After months of hiding, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado arrived in Oslo, Norway, in the middle of the night Dec. 11 to collect her Nobel Peace Prize.
It was the first time Machado had been seen in public since January.
Machado, 58, surfaced in Norway’s capital after slipping through 10 military checkpoints in Venezuela by wearing a wig and a disguise to reach a fishing boat bound for the Caribbean island Curaçao. From there, Machado boarded a private jet to Norway. The Wall Street Journal first reported her escape route.
Just hours before Machado’s arrival in Oslo, her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa Machado, accepted the Nobel Prize in her name and delivered a speech written by her mother in which she said democracies must be prepared to fight for freedom to survive. The engineer’s dramatic, covert escape to Oslo came on the same evening U.S. forces seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, marking a sharp escalation in the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro’s government.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Machado’s travel to OIso.
Machado left Venezuela in defiance of a decadelong travel ban imposed by authorities in her home country and after spending more than a year in hiding. It is unclear when, or how, Machado plans to return to Venezuela, though while in Oslo she said she plans on taking her Nobel Prize back to Venezuela.
“I came to receive the prize on behalf of the Venezuelan people, and I will take it back to Venezuela at the correct moment,” she told reporters at Norway’s parliament, dressed in a white suit.
“Of course I will not say when that is.”
Machado waved to cheering supporters as she arrived in Oslo. They had gathered outside the city’s Grand Hotel, where Nobel laureates traditionally stay, after Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, confirmed her safe arrival. She also blew them kisses and sang songs with them.
“I want you all back in Venezuela,” Machado said as many people lifted their cellphones to take pictures. Some chanted “Maria! Maria!” and “Freedom! Freedom!” Others sang Venezuela’s national anthem.
Machado was barred from running in Venezuela’s presidential election last year, despite having won the opposition’s primary by a landslide. She went into hiding in August that year as authorities expanded arrests of opposition figures after the disputed vote. Until her arrival in Oslo, the mother of three had not seen her children for almost a year. She had sent them into exile for their own safety.
When Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize in October, she dedicated it in part to President Donald Trump, who had said he himself deserved the honor. Trump has argued that Maduro has links to criminal gangs that pose a direct threat to U.S. national security, despite doubts raised by the U.S. intelligence community.
The Trump administration has ordered more than 20 military strikes in recent months against suspected drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and off Latin America’s Pacific coast.
Trump has raised the specter of a U.S. attack, possibly even an invasion, of Venezuela but has not committed to it. When asked in Oslo about a possible U.S. invasion, Machado said her country is already invaded by Russian agents, criminal gangs and members of the Islamic militant group Hezbollah.
Contributing: Reuters