The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize was given to María Corina Machado, a far-right, pro-war Venezuelan opposition leader who has been funded by the US government for more than two decades.

Machado has helped to lead numerous violent coup attempts in Venezuela, in 2002, 2014, 2017, 2019, and again today.

She is now at the center of the US government’s regime-change war against Venezuela.

In an interview with Donald Trump Jr. in February 2025, Machado made it clear that she wants to privatize Venezuela’s state-owned oil industry and sell off the South American nation’s natural resources to US corporations.

Machado excitedly explained that, if Trump helped her overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, her new regime would “be the strongest ally in the region for the United States”.

“Venezuela is going to be the brightest opportunity for investment of American companies, of good people that are going to make a lot of money”, she vowed.

This is what Machado said to the son of the US president (emphasis added):

Forget about Saudi Arabia; forget about the Saudis. I mean, we have more oil, I mean, infinite potential.

And we’re going to open markets. We’re going to kick [out] the government from the oil sector. We’re going to privatize all our industry.

Venezuela has huge resources: oil, gas, minerals, land, technology. And, as you said before, we have a strategic location, you know, hours from the United States.

So we’re going to do this right. We know what we have to do.

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And American companies are in, you know, a super strategic position to invest.

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This country, Venezuela, is going to be the brightest opportunity for investment of American companies, of good people that are going to make a lot of money.

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