Norberto ParedesBBC Mundo and
Alex Boyd
Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado has told the BBC she is grateful for what US President Donald Trump is doing “around the world for peace”.
Machado, Venezuela’s opposition leader, was awarded the 2025 prize having long campaigned against the country’s President Nicolás Maduro Moros, whose 12-year rule is viewed by many as illegitimate.
She told BBC Mundo that during a congratulatory phone call with Trump she told him “how grateful the Venezuelan people are for what he’s doing, not only in the Americas, but around the world for peace, for freedom, for democracy”.
Trump has made no secret about wanting to win the award himself, regularly speaking about the seven wars he claims to have ended.
Nominations for the award closed in January, just as Trump’s second term as president began. A White House official said on Friday the “Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace”.
Machado said she was “very glad” to speak to the US president and was “able to convey to him our appreciation”.
The 58-year-old, forced to live in hiding for much of the past year, was hailed by the Nobel Committee as “one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times”.
Nobel chairman Jørgen Watne Frydnes said she was recognised for “her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy”.
He added: “Despite serious threats against her life, she has remained in the country, a choice that has inspired millions.”
Machado was barred from running in last year’s presidential elections, in which Maduro won a third six-year term in office.
The elections were widely dismissed on the international stage as neither free nor fair, and sparked protests across the country.
Even after she was barred from the polls, she managed to unite the notoriously divided opposition faction and succeeded in getting millions of Venezuelans behind the little-known candidate which replaced her on the ballot, Edmundo González.
When the government-controlled National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner – even though tallies from polling stations showed that González had won by a landslide – Machado continued to campaign from hiding as the Maduro government has repeatedly threatened her with arrest.
Machado told BBC Mundo her award was “like an injection” for her political movement.
“It infuses energy, hope, strength on the Venezuelan people because we realise that we are not alone,” she added. “The democrats around the world share our struggle.”
She said she thought Trump and the international community were already helping with the political situation in Venezuela.
“The regime in Venezuela is a criminal structure,” Machado told the BBC. “And as such, it sustains themselves on the criminal flows from their illicit activities.
“We need the international community to cut those flows that are not only used for corruption, but also for repression, violence and terror.
“So when you cut the inflows that come from drug trafficking, gold smuggling, arms smuggling, human trafficking, or the black market of oil, then the regime falls.
“And that’s exactly what we’re seeing, cracks that are getting deeper and deeper as we talk right now.”
Earlier this month, US forces killed four people in an attack on a boat off the coast of Venezuela that was allegedly trafficking drugs.
It was the latest in a number of recent strikes by the US on boats in international waters it said were involved in “narco-trafficking”.
They have attracted condemnation in countries including Venezuela and Colombia, with some international lawyers describing the strikes as a breach of international law.
On Thursday Colombian President Gustavo Petro said one of the boats was “Colombian with Colombian citizens inside”, an allegation the White House called “baseless”.
