Maria Corina Machado said it was a “historic day for us Venezuelans” as she handed President Donald Trump her Nobel Peace Prize. For the pro-Israel, far-right opposition figure in Venezuela, being welcomed to the White House may have been a historic day. But for those of us interested in peace and justice, the only history the United States is making by keeping the sitting president of Venezuela locked up in New York is of colonialist bullying and imperialist violence.

After being snubbed of her dreamed-of-role as President of Venezuela, Machado left no hard feelings as she gave her recently awarded Nobel Peace Prize to Trump on January 15. One might think being told she didn’t have the “respect” nor “support” within Venezuela to be parachuted in as leader would sever Trump-Machado relations. But, US relations with Machado and her far-right party are deep. This remains the zenith of her life’s worth to sell back her country to capital. For those wondering if Trump now has the Nobel Prize–yes. Well, he did the second Machado got it, no matter his statements to counteract that. Machado’s decision to accept the prize, supposedly contrary to the wishes of the White House, before delivering it to him in person, signifies the depth of Machado’s commitment to enact the US will on Venezuela.

Maria Corina Machado was born in 1967 into one of the wealthiest families in Venezuela. This wealth came from their ownership and control of Venezuela’s largest private-sector steel company, Sivensa, and its largest private steel processor, Sidetur. Her family also benefited greatly from the 1997 privatization of Sidor, the largest steelmaker in Venezuela, as they held a controlling stake. Between 2008 and 2010, the Chávez government nationalized all three of these companies, which stripped the Machado family of their life of abhorrent luxury while most Venezuelans suffered. Like many of this era, these wealthy families never forgave the revolutionary government for providing for the Venezuelan people.

In her youth, with all of the riches of these companies, Machado was educated at an elite boarding school in the United States, which costs $78,000 a year in today’s money. She then studied engineering at the graduate and post-graduate levels. After completing her studies, she spent a brief stint in her family’s steel company before she moved into philanthropy. It is not hard to see where her virulent pro-US politics have come from. But US-Machado relations go back a long way, which is why her handing Trump the Nobel Peace Prize is not the first occasion when she has shown her true nature as a US-backed asset.

In 2002, Machado set up Súmate, an NGO aiming to topple the Bolivarian Revolution under the supposed task of “election monitoring” in Venezuela. It immediately received at least $53,400 from the United States via the National Endowment for Democracy, the infamous route through which the US funds its CIA campaigns globally. Súmate was the front through which US interests repeatedly attempted to undermine Chávez: They pushed the campaign for a 2004 recall of the presidential election, produced data for opposition attacks, and peddled anti-Chávez propaganda in the media, among other nefarious activities using the front of “democracy” to do so. In 2005, President George W. Bush invited Machado into the Oval Office to personally thank her for carrying out this work.

In 2012, Machado set up Vente Venezuela, a far-right political party that pushed for private property and free markets in Venezuela. Through this political party, she has attempted to unify strands of the opposition to push her challenge to the Bolivarian project and launch counterrevolutionary measures aimed at overthrowing the government. Machado has asserted that if she were in power, she would sell off Venezuela’s publicly owned oil company and privatize all oil and gas reserves that currently fund public services for Venezuelans. These instances reveal that “democracy” and “freedom” are guises for the ultimate aim of privatization in order for her, as well as her friends and family, to once more embezzle huge sums of money and cut off millions of people from needed public services.

Machado is a key asset for the US as a voice that ostensibly speaks on behalf of those grieved from within Venezuela that can be used to justify its regime change attempts from outside.

When the US imposed sanctions on Venezuela, formally in 2005, Machado was one of the loudest and most abrasive supporters. On many occasions, she has been boldly in support of these unilateral coercive measures that have killed over 100,000 people and caused absolute misery for Venezuelans.

Beyond her support for sanctions, Machado’s appetite for the murder of her own countrymen is seen through her support for the US naval armada as well as murderous US attacks on small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, which have killed over 120 people since September 2025. As 70% of the US oppose war on Venezuela, as families mourn their loved ones, and as millions of dollars are used to fund warship deployments in the Caribbean, Machado said: “I totally support [Trump’s] strategy. I think it is the right thing to do. It’s courageous. It’s visionary.” Perhaps Machado’s American boarding school taught her such conceptions of courage and vision, but for those of us who have seen the videos of boats being bombed, heard testimonies of the civilian victims of airstrikes in La Gauira, and watched the rabid threats of war flow unabated, they are supportive of terror and murder.

Not only are people in Venezuela being sacrificed in Machado’s dream of a ravaged, neoliberal Venezuela, but as per her duty, she also justifies US action against Venezuelans living in the United States. Machado peddled lies about drug cartels and their links to the Venezuelan government, which justified Trump’s incarceration of 200 Venezuelans in the US to the CECOT torture facility in El Salvador. When she traveled to Oslo to receive the Nobel........

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