drugs.
The strikes, which form part of the U.S. pressure campaign on Mr. Maduro, began in early September. So far, they have killed nearly 90 people, according to U.S. authorities.
A broad range of experts in laws governing the use of lethal force say the strikes are illegal, arguing that the Trump administration has not shown that an armed conflict exists between the United States and Venezuela.
Ms. Machado has also come under scrutiny for exaggerating Mr. Maduro’s ties to drug trafficking as the Trump administration tries to make the case that Venezuela, a minor player in the drug trade compared with Colombia, Mexico or Ecuador, is flooding the United States with deadly drugs.
Ms. Machado has also waded into highly contentious political disputes in the United States related to Mr. Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 presidential election. In recent weeks, she has amplified debunked claims that Venezuela’s government rigged elections in the United States.
Ms. Machado’s last public appearance was at a protest in January after she was in hiding for months; Mr. Maduro’s government has threatened to arrest her on multiple occasions.
After Ms. Machado went into hiding, her daughter accepted several awards on her behalf, including the Sakharov Prize for the Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament and the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize from the Council of Europe.
Jin Yu Young and Ravi Mattu contributed reporting.
Simon Romero is a Times correspondent covering Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. He is based in Mexico City.
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