Venezuelan Nobel peace prize winner misses ceremony but vows to continue struggle | María Corina Machado

Venezuela’s most prominent opposition leader, María Corina Machado, has vowed to continue her struggle to free the country from years of “obscene corruption”, “brutal dictatorship” and “despair” as she was awarded the Nobel peace prize at a ceremony in Norway’s capital, Oslo.

The 58-year-old conservative has lived in hiding in Venezuela since its authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, was accused of stealing the 2024 presidential election from her political movement. Despite fevered speculation that she would make a dramatic appearance at Wednesday’s event, having somehow slipped out of Venezuela, Machado was not present, although she was expected to arrive in Oslo in the coming hours.

In a lecture delivered by her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa Machado, the former congresswoman and veteran pro-democracy campaigner pledged to continue leading Venezuela on its “long march to freedom”.

“Venezuela will breathe again,” said Machado, who has lived underground since Maduro launched a wave of repression after refusing to accept he had lost last year’s vote, despite compelling proof.

“We will open prison doors and watch thousands who were unjustly detained step into the warm sun, embraced at last by those who never stopped fighting for them … We will hug again. Fall in love again. Hear our streets fill with laughter and music,” added Machado, who some call Venezuela’s Iron Lady.

Opening Wednesday’s ceremony, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, said Machado was “safe” and “will be here with us in Oslo” after “a journey in a situation of extreme danger”, although not in time for the event.

In an audio message released by her team, the activist thanked those who had “risked their lives” to get her out of Venezuela and confirmed: “I’m on my way … I’ll see you very soon.” It was not immediately clear how Machado had managed to escape Venezuela but the Wall Street Journal, citing US officials, reported that she had secretly travelled by boat to the Caribbean island of Curaçao on Tuesday.

Latin America leaders and celebrities including the rightwing presidents of Argentina, Ecuador, Panama and Paraguay – Javier Milei, Daniel Noboa, José Raúl Mulino and Santiago Peña – travelled to Oslo to offer Machado their support as her movement continued its crusade to force Maduro from power.

Also present was Edmundo González, the 76-year-old diplomat who filled Machado’s shoes in last year’s election after she was banned from running and is widely believed to have won. González was forced into exile in Spain by Maduro’s post-election crackdown.

The Venezuelan pianist and activist Gabriela Montero flew to Norway to perform at Wednesday’s ceremony inside the redbrick Oslo city hall.

Montero said Machado had asked her to play Mi Querencia (My Haven), a song by the Venezuelan composer Simón Díaz that the pianist believed spoke to the exodus of more than eight million people who have fled economic hardship and repression in Venezuela since Maduro took power in 2013.

“The song is about coming home,” Montero said before the ceremony. “That has been [María Corina’s] mantra all these years: that we will all be able to return home and that families will come together and the country will rebuild with that enormous diaspora that has spread through the world for so many years.”

Montero paid tribute to a politician she called “the most courageous, resilient woman that I know”.

“María Corina never abandoned the fight despite her enormous personal sacrifices … She always kept the goal in sight: which has been to liberate a country that she loves and that she has given her life up for,” the musician said.

Addressing the audience, Frydnes celebrated Machado’s “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a peaceful and just transition from dictatorship to democracy”.

Standing next to a portrait of Machado, Frydnes sent a direct message to Maduro: “You should accept the election results and step down … because that is the will of the Venezuelan people … Let a new age dawn.”

The Nobel ceremony coincides with one of the most dramatic and uncertain moments in Venezuela’s turbulent recent history. Since August, Donald Trump has ordered a massive naval deployment in the Caribbean Sea and a series of deadly strikes on alleged narco boats off Venezuela’s northern coast.

On Tuesday, two US fighter jets flew within less than 80km of Venezuela’s second biggest city, Maracaibo, in a show of force.

While the official justification for the military buildup is Trump’s “war on drugs”, most analysts and diplomats believe his fundamental goal is to topple Maduro by sparking a military uprising. Trump tried – but failed – to remove Maduro during his first term in the White House with a “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions and military threats.

“His days are numbered,” Trump told Politico this week – although allies, including the now secretary of state Marco Rubio, made almost identical claims during the 2019 attempt to unseat Maduro, and were wrong.

Speaking to Politico, Trump refused to rule out a ground invasion of Venezuela, although given his non-interventionist policy few expect that to happen. Still, some observers fear bloodshed if Trump intensifies his military campaign, possibly by launching strikes against land targets within Venezuela.

Celso Amorim, the chief foreign policy adviser to Brazil’s leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, told the Guardian that a US attack could create a Vietnam-style “war zone”.

Other observers remember the chaos unleashed by the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussein or the 2011 Nato airstrikes that helped bring down Muammar Gaddafi.

Montero rejected such comparisons. “They try to compare it to other ‘regime changes’ in history – and it’s nothing like anything else that we have ever seen,” the pianist said.

“We have marched, we have voted, we have protested [against Maduro] … We’ve done everything to free ourselves of this terrible, terrible chapter of our history … and it’s very frustrating when we encounter public opinion that doesn’t understand what has happened to us and what we are up against.”

In her lecture, Machado said Venezuela had once been “the most stable [democracy] in Latin America” but had been plunged into economic ruin and authoritarian rule in the years after the 1998 election of Maduro’s mentor, Hugo Chávez, as the country’s oil wealth was frittered away and stolen. “From 1999 onward, the regime dismantled our democracy,” she said. “[We have spent] almost three decades … fighting against a brutal dictatorship.”

The Norwegian Nobel Institute’s decision to honour Machado is not without controversy. While the committee celebrated her dogged struggle against Venezuela’s “brutal, authoritarian state”, critics pointed to Machado’s past support for military intervention to unseat the country’s dictator. Others have criticised her failure to condemn Trump’s deadly strikes in the Caribbean or his treatment of Venezuelan migrants deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Dozens of protesters took to the streets of Oslo on the eve of the ceremony to denounce the award.

“A peace prize must be awarded to actors who genuinely work for peace, dialogue, and justice. When the prize is given to a politician who supports military interference and actions contrary to international law, it breaks with the very purpose of the Nobel peace prize,” Gro Standnes, an activist and member of the Norwegian Peace Council said in a statement.