Nobel “Peace prize” handed to Maria Machado, Venezuelan part of global alliance between fascism, Zionism, and neoliberalism

Written By Grahame Russell

Understanding the U.S.-led, Western-bloc connections,
Middle East to Latin America

What a revealing Nobel “Peace prize” winner. As the U.S.-led, Canadian and Western European bloc continues to fully support and legitimize Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing destruction of Palestine, it is (depressingly) fitting that the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize gang chooses Maria Machado.

“Machado isn’t a symbol of peace or progress. She is part of a global alliance between fascism, Zionism, and neoliberalism – an axis that justifies domination in the language of democracy and peace. In Venezuela, that alliance has meant coups, sanctions, and privatization. In Gaza, it means genocide and the erasure of a people. The ideology is the same: a belief that some lives are disposable, that sovereignty is negotiable, and that violence can be sold as order.” (CODEPINK Petition)

Five reasons

There are five reasons why the U.S.-led West has been demonizing and try to undermine, overthrow the government of Venezuela since 2000: Oil, Oil, Oil, Minerals & Oil.

“Everybody knows what’s going on here. There is a bloodthirsty killer prowling the Caribbean looking for wars. They are fabricating a war. The emperor is naked. Stop pretending this is complicated.”

Statement by Samuel Moncada, Venezuelan Ambassador to UN
https://x.com/i/status/1979202653579100337

Regime changes in Guatemala and Honduras

Rights Action does not casually share this information. Anyone who follows our work knows well enough of the U.S., Canadian and Western-backed regime change military coups (Guatemala 1954, Honduras 2009) that served to bring back to power repressive, corrupt, “open-for-global-business” regimes referred to as “democracy allies” for decades.

All of the work and struggles that Rights Action supports and is involved with play themselves out in these violent, corrupt, post-coup contexts.

Below

  • “‘Do Not Become an Instrument of Empire,’ Nobel Laureate Pérez Esquivel Tells Machado”, by Adolfo Pérez Esquivel

  • “Why Is Canada Assisting US Powerplay Against Venezuela?”, by Yves Engler

  • Petition by CODEPINK: Tell Nobel Committee: The Peace Prize belongs to Gaza’s journalists, not María Corina Machado

  • Links to other articles

‘Do Not Become an Instrument of Empire,’ Nobel Laureate Pérez Esquivel Tells Machado
By Adolfo Pérez Esquivel – Oct 13, 2025
https://orinocotribune.com/do-not-become-an-instrument-of-empire-nobel-laureate-perez-esquivel-tells-machado/

I send you the greetings of Peace and Good that humanity and the peoples living in poverty, conflict, war, and hunger so desperately need. This open letter is to express your feelings and share some thoughts.

I was surprised by your award of the Nobel Peace Prize by the Nobel Committee. It reminded me of the struggles against dictatorships on the continent and in my country of Argentina—military regimes we endured from 1976 to 1983. 

We withstood prisons, torture and exile, with thousands disappeared, children kidnapped and missing, and the death flights, of which I am a survivor.

In 1980, the Nobel Committee awarded me the Nobel Peace Prize. Forty-five years have passed, and I continue working in service to the poorest and alongside the peoples of Latin America. I accepted this high distinction not for the prize itself, but on behalf of all those who share in the struggles and hopes of building a new dawn. Peace is built day by day, and we must be consistent between our words and our actions.

At 94, I remain a lifelong learner, and I am deeply concerned about your positions and your social and political choices. Therefore, I send you these reflections.

The Venezuelan government is a democracy with its lights and shadows.

Hugo Chávez paved the way for freedom and sovereignty for the people and fought for continental unity—he was an awakening of the Great Homeland.

The United States constantly attacked him: it cannot allow any country on the continent to escape its orbit and colonial dependence. It continues to treat Latin America as its “backyard.”

The U.S. blockade of Cuba for more than 60 years is an attack on the freedom and rights of the people. The resistance of the Cuban people is an example of dignity and strength.

I am surprised by how closely you align yourself with the United States. You must know it has no allies or friends—only interests. The dictatorships imposed in Latin America were instruments of its domination, destroying the social, cultural and political fabric of peoples fighting for freedom and self-determination. We, the peoples, resist and fight for the right to be free and sovereign—not a colony of the United States.

The government of Nicolás Maduro lives under threat from the United States and its blockade. Consider the naval forces in the Caribbean and the danger of an invasion of your country.

You have not spoken out—or worse, you support the great power’s interference against Venezuela. The Venezuelan people are ready to confront this threat.

Corina, I ask you: Why did you call on the United States to invade Venezuela? When you received the announcement that you had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, you dedicated it to Trump—the aggressor against your country who lies and accuses Venezuela of being a drug trafficker.

This lie echoes George W. Bush’s claim that Saddam Hussein possessed “weapons of mass destruction”—a pretext to invade Iraq, plunder it and cause thousands of victims, including women and children.

I was at the children’s hospital in Baghdad at the war’s end and witnessed the destruction and deaths wrought by those who proclaim themselves defenders of freedom. The worst form of violence is a lie.

Do not forget, Corina, that Panama was invaded by the United States, causing death and destruction to capture a former ally, General Noriega. The invasion left 1,200 dead in Los Chorrillos. Today, the United States seeks to seize the Panama Canal once again. 

It is a long list of interventions and suffering across Latin America and the world.

The veins of Latin America are still open, as Eduardo Galeano wrote.

I am troubled that you did not dedicate the Nobel Prize to your people—but to the aggressor against Venezuela.

I believe, Corina, you must reflect deeply on where you stand: Are you merely another instrument of U.S. colonialism, subordinated to its interests of domination—interests that can never serve your people? As an opponent of the Maduro government, your positions and choices generate great uncertainty. You resort to the worst possible option when you call for a U.S. invasion of Venezuela.

What matters is this: building peace demands great strength and courage for the good of your people—whom I know and love deeply. Where once there were shantytowns in the hills, where people survived in poverty and destitution, today there are decent homes, health care, education and culture. The dignity of the people cannot be bought or sold.

Corina, as the poet says: “Walker, there is no path; the path is made by walking.” Now you have the opportunity to work for your people and build peace—not provoke greater violence. One evil is not resolved by a greater evil. We will only have two evils, never a solution to the conflict.

Open your mind and heart to dialogue, to encounter with your people. Empty the jug of violence and build peace and unity among your people, so that the light of freedom and equality may enter.

Why Is Canada Assisting US Powerplay Against Venezuela?
By Yves Engler. Oct 14, 2025

Canada should stop assisting the US war on Venezuela.

Over the past six weeks the US has blown up a handful of alleged drug boats in international waters near Venezuela. The US has also deployed 10,000 troops to the region and the Pentagon notified Congress under the War Powers Resolution that US forces were engaged in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels. A number of outlets have reported that the Donald Trump administration is seeking to overthrow the Venezuelan government.

Canada is assisting in several ways. A Project Ploughshares report shows that Canadian-made camera systems have been used in the US strikes on Venezuelan boats. Additionally, Canadian naval vessels are engaged in counter narcotics patrols with their US counterparts in the Caribbean.

The Canadian military has likely assisted the US strikes. In the 1980s NORAD was given a ‘war on drugs’ mandate. Regional NORAD headquarters, including North Bay, installed new computers to track suspected aerial drug trafficking. The computers enabled instant communication with law enforcement agencies. In 1993 NORAD’s responsibilities were formally extended to “monitoring of aircraft suspected of smuggling illegal drugs into North America”.

During his meeting with Trump last Wednesday Mark Carney smiled and laughed when the US president talked of blasting boats out of the water. Trump said this US violence benefited Canada too.

Ottawa doesn’t appear to have commented directly on the illegal US strikes. Conversely, Global Affairs congratulated the Nobel Committee for recently awarding their peace prize to Venezuelan coup monger Maria Corina Machado.

Machado has been working with Canadian imperialism for two decades. At the start of the year Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly spoke with Machado and she has been in regular contact with Canadian officials. She came to Ottawa in 2014 and in 2005 Foreign Affairs invited Machado to visit. At the time Machado led Súmate, an organization at the forefront of efforts to remove Hugo Chavez as president. Just prior to this invitation, Súmate had led an unsuccessful campaign to recall Chavez through a referendum. Before that, Machado’s name appeared on a list of people who endorsed the 2002 coup, for which she faced charges of treason.

She denied signing the now-infamous Carmona Decree that dissolved the National Assembly and Supreme Court and suspended the elected government, the attorney general, comptroller general, and governors as well as mayors elected during Chavez’s administration. It also annulled land reforms and reversed increases in royalties paid by oil companies.

Canada also helped finance Súmate. According to disclosures made in response to a question by NDP foreign affairs critic Alexa McDonough, Canada gave Súmate $22,000 in 2005–06. Minister of International Cooperation José Verner explained that “Canada considered Súmate to be an experienced NGO with the capability to promote respect for democracy, particularly a free and fair electoral process in Venezuela.”

Alongside large sums from Washington, Canada has provided many millions of dollars to groups opposed to the Venezuelan government over the past 20 years. In a bid to elicit “regime change,” Ottawa has financed an often-unsavoury opposition, including Machado.

For multiple years the Justin Trudeau government openly sought to overthrow Venezuela’s government by working to isolate Caracas, imposing illegal sanctions and taking its officials to the International Criminal Court. They even claimed a marginal opposition politician was the legitimate president of the country. On the same day Juan Guaidó declared himself president of Venezuela in a Caracas park in January 2019, foreign minister Chrystia Freeland formally recognized the little-known opposition politician. Additionally, Canadian diplomats played an important role in uniting large swaths of the Venezuelan opposition, as well as international forces, behind a plan to proclaim as president the new head of the opposition-dominated National Assembly.

Ultimately, Ottawa’s remarkable multi-year campaign to subvert the Venezuelan government failed. But Canada has not reestablished diplomatic relations with the country or rescinded its sanctions.

It’s time for Ottawa to stop its bid to overthrow the Venezuelan government. The platform for my NDP leadership bid notes, “End state-sponsored propaganda, fearmongering, and demonization of nations resisting Western domination, including … Venezuela.”

It’s about time we followed the golden rule in our foreign policy. If we do not want other countries to interfere in Canadian politics, we should not be intervening in theirs.

Tell the Nobel Committee: The Peace Prize belongs to Gaza’s journalists, not María Corina Machado!

When I saw the headline “María Corina Machado wins the Peace Prize,” I almost laughed at the absurdity. But I didn’t, because there’s nothing funny about rewarding someone whose politics have brought so much suffering. 

Anyone who knows what Maria Machado stands for knows there’s nothing remotely peaceful about her politics. If this is what counts as “peace” in 2025, then the prize itself has lost every ounce of credibility. I’m Venezuelan-American, and I know exactly what Machado represents.

She’s the smiling face of Washington’s regime-change machine, the polished spokesperson for sanctions, privatization, and foreign intervention dressed up as democracy.

Machado’s politics are steeped in violence. She has called for foreign intervention, even appealing directly to Benjamin Netanyahu, the architect of Gaza’s annihilation, to help “liberate” Venezuela with bombs under the banner of “freedom.” She has demanded sanctions, the silent form of warfare whose effects – as studies in The Lancet and other journals have shown – have killed more people than war, cutting off medicine, food, and energy to entire populations.

Machado has spent her entire political life promoting division, eroding Venezuela’s sovereignty, and denying its people the right to live with dignity.

This is who María Corina Machado really is:

👉 She helped lead the 2002 coup that briefly overthrew a democratically elected president and signed the Carmona Decree that erased the Constitution and dissolved every public institution overnight.

👉 She worked hand in hand with Washington to justify regime change, using her platform to demand foreign military intervention to “liberate” Venezuela through force.

👉 She cheered on Donald Trump’s threats of invasion and his naval deployments in the Caribbean, a show of force that risks igniting regional war under the pretext of “combating narcotrafficking.” While Trump sent warships and froze assets, Machado stood ready to serve as his local proxy, promising to deliver Venezuela’s sovereignty on a silver platter.

👉 She pushed for the U.S. sanctions that strangled the economy, knowing exactly who would pay the price: the poor, the sick, and the working class. 

👉 She helped construct the so-called “interim government,” a Washington-backed puppet show run by a self-appointed “president” who looted Venezuela’s resources abroad while children at home went hungry.

👉 She vows to reopen Venezuela’s embassy in Jerusalem, aligning herself openly with the same apartheid state that bombs hospitals and calls it self-defense.

👉 Now she wants to hand over the country’s oil, water, and infrastructure to private corporations. This is the same recipe that made Latin America the laboratory of neoliberal misery in the 1990s.

Machado was also one of the political architects of La Salida, the 2014 opposition campaign that called for escalated protests, including guarimba tactics. Those weren’t “peaceful protests,” as the foreign press claimed; they were organized barricades meant to paralyze the country and force the government’s fall. Streets were blocked with burning trash and barbed wire, buses carrying workers were torched, and people suspected of being Chavistas were beaten or killed. Even ambulances and doctors were attacked. Some Cuban medical brigades were nearly burned alive. Public buildings, food trucks, and schools were destroyed. Entire neighborhoods were held hostage by fear while opposition leaders like Machado cheered from the sidelines and called it “resistance.”

She praises Trump’s “decisive action” against what she calls a “criminal enterprise,” aligning herself with the same man who cages migrant children and tears families apart under ICE’s watch while Venezuelan mothers search for their children disappeared by U.S. migration policies.

Machado isn’t a symbol of peace or progress. She is part of a global alliance between fascism, Zionism, and neoliberalism – an axis that justifies domination in the language of democracy and peace. In Venezuela, that alliance has meant coups, sanctions, and privatization. In Gaza, it means genocide and the erasure of a people. The ideology is the same: a belief that some lives are disposable, that sovereignty is negotiable, and that violence can be sold as order.

If Henry Kissinger could win a Nobel Peace Prize, why not María Corina Machado? Maybe next year they’ll give one to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation for “compassion under occupation.”

Every time this award is handed to an architect of violence disguised as diplomacy, it spits in the face of those who actually fight for peace, like the Palestinian journalists in Gaza who, with no safety or rest, document the bombings, name the victims, and keep the truth alive when the world looks away.

Tell the Nobel Committee that they uplift war criminals, not peacemakers! 

In solidarity, 
Michelle, Medea, Teri, and the CODEPINK Latin America Team

Other articles

Follow work of

Grahame Russell
Next

Corrupted Attorney General’s office in Guatemala continues to undermine precedent setting “Military Diary” crimes against humanity case