Nobel laureate Machado appears for the first time in 11 months
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Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado appeared in public for the first time in 11 months Thursday after a daring escape from her homeland when she emerged from a hotel balcony in Norway’s capital and waved to an emotional crowd of supporters cheering for the new Nobel laureate.
Her appearance in Oslo came hours after her daughter accepted the Nobel Peace Prize award on her behalf. Machado was recognized after mounting the most serious peaceful challenge in years to the authoritarian government of Venezuelan President President Nicolás Maduro.
“Freedom! Freedom!” the crowd gathered outside the hotel chanted after seeing Machado. Together, they sang Venezuela’s national anthem.
Machado, dressed in jeans and a puffer jacket, spent several minutes outside the hotel, where she was joined by members of her family and several of her closest aides. She hugged many in the crowd amid chants of “President! President!”
“I want you all back in Venezuela,” Machado said as people lifted their cellphones to take pictures.
Hiding in Venezuela
Machado had been in hiding since Jan. 9, when she was briefly detained after joining supporters in a protest in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. She had been expected to attend the award ceremony Wednesday in Oslo, where heads of state and her family were among those waiting to see her.
Machado said in an audio recording of a phone call published on the Nobel website that she wouldn’t be able to arrive in time for the ceremony but that many people had “risked their lives” for her to arrive in Oslo.
Her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, accepted the prize in her place.
“She wants to live in a free Venezuela, and she will never give up on that purpose,” Sosa said. “That is why we all know, and I know, that she will be back in Venezuela very soon.”
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, told the award ceremony that “María Corina Machado has done everything in her power to be able to attend the ceremony here today — a journey in a situation of extreme danger.”
Machado said in an audio recording of a phone call published on the Nobel website that she would not be able to arrive in time for the ceremony but that many people had “risked their lives” for her to arrive in Oslo.
“I am very grateful to them, and this is a measure of what this recognition means to the Venezuelan people,” she said, before indicating that she was about to board a plane.
Flight tracking data show that the plane she arrived on flew to Oslo from Bangor, Maine.
Machado said that “since this is a prize for all Venezuelans, I believe that it will be received by them. And as soon as I arrive, I will be able to embrace all my family and my children that I’ve have not seen for two years and so many Venezuelans, Norwegians that I know that share our struggle and our fight.”
