Who is still surprised by a Nobel Peace Prize for a scammer?

The news coming from the old Scandinavian Peninsula echoed around the world this Friday morning (10): the Norwegian Nobel Committee, based in the freezing commune of Oslo, decided to award the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to Venezuelan María Corina Machado.

Those who were young in the 1990s may remember another Corina, the “perfect nanny” played by Whoopi Goldberg. Charismatic and intelligent, knowledgeable about jazz and literature, she had the setback of being black in an openly racist society. But this Corina was the only one capable of making the girl Molly (Tina Majorino) overcome the trauma of her mother’s death and communicate with her family again.

There is another Corina (Naian González Norvind) who stars in a Mexican film from 2024. She suffers from a disorder called agoraphobia, which makes her panic about crowds and closed places. That’s why he barely leaves the house. But her job at a publishing house is at risk, and Corina is forced to face her ghosts. In both cases – Hollywood and Méximo – we are faced with typical films about tolerance and overcoming.

Corina, who has just won the Nobel Peace Prize, is not a fictional character. A woman of flesh and blood, the Venezuelan engineer and professor was also not known for her overcoming. His greatest achievement was to stand out among the den of coup plotters trying to overthrow Nicolás Maduro’s government and return Venezuela to the status of the United States’ backyard. Not by chance, she dedicated the Nobel “to President Trump for his decisive support for our cause”.

Brazilian news repeats ad nauseam that Corina was prevented from running for president in her country’s elections in 2024. More than that, the leader of the Venezuelan opposition is ineligible for 15 years, according to a decision by the Supreme Court of Justice. If it depends on what’s in the mainstream media today, you won’t know the crimes that led the Judiciary to convict her.

Although the reasons for his sentence are public and official, the mainstream media in Brazil makes a point of omitting them. The English BBC, more carefully, recalls that Corina was convicted “for alleged involvement in corruption during the so-called interim government of Juan Guaidó — the Venezuelan politician who declared himself interim president of Venezuela between 2019 and 2023”.

In July 2024, an article written by Corina was published in Wall Street Journal with the title “I can prove that Maduro was defeated”. Fifteen months later, we are still waiting for the evidence. Meanwhile, the radical oppositionist has already criticized President Lula and declared support for a US military invasion of Venezuela – any similarity with Brazilian deputy and fifth columnist Eduardo Bolsonaro is not a mere coincidence.

Swedish Alfred Nobel, creator of the award that bears his noma, wanted the honor linked to peace to be awarded, annually, to people or institutions that have promoted national or international unity. Corina’s case is the opposite: she leads a political current that tries to destabilize Venezuela

But the honor given to a scammer should not come as a surprise to anyone. The most influential peace agreement of all time – the one that led to the end of the Second World War, with the decisive participation of Stalin and the Soviet Union – was never remembered by the Nobel Committee.

No country has been more involved in wars and armed conflicts in history than the United States. Even so, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, George Marshall, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore and Barack Obama have already won the award. Donald Trump has reasons for wanting to join the list.

Often, the oppressed side was only recognized by sharing the prize, shared with its oppressor. When the Vietnam War was about to end, the Nobel leadership only agreed to honor Lê Đức Thọ, leader of the Communist Party of Vietnam, if it was a double with Henry Kissinger, the most famous North American Secretary of State. Lê Đức Thọ turned down the award – and did very well.

The Camp David Agreement guaranteed a Nobel Peace Prize to Egyptian Anwar Al Sadat and Israeli Menachem Begin. At the end of apartheid in South Africa, whites and blacks were awarded the Nobel Prize, shared between Nelson Mandela and Frederik de Klerk. The following year, Yasser Arafat, for Palestine, had his prize split with the Israelis Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.

The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, did not win a Nobel Prize for promoting peace – but rather for being the “gravedigger” of socialism. If Andrei Sakharov and Lech Wałęsa had won before, there was no doubt: the Prize wanted to be seen as anti-communist. Revolutions? Only peaceful and colorful ones, supported by the United States.

No, there is “nothing rotten in the Kingdom of Denmark” – or rather, in the committee in neighboring Norway. If a puppet like Maria Corina Machado wins the Nobel Peace Prize, it is because normality prevailed and the 2025 prize lived up to its hypocritical tradition.