🇻🇪Nobel: The Prize that Exposed a Regime
A lesson in history, a cautionary tale for the United States ... This is why I fight.
Thank you for your subscription. As a writer, this my therapy to deal with traumatic times. To have an audience that follows Praying Mantis is simply awesome.
Although she did not arrive in time for the actual ceremony, Maria Corina Machado (MCM) ultimately made it to Norway and addressed the public yesterday, following the Nobel investiture. The exact details of her escape from Venezuela remain uncertain, but I’ve been told she left Caracas and endured a harrowing 12-hour drive to Falcón before boarding a watercraft that transported her to an undisclosed location, likely Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles or another island. From there, she flew to Norway.
Witnesses reported two U.S. F-16s and drones seen overhead during her perilous passage across the ocean—an unmistakable sign that the United States was protecting the endangered leader. Given the logistical challenges and the threats against her life, it is nothing short of divine intervention that MCM arrived safely in Oslo.
Meanwhile, reports had claimed she left Venezuela several days earlier. In fact, Diosdado Cabello—Venezuela’s feared Minister of Interior under the Maduro regime—insisted she had been permitted to depart freely. He has since been exposed as lying, as we now know this operation took place only in recent days and under such perilous conditions that MCM could not reach Oslo in time for her own ceremony. Instead, her daughter Ana beautifully delivered her speech. Here is the full text:
I am here on behalf of my mother, MCM, who has United millions of Venezuelans in an extraordinary effort that you our hosts, have honored with a Nobel Peace Prize. But although she has not been able to be here and take part in this ceremony I must say that my mother never breaks a promise and that is why with all the joy in my heart I can tell you that in just a few hours we will be able to embrace her here, in Oslo, after 16 months of living in hiding.
And as I await that moment to hug her, to kiss her, to embrace her after two years, I think of the other daughters and sons who do not get to see their mothers today. This is what drives her, what drives all of us. She wants to live in a free Venezuela and she will never give up on that purpose. That is why we all know and I know that she will be back in Venezuela, very soon.
In the meantime, at this moment, I face the difficult task of giving voice to her words, the speech she prepared for this occasion. This is her speech:
“I have come here to tell you a story the story of a people and their long march towards freedom. This march brings me here today as one voice, amongst millions of Venezuelans, who rose once again to reclaim the destiny that was always theirs.
Venezuela was born of audacity, shaped by peoples and cultures intertwined. From Spain we inherited a language, a culture, and a faith that merged with african and ancestral roots. In 1811, we wrote the first Constitution in the spanish speaking world: one of the earliest republican Constitutions on earth, affirming the radical idea that every human being carries a sovereign dignity. This Constitution enshrines citizenship, individual rights, religious liberty and separation of powers.
Our ancestors carried liberty on their backs. The crossed an entire continent, from the banks of the Orinoco to the heights of the Potosi, to help to give rise to societies of free and equal citizens. Out of the conviction that freedom is never whole unless it is shared, from the beginning we believed something simple and immense: that all human beings are born to be free.
That conviction became our national soul. In the 20th century, the earth opened. In 1922, the Reventon in La Rosa erupted for nine days: a fountain of oil and possibility. In peace, we turned that sudden wealth into an engine for knowledge and imagination. Through the ingenuity of our scientists, we eradicated disease. We built universities of global prestige, museums, and concert halls, sent thousands of Venezuelans abroad through scholarships, trusting that free minds would return as transformation. Our cities glowed with the kinetic art of Cruz and Soto.
We forged steel, aluminum, and hydro power. Proved that Venezuela could build anything it dared to envision. But Venezuela also became a refuge. We opened our arms to migrants and exiles from every corner of the world. Spaniards fleeing civil war. Italians and Portuguese escaping poverty and dictatorship. Jews after the Holocaust. Chileans, Argentinians, and Uruguayans escaping military regimes. Cubans escaping communism and families from Colombia, Lebanon, and Syria seeking peace. We gave them homes, schools, and safety and they became Venezuelans. This is Venezuela.
We built a democracy that became the most stable in Latin America and freedom unfolded as a creative force. But even the strongest democracy weakens when its citizens forget that freedom is not something we wait for but something we become. It is a deliberate personal choice and the sum of those choices forms the civic ethos that must be renewed every day. The concentration of oil revenues in the state created perverse incentives. It gave the government immense power over society which turned into privilege and corruption.
My generation was born in a vibrant democracy and we took it for granted. We assumed freedom was a permanent as the air we breathed. We cherished our rights, but we forgot our duties.
I was raised by a father whose life’s work building, creating, serving, taught me that loving a country meant assuming responsibility for its future. By the time we recognized how fragile our institutions had become, a man who had once led a military coup to overthrow democracy was elected president.
Many thought charisma could substitute the rule of law. From 1991 onward, the regime dismantled our democracy, violating the Constitution, falsifying our history, corrupting the military, purging independent judges, censoring the press, manipulating elections, persecuting dissent, and ravaging our extraordinary biodiversity.
Oil wealth was not used to uplift, but to bind. Washing machines and refrigerators were handed out on national television to families living on dirt floors, not as progress, but as spectacle. Apartments meant for social housing were handed to a select few with a condition for unquestionable obedience.
And then came the ruin, obscene corruption, historic looting. During the regime’s rule, Venezuela received more oil revenue than in the previous century combined. And it was all stolen. Oil money became a tool to purchase loyalty abroad. While at home, criminal and international terrorist groups fused themselves to the state.
The economy collapsed by more than 80%. Poverty surpassed 86%. Today, 9 million Venezuelans have been forced to flee. These are not statistics. They’re open wounds. Meanwhile, something deeper and more corrosive took place. It was a deliberate method to divide society by ideology, by race, by origin, by way selves of being paid by me to protest.
Women and girls in prison are right now being forced into sexual slavery, made to endure abuse in exchange for a family visit, a meal, or the chance to take a bath. And yet, the Venezuelan people did not surrender. During the past 16 months in clandestinity, we have built new networks of civic pressure and disciplined disobedience, preparing for Venezuela’s orderly transition to democracy.
That is how we reach this day, a day carrying the echo of millions who stand at the threshold of freedom. This prize carries profound meaning. It reminds the world that democracy is essential to peace. And more than anything, what we Venezuelans can offer the world is the lesson forged through this long and difficult journey. That to have democracy, we must be willing to fight for freedom. And freedom is a choice that must be renewed every day, measured by our willingness and our courage to defend it.
For this reason, the cause of Venezuela transcends our borders. A people who choose freedom, choose freedom to contribute not only to themselves but to humanity. We attain freedom only when we refuse to turn our backs on ourselves. When we confront the truth directly, no matter how painful. When we love, what truly matters in life gives us the strength to persevere and to prevail.
Only through that inner alignment, that vital integrity, do we rise to meet our Destiny. Only then do we become who we truly are, able to live a life worthy of being lived. Along this march to freedom, we gain profound certainties of the soul. Truths that have given our lives a deeper meaning and prepared us to build a great future in peace. Therefore, peace is ultimately an act of love.
This love has already set our future in motion. Venezuela will breathe again. We will open prison doors and watch thousands who were unjustly detained stepped into the warm sun. Embrace at last by those who never stopped fighting for them. We will see grandmothers settled children on their laps to tell them stories not of distant forefathers but of their own parents’ courage. We will see our students debate ideas passionately and without fear, their voices rising freely. At last, we will hug again, fall in love again, hear our streets filled with laughter and music again, and all the simple joys in the world that we have taken for granted will be ours.
My dear Venezuelans, the world has marveled at what we have achieved and soon it will witness one of the most moving sights of our time: Our loved ones coming home. And I will stand again on the Simon Bolivar Bridge where I once cried to the thousands who were leaving and welcome them back into the luminous life that awaits us. Because in the end, our journey towards freedom has always lived inside us. We are returning to ourselves. We are returning home.
Allow me to honor the heroes of this Journey. Our political prisoners, the persecuted, their families, and all who defend human rights. Those who sheltered us, fed us, and risked everything to protect us. The journalists who refused silence. The artist who carried our voice. My exceptional team, my mentors, my fellow political and social activists, the leaders around the world who joined us and defended our cause. My three children, my adored father, my mother, my three sisters, my brave and loving husband who’ve all supported me throughout my life, and above all, the millions of anonymous Venezuelans who risked their homes, their families, and their lives out of Love. To them belongs this honor. To them belongs this day. To them belongs the future. Gracias.”
In my next installment I’ll name names: US legislators were on Venezuela’s payroll according to 3-Star General Hugo Carvajal, Venezuela’s Director of Intelligence.