Peace prize may offer indemnity for Machado - but at a cost

In March 2019 as a nationwide blackout plunged Venezuela into darkness, hundreds of citizens huddled on a basketball court in the city of Maracaibo to hear their leader promise to guide them out of the gloom.

- By Tom Phillips

"We are, quite literally, living through our darkest hour. But these are also the brightest of times," María Corina Machado told supporters as they used mobile phones to illuminate the night.

Six and a half years later, last Friday Machado used almost identical words to celebrate winning the Nobel peace prize for her “extraordinary” - yet incomplete - struggle against Venezuela’s “brutal, authoritarian state”.

“We are ... living the darkest hours. But at the same time there is enormous hope,” Machado declared after hearing the news, before vowing: “Venezuela will be free.”

But was she right? Would receiving the prestigious prize advance Machado’s campaign to unseat the president, Nicolás Maduro, or could it backfire and lead to greater repression?

International supporters voiced confidence that change was coming for a country that has slipped into economic malfunction since Maduro succeeded Hugo Chávez in 2013, with about 8 million citizens fleeing abroad.

“The thirst for democracy always prevails,” wrote the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.