\n<\/p>\n
Mar\u00eda Corina Machado, the leader of the Venezuelan opposition, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee cited \u201cher tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela\u201d and \u201cher struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.\u201d When announcing the award, the committee chair described her as \u201ca woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amidst a growing darkness.\u201d<\/p>\n
This metaphor is apt. Machado is in hiding, deep inside a country that is failing. I spoke with her twice late last year, without knowing where she was. A few months before, the country had just held presidential elections. The opposition movement that she leads had won. Even though activists were being picked up off the streets, or simply shot and killed, they had held a primary, run a presidential campaign\u2014Machado herself was barred, so Edmundo Gonz\u00e1lez was the candidate\u2014and made sure that votes were counted accurately. Still, even after his definitive loss, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, the country\u2019s illegitimate leader, refused to hand over power.<\/p>\n
Lately, Americans have been hearing little about Venezuela other than drugs and gangs, but the country has long been the home of one of the world\u2019s most impressive grassroots-democracy movements. At this moment, when citizens in many of the world\u2019s most successful liberal democracies are giving up, even questioning whether popular participation in politics has any value, Venezuelans fight violence with nonviolence, and oppose corruption through bravery. As I wrote in December:<\/p>\n
During both of our conversations, Machado sat in front of a blank wall, with no other backdrop. Both times she was also calm, assured, even elegant. She didn\u2019t look tired or stressed, or whatever a person who hadn\u2019t seen her family or friends since July should look like. She wore makeup and simple jewelry. She sounded determined, positive. This is because, Machado told me, she believes that the campaign and its aftermath altered Venezuela forever, bringing about what she describes as \u201canthropological change.\u201d<\/p>\n
By this, she meant that the grassroots political movement she and her colleagues created has transformed attitudes in Venezuela and forged new connections between people. Her organization, in concert with others, carefully organized a primary campaign that brought together old opposition competitors. Volunteer training, she told me, gave hundreds of thousands of people a real experience not just of voting but of building institutions from scratch. Those efforts didn\u2019t end with last summer\u2019s election. \u201cThe 28th of July was not just an event,\u201d Machado told me. \u201cIt\u2019s a process that has brought our country together. And regardless how many days it takes, Venezuela has changed forever and for the good.\u201d Her team, with its leaders across the country, built not just a movement for one candidate or election, but a movement for permanent change. The scale of their achievement\u2014the number of people involved, and their geographic and socioeconomic range\u2014would be notable in a liberal democracy. In an authoritarian state, this project is remarkable.<\/p>\n
What Machado wanted, she told me, was to<\/p>\n
\u201ctransform completely\u2014completely\u2014the relationship we had between citizens and the state. We\u2019ve only known the state deciding for us. Now it\u2019s going to be the other way around. We\u2019re going to have the society in power and making their own decisions, and the state at its service.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added:<\/p>\n
\u201cI went around the country saying, \u2018I have nothing to offer but work. I have nothing to offer you but [the possibility] that we\u2019re going to get together, and we\u2019re going to put this country back on our feet. So we\u2019re going to do this right.\u2019 And people cried and prayed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Machado continues to be a fierce, uncompromising optimist. She founded an election-monitoring group more than two decades ago. Since then, she has continued to argue that engagement matters, and that change is possible. Participation, she argues, can make a difference. Any society can be made better, more just, and more free\u2014even in places where that seems impossible.<\/p>\n
Read the original article here.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mar\u00eda Corina Machado, the leader of the Venezuelan opposition, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee cited \u201cher tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela\u201d and \u201cher struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.\u201d When announcing the award, the committee chair described her<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27218,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[14781,16256,12669,13708,2523,1169],"class_list":{"0":"post-27217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-deserved","9":"tag-machado","10":"tag-maria","11":"tag-nobel","12":"tag-peace","13":"tag-prize"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}