An industrial engineer with a master’s degree in finance, Machado, born in 1967, began her political career as co-founder of Súmate. The organisation was formed in 2001 following a hurried encounter between Machado and Alejandro Plaz in a hotel lobby. Súmate (Spanish for ‘Join Up) is a non-governmental organisation that describes itself as a vote-monitoring group; it has also been described as an election-monitoring group.
Mahado and Plaz had shared their concern about the course 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 polarised 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’s espoused values are:
• The guarantee of civil and political freedom and rights
• Impartial and independent citizen participation in democratic processes
• Professional volunteerism with a high level of citizen participation
• Organisational transparency and efficacy
Other projects are the consolidation of a national network of volunteers, analysis of voter registration, planning and execution of parallel vote counts to strengthen confidence in electoral processes, and educational programmes.
In 2006, Súmate’s observations and reports on the 2004 national elections led to the first of many treason charges, mainly over alleged financial issues, including allegations of US funding. Subsequent hearings were held either in her absence or without her being allowed any representation. The trial was ultimately suspended indefinitely, and with them never having re-convened, the charges have effectively been dismissed.
In 2010, she resigned from Súmate, and won an election to serve in the National Assembly of Venezuela from 2011 to 2014.
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, and that she was a future presidential contender “who can effectively communicate a vision for a post-Chávez Venezuela that can appeal to enough Chávez supporters”.
On January 13th 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 nationalisations of basic industries. According to the Associated Press, she “boldly interrupted” Chavez’s speech to accuse him of theft, demanding, “How can you talk about respecting the private sector in Venezuela when you’ve been dedicated to expropriation, which is stealing?”
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 organising demonstrations against Maduro’s government.
In 2023, she ran in the opposition presidential primaries. The Maduro administration subsequently barred her from running. She became the main driving force for the main opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, who was allowed to compete by the Maduro regime.
In May of that year, Machado called for the banning of reelection to political office, said she was in favour of same-sex marriage, supported the legalisation of medical cannabis, and called for a national debate on the legality of abortion in cases involving risk to the mother’s life or instances of sexual assault.
In 2023, Machado won the opposition primary to become the unity candidate for the 2024 presidential election. The Venezuelan government subsequently barred her from running in the election. She named Corina Yoris as a replacement candidate, who was later replaced by Edmundo González.
The opposition presented a vote count that showed González winning the July 2024 election in a landslide, while the government-run National Electoral Council declared victory for Maduro without presenting evidence. Shortly after the presidential election, Machado announced that she had gone into hiding, citing fears for her life and freedom under the Maduro government.
Machado is openly anti-communist, pro-Conservative and a big admirer of Margaret Thatcher, to whom many commentators have compared (Along the same lines, see also Dynamic Business Magazine’s Big Story on Japan’s first female Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, last month). In 2011, she campaigned as an advocate of “popular capitalism”, stating: “To defeat Chavista socialism, we must present superior ideas that can inspire millions of Venezuelans.” Machado supports the privatisation of state-run entities in Venezuela, including oil company PDVSA.
In a 2024 interview, Machado discussed making education available for all Venezuelans and of reforming the country’s judiciary. In 2025, appearing virtually at the 2025 edition of Fortune Global Forum, she advocated large-scale privatisation in Venezuela, arguing that more than 500 companies could be privatised, representing an estimated $1.7 trillion in economic opportunity.
Nobel Peace Prize
Machado 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.
In 2025, Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The committee’s citation read: “For her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”
Machado, banned from leaving Venezuela, made her way to Oslo via a circuitous, extremely hazardous route, fearing for her safety. In a journey straight out of a Jason Bourne novel, she ultimately didn’t make it to the awards ceremony in time, so her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa Machado, delivered the Nobel Prize Lecture on December 10th 2025, on her behalf. She talked of the pride in the birth of Venezuela’s nation, which declared independence from Spain in 1811, the first Latin American country to do so. (Full independence happened in 1830).
The constitution, she said, was written “affirming the radical idea that every human being carries a sovereign dignity. This constitution enshrined citizenship, individual rights, religious liberty, and the separation of powers.”
She also offered a long narrative, highlighting Venezuela’s place as a nation of sanctuary, growth and togetherness, while strongly criticising the dictatorships of the 21st century, concluding, “Our political prisoners, the persecuted,
their families, and all who defend human rights; those who sheltered us, fed us, and risked everything to protect us; the journalists who refused silence, the artists who carried our voice; my exceptional team, my mentors, my fellow political and social activists; the leaders around the world who joined and defended our cause; my three children, my adored father, my mother, my three sisters, my brave and loving husband, who’ve all supported me throughout my life; and above all, the millions of anonymous Venezuelans who risked their homes, their families, and their lives out of love.”
“To them belongs this honour. To them belongs this day.
“To them belongs the future.”
Maduro extraction
Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump indulged in something many of his predecessors have done since the end of World War II – interfering in the internal politics of nations in his backyard. Most pertinently, the US gets involved in nations whose leaders - whether democratically elected or military imposing their own will – are considered ‘left-wing’.
In what is an ongoing story, Trump’s excuse for the Venezuela affair was the drug trafficking entering the United States from that country. Given that Venezuela is not the only Latin American nation to be a source of this illegal trade, the probable reality is that Trump is interested in controlling Venezuela’s oil industry. Along the same lines, he has been making overtures towards doing the same to Colombia’s President, Gustavo Petro, as well.
It is against this backdrop that US Special Forces bombed the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, and captured President Maduro and his wife and took them into custody in the US. Trump has unilaterally decided that the US will now govern Venezuela - with no mandate whatsoever - until he believes he can ensure a correct and judicious handover.
Given that the people of Venezuela don’t, as a general rule, take this kind of interference lying down, taking control of Caracas may prove difficult, at least not without major, increased military intervention. It’s an interesting turn of events for the self-styled ‘Peace President’.
Trump, a sharp critic of the US invasion of Iraq, will now have to heed the words of one of the American architects of the Iraq War, Secretary of State Colin Powell: “If you break it, you own it.”
In the immediate aftermath of this highly internationally-illegal move, Trump offered Machado the ultimate diplomatic praise he could bestow by declaring she had neither the respect nor the credentials within Venezuela, stating she was unfit to run the country. With that kind of endorsement, her credentials seem clear. The farcical irony of Donald Trump not believing Machado should govern following her running partner’s reported landslide victory is not lost on anyone. But farcical irony is the norm with him.
That said, technically, Machado didn’t win the 2024 Election; González did. However, Venezuela would need to have a period of stability before any elections – a ‘coronation’ involving a transfer of power isn’t possible – take place.
Somewhat perversely, Machado stated, as part of her Nobel Prize acceptance speech, that she admired Donald Trump and felt he should be the recipient of the award in 2026. Bombing foreign countries is probably a good way to preclude someone from that accolade. In short, she was an open advocate of a US invasion of Venezuela.
Whether she gets to take her place as the leader of a new Venezuelan future and implement her manifesto isn’t, at present, in her own hands. She would have to go against the wishes of the very person whose invasion she had supported to stake her claim. And we’ve seen what happens when that occurs.
