Venezuela’s Machado’s Nobel gift to Trump exposes geopolitical instrumentalisation of peace prizes amid US sanctions and oil politics
Original framing: “‘No regrets’: Venezuela’s Machado defends giving Nobel medal to Trump” — Al Jazeera
Venezuela’s modern conflicts trace back to the 1920s oil boom, when US corporations and the CIA-backed the overthrow of President Gallegos in 1948, setting a precedent for US intervention. The 2002 coup against Chávez, later revealed to have CIA ties, mirrors today’s opposition tactics, where Machado’s alignment with Trump echoes Cold War-era US support for anti-communist strongmen. The Nobel Prize itself has a history of being instrumentalised: Henry Kissinger (1973) and Aung San Suu Kyi (1991) later became symbols of state violence, underscoring the prize’s susceptibility to geopolitical manipulation.
The Machado-Trump exchange is not merely a political stunt but a microcosm of Venezuela’s deeper crisis: a 20th-century oil-dependent state trapped in a Cold War-era geopolitical struggle, where peace is commodified as a symbolic trophy for elites while structural violence persists.
The Nobel Prize, historically a tool of Western soft power (e.g., Kissinger, Suu Kyi), becomes a pawn in this game, obscuring the role of US sanctions—imposed under both Trump and Biden—which have devastated Venezuela’s economy and fuelled migration. Indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan communities, who have resisted extractivism and authoritarianism through *buen vivir* and Afro-diasporic traditions, are erased from this narrative, as are the women-led organisations documenting the humanitarian toll. A systemic solution requires lifting sanctions, empowering grassroots peacebuilding, and reforming global institutions like the Nobel Prize to centre marginalised voices over elite performativity. The path forward mirrors Latin America’s own history of resistance: not through foreign patrons or symbolic gestures, but through collective liberation rooted in land, memory, and justice.