Venezuela: Maria Corina Machado Arrives in Oslo
After 2 a.m. (Norwegian time), the Nobel Peace Prize laureate spent more than 30 minutes with the Venezuelans gathered in the street
HAVANA TIMES – Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado arrived in Oslo and, after meeting with her family and closest loved ones, stepped out onto the balcony of Oslo’s Grand Hotel to greet the many Venezuelans and supporters cheering for her from the street.
As soon as she appeared, a roar went up from the crowd, who shouted “Brave, brave!” and sang the national anthem.
After eleven months in hiding and roughly twelve years without leaving Venezuela, María Corina Machado arrived in Oslo on Wednesday night and, shortly after 2:30 a.m. (Norwegian time, 9:30 p.m. in Venezuela), came out to greet the people who had waited for her arrival in front of the hotel.
“María Corina Machado is now in Oslo and on her way here,” said the president of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, hours earlier.
Although he had initially reported that “she is going to meet directly with her family, and that there will be no gathering today,” the opposition leader, dressed in dark colors, greeted people from the balcony and later came down to the street to thank, face to face, those who remained outside in winter temperatures.
“Thank you, María Corina!”, “We want to go home,” “We want to return to Venezuela,” people told the leader as she greeted the emotional Venezuelan exiles who had waited in the street.
She approached the barriers to shake the hands of people trying to touch her. There were also hugs and chants in support of Machado and Venezuela’s freedom.
Frydnes said he would announce as soon as possible Machado’s program in Oslo on Friday, which for now includes a visit to the Norwegian Parliament and a meeting with the country’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, with whom she was to give the press conference that was missed on Tuesday.
Machado had said in a phone conversation from an undisclosed location with Frydnes, that she had not been able to arrive in time for the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony, but assured him she was already “on her way” to Oslo.
“As soon as I arrive, I’ll be able to hug all my family and my children, whom I haven’t seen in two years. And so many Venezuelans and Norwegians I know, who share our struggle and our efforts,” she said in that conversation, which took place just as she was about to board a flight Wednesday according to her own account.
Her sister and her mother, Corina Parisca, are also in Oslo.
This event is the Venezuelan politician’s first public appearance since January of this year.
In her acceptance speech for the prize, read by her daughter, Machado dedicated the award to the entire people of Venezuela and said they would soon witness the return home of exiled opposition members.
“Venezuela will breathe again. We will open the doors of the prisons and see thousands of innocent people, who were unjustly imprisoned, come out into the sunlight,” she declared, and promised that she would then be on the Simón Bolívar Bridge, on the border with Colombia—where she once wept “among the thousands who were leaving”—to welcome them back.
Shortly before that, in his remarks, Frydnes urged the president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, to accept the results of the 2024 elections and to step down from office in order to lay the foundations “for a peaceful transition to democracy” in the country, since that is “the will of the Venezuelan people.”
First published in Spanish by Efecto Cocuyo and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.