María Corina Machado, the leader of the Venezuelan opposition, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee cited “her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela” and “her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” When announcing the award, the committee chair described her as “a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amidst a growing darkness.”
This metaphor is apt. Machado is in hiding, deep inside a country that is failing. I spoke with her twice late last year, without knowing where she was. A few months before, the country had just held presidential elections. The opposition movement that she leads had won. Even though activists were being picked up off the streets, or simply shot and killed, they had held a primary, run a presidential campaign—Machado herself was barred, so Edmundo González was the candidate—and made sure that votes were counted accurately. Still, even after his definitive loss, Nicolás Maduro, the country’s illegitimate leader, refused to hand over power.
Lately, Americans have been hearing little about Venezuela other than drugs and gangs, but the country has long been the home of one of the world’s most impressive grassroots democracy movements. At this moment, when citizens in many of the world’s most successful liberal democracies are giving up, even questioning whether popular participation in politics has any value, Venezuelans fight violence with nonviolence, and oppose corruption through bravery. As I wrote in December:
During both of our conversations, Machado sat in front of a blank wall, with no other backdrop. Both times she was also calm, assured, even elegant. She didn’t look tired or stressed, or whatever a person who hadn’t seen her family or friends since July should look like. She wore makeup and simple jewelry. She sounded determined, positive. This is because, Machado told me, she believes that the campaign and its aftermath altered Venezuela forever, bringing about what she describes as “anthropological change.”
By this, she meant that the grassroots political movement she and her colleagues created has transformed attitudes in Venezuela and forged new connections between people. Her organization, in concert with others, carefully organized a primary campaign that brought together old opposition competitors. Volunteer training, she told me, gave hundreds of thousands of people a real experience not just of voting but of building institutions from scratch. Those efforts didn’t end with last summer’s election. “The 28th of July was not just an event,” Machado told me. “It’s a process that has brought our country together. And regardless how many days it takes, Venezuela has changed forever and for the good.” Her team, with its leaders across the country, built not just a movement for one candidate or election, but a movement for permanent change. The scale of their achievement—the number of people involved, and their geographic and socioeconomic range—would be notable in a liberal democracy. In an authoritarian state, this project is remarkable.
What Machado wanted, she told me, was to
“transform completely—completely—the relationship we had between citizens and the state. We’ve only known the state deciding for us. Now it’s going to be the other way around. We’re going to have the society in power and making their own decisions, and the state at its service.”
She added:
“I went around the country saying, ‘I have nothing to offer but work. I have nothing to offer you but [the possibility] that we’re going to get together, and we’re going to put this country back on our feet. So we’re going to do this right.’ And people cried and prayed.”
Machado continues to be a fierce, uncompromising optimist. She founded an election-monitoring group more than two decades ago. Since then, she has continued to argue that engagement matters, and that change is possible. Participation, she argues, can make a difference. Any society can be made better, more just, and more free—even in places where that seems impossible.
