Caracas Chronicles

Perhaps the thing that Hugo Chávez and his successors have done best over the last 27 years is selling the idea of the chévere strongman. A kind of banalization of evil in which the architects of some of the most atrocious acts known to modern Latin America were not faceless bureaucrats but exceptionally charismatic personalities who, while ruthless, were marketed as charming, approachable, and easy to deal with. From lavish diplomatic parties with free-flowing rum and live salsa, to celebrity-studded visits designed to launder the regime’s image, to the absurdity of a state that hosts forums on every anti-imperialist human-rights cause while refusing to acknowledge the rights of its own citizens, the performance has always been the point.

Through all this, Venezuelans have had to navigate an academic, entertainment, and business world that often covered our story while sidelining our voice, outsourcing our pain to whichever spokesperson best fit the narrative needs of the coverage provider. We were cast as doomsday prophets even as we watched, in real time, the strategically gradual dismantling of our democracy and the hollowing out of our rule of law. Which is why the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to María Corina Machado is, for so many Venezuelans, a deeply personal moment of vindication and overdue recognition of the people who sacrificed so much to ensure our voices were heard and our stories told.

In the days leading up to Machado receiving her Nobel Peace Prize, Venezuela became the subject of some of the most surreal foreign coverage in recent memory. The New York Times accused her of spreading “fake news” while simultaneously depicting Delcy Rodríguez as the “moderate” face of a post-Maduro chavismo, a framing so estranged from Venezuelan reality that it verged on parody. All this came amid what can only be described as a worst-case informational scenario for the Venezuelan opposition: support for the Venezuelan cause has not only hemorrhaged much of the bipartisan backing it fought so hard to cultivate, but has also become a convenient media punching bag in critiques aimed at the Trump administration. None of this, of course, is Machado’s fault; she inherited an impossible communicational landscape and has navigated it with remarkable discipline and restraint.

Perhaps the clearest expression of this shift was Jon Stewart’s recent treatment of the Venezuelan crisis. This is the same Jon Stewart who once invited Francisco Márquez alongside future Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa to discuss Venezuela as an emblem of creeping authoritarianism. Yet now he reduces the Venezuelan tragedy to a punchline, likening the Trump administration’s Caribbean posture to the Iraq War because, as he quips, both dictators sport mustaches, wield swords, and sit atop oil reserves. Two decades of institutional collapse, exile, hunger, repression, and democratic struggle flattened into a late-night gag. Gone are the days of nuanced, deeply informed conversations on Venezuela; in their place arrive the easy punchline.

Ana Corina Sosa spoke of the generations who took that legacy for granted and chose to bet it all on red, ushering in the catastrophe we live with today. And narrated the story of a movement that has fused collective pain into a renewed hope

Which makes today’s Nobel ceremony so refreshing and spirit-filling. For the first time since this tragedy began, it felt like Venezuelans were finally given a voice on the world stage able to tell our story without the noise of global electoral politics or the distortions of activist ecosystems. It was, quite simply, our moment to speak. And our representatives did not disappoint. The speech by the President of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, was particularly extraordinary because it captured with almost uncanny precision the struggle of all these years. It felt, in many ways, like listening to a Venezuelan. It reflected a level of understanding and care that speaks to how seriously the Committee took its responsibility in recognizing the Venezuelan struggle and Machado’s role in it.

In a time when we have been hearing a chorus of voices calling for containment, for a status quo that claims to guarantee a fragile stability while balancing itself over an ever-growing pile of skulls, the Nobel Committee chose boldness. It defended the right of the Venezuelan people to petition the world for help or at the very least, to demand acknowledgment of the horrors they have endured. It even dared to warn of the dangers of entering dialogue with dictators without a discernible objective. The scars of past “mediations,” it seems, run deep. Chalk that one up to Delcy the Moderate huh, Anatoly?

Most importantly, they articulated an inconvenient truth that many abroad prefer to ignore. As Frydnes said:

“People across the political spectrum from communists to conservatives have risen to challenge the regime. The opposition has tried one strategy after another.”

Today’s ceremony is a necessary reminder to the world that our struggle is neither fringe nor futile.

And then, in a line that should echo for years to come, he delivered a cold rebuke to the Petro’s and the Amorim’s of the world:

“Venezuela’s future can take many forms. But the present is one thing only, and it is horrific.”

Machado’s daughter followed with a deeply moving rendition of her mother’s already powerful message (from a former speechwriter: chapeau to whoever crafted it). She evoked Venezuela’s long and deeply rooted tradition of freedom and democracy, our proud history of receiving migrants and the contributions they made to a once-vibrant republic. She spoke of the generations who took that legacy for granted and chose to bet it all on red, ushering in the catastrophe we live with today. And she narrated the story of a movement that has fused the collective pain of the last 27 years into a renewed hope one embodied in Machado and Edmundo González, and in the millions who believe that Venezuela can still end one of the most opprobrious dictatorships our region has ever seen. Ending with a message of hope for the road we have traveled, and for the one that still lies ahead.

The Nobel will not topple Maduro, nor will it magically undo the wreckage of a quarter-century. But it does help puncture the fiction carefully constructed by the regime and too eagerly repeated abroad that Venezuela’s fate is sealed. Today’s ceremony is a necessary reminder to the world that our struggle is neither fringe nor futile.

Vindication is not victory. But there are certainly few better feelings than the moment when you feel the world finally looks up from its convenient narratives and sees us as we are: a people still fighting to reclaim its future. If the Nobel Prize did anything today, it was to tell Venezuelans that, at least for now, the world has not turned the page on our story.