María Corina Machado

María Corina Machado Parisca (born 7 October 1967) is a Venezuelan politician, activist, and prominent leader of the opposition to the administrations of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. She served as a member of the National Assembly of Venezuela from 2011 to 2014, and has run as a candidate in presidential elections. She was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize; she presented the medal to U.S. president Donald Trump after the 2026 U.S. strikes in Venezuela and capture of Maduro.

An industrial engineer with a master's degree in finance, Machado began her political career as a founder of the vote-monitoring organization Súmate. She is the National Coordinator of the political party Vente Venezuela and ran in the 2012 opposition presidential primary, which she lost to Henrique Capriles. During the 2014 Venezuelan protests, she played a leading role in organizing demonstrations against Maduro's government.

In 2023, Machado won the opposition primary to become the unity candidate for the 2024 presidential election. Machado was barred from running in the 2024 presidential election because she was disqualified from holding public office for 15 years on administrative and fiscal violations dating back to her time as a legislator. Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice upheld that disqualification. She named Corina Yoris as a replacement candidate, who was later replaced by Edmundo González. The opposition mobilized to document and collect vote tallies, which showed González as the winner of the election, while the Maduro government claimed victory instead. Shortly after the presidential election, Machado said that she had gone into hiding, expressing fears for her life and freedom under the Maduro government.

Aside from the Nobel Peace Prize, she was named one of BBC's 100 Women in 2018, and listed among Time magazine's 100 most influential people in 2025. In 2024, Machado received the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize and the Sakharov Prize (shared with González) for representing Venezuelans fighting for democracy.

Early life and education

Machado was born in Caracas, Venezuela, on 7 October 1967. The eldest of four daughters, her mother Corina Parisca Pérez was a psychologist while her father Henrique Machado Zuloaga was a steel-industry businessman. She grew up in a conservative and Catholic family. Machado's great-great-grandfather was Eduardo Blanco, who wrote Venezuela Heroica in 1881. Her great-uncle Armando Zuloaga Blanco was killed in the 1929 failed uprising against the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez.

With a degree in industrial engineering from Andrés Bello Catholic University and a master's degree in finance from Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración (IESA) in Caracas, Machado worked in the auto industry in Valencia. In 1992, she started Fundación Atenea (Atenea Foundation), a foundation using private donations to care for orphaned and delinquent Caracas street children; she also served as chair of the Oportunitas Foundation. She moved to Caracas in 1993. Because of her role in Súmate, Machado left the foundation so that it would not be politicized.

Machado was part of Yale University's Yale World Fellows program in 2009. She was also part of Young Global Leaders in 2005, and again in 2011.

Súmate

The founding of the volunteer civil organization Súmate resulted from a hurried encounter between Machado and Alejandro Plaz in a hotel lobby in 2001, where they shared their concern about the course that was being shaped for Venezuela. Machado said: "Something clicked. I had this unsettling feeling that I could not stay at home and watch the country get polarized and collapse... We had to keep the electoral process but change the course, to give Venezuelans the chance to count ourselves, to dissipate tensions before they built up. It was a choice of ballots over bullets."

Súmate led a petition drive for the 2004 Venezuelan recall referendum. After the referendum results showed that electors had voted no to recalling President Hugo Chávez, members of Súmate including Machado were charged with treason and conspiracy, under Article 132 of the Penal Code, for receiving financial support for their activities from the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Human Rights Watch acknowledged that Machado, Planz and other members of Súmate received financial support from NED but labelled the criminal charges as dubious and politically motivated. Machado acknowledged the support of Venezuelans for Chávez, saying, "We have to recognize the positive things that have been done", but that the president is "increasingly intolerant".

Machado and Plaz were invited to meet with National Assembly legislators in August 2006 for an investigation about Súmate's funding but were denied access to the hearing, despite stating that they received two letters requesting their presence. She faced treason charges for signing the Carmona Decree during the 2002 Venezuelan coup attempt; she said she wrote her name on what she believed to be a sign-in sheet while she was visiting the presidential palace. The trial was suspended in February 2006 and was postponed indefinitely, making it effectively dismissed.

2011 presidential candidacy

In 2011, Machado launched her candidacy for the 2012 Venezuelan presidential election. The Los Angeles Times said that her name was raised as a potential candidate. According to the Financial Times, Machado was "dubbed the new face of the opposition ... Even President Hugo Chávez has spoken of confronting her in the 2012 presidential elections."

On 13 January 2012, during an eight-hour annual State of the Nation Speech by Chávez to the National Assembly, Machado confronted him about shortages of basic goods, crime, and nationalizations of industries. According to the Associated Press, she "boldly interrupted" Chavez's speech to accuse him of theft. El Estímulo reported that the "televised clash ... catapulted [her] into the public eye beyond the capital's borders", when she said to Chávez, "How can you talk about respecting the private sector in Venezuela when you've been dedicated to expropriation, which is stealing". According to El Pais, her family founded the national corporation Electricidad de Caracas, and the family steel companies (Sivensa and Sidetur) were "expropriated and destroyed by the Chavista administration"; Chávez "sent soldiers to take over seven of the company’s plants as part of his socialist nationalization program", according to the New York Times.

The winner of the 2012 primary to be the opposition candidate against Chávez in the October presidential election was Henrique Capriles Radonski; according to the Associated Press, Machado "conceded defeat before the results were announced, saying she also will actively back Capriles". Chávez had predicted Machado's defeat in their prior confrontation when he pointed out that she was trailing badly in polls for the opposition primary.

National Assembly

Candidacy

In February 2010, Machado resigned from Súmate, and announced her candidacy for the National Assembly of Venezuela. She represented the state of Miranda for the municipalities of Chacao, Baruta, El Hatillo, and the Parroquia Leoncio Martínez de Sucre. She was a Justice First (Primero Justicia) party member of the Democratic Unity Roundtable (Mesa de la Unidad Democrática – MUD) in opposition to Chávez's party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela – PSUV). In announcing her candidacy, she said Venezuelans were good, decent, and free people who do not want to live with violence or hate; she promised to defend the right for Venezuelans to think freely and live without fear. In April 2010, Machado won the primary election. She campaigned actively in "slums once viewed as solid pro-Chávez territory", attempting to "capitalize on domestic problems, including widespread violent crime, power outages in some regions, a severe housing shortage and 30-percent inflation".

Machado complained that MUD candidates faced "what she called a government-orchestrated propaganda machine that churns out spots ridiculing Chávez's critics, runs talk shows dominated by ruling party hopefuls and picks up all of the president's speeches", and that she had to campaign with less funds as she "struggled to convince supporters and business leaders to contribute to her campaign because they fear reprisals by the government and Chávez-friendly prosecutors". According to The Economist, Venezuela's constitution "prohibits government officials, including the president, from using their position to favour a political tendency. But the electoral authority, whose board comprises four chavistas and a lone oppositionist, says they can do it anyway."