pWotD Episode 3083: María Corina Machado

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With 681,717 views on Friday, 10 October 2025 our article of the day is María Corina Machado.

María Corina Machado Parisca (born 7 October 1967) is a Venezuelan politician and activist. A prominent opposition leader to the goverments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, she served as a member of the National Assembly from 2011 to 2014, and has run as a candidate in presidential elections while experiencing repression from the Maduro regime. She is considered a liberal conservative politician.

An industrial engineer with a master's degree in finance, Machado began her political career as a founder of the vote-monitoring organization Súmate. She is the National Coordinator of the political party Vente Venezuela and ran in the 2012 opposition presidential primary, which she lost to Henrique Capriles. During the 2014 Venezuelan protests, she played a leading role in organizing demonstrations against Maduro's government.

In 2023, Machado won the opposition primary to become the unity candidate for the 2024 presidential election. The Venezuelan government subsequently barred her from running in the election. She named Corina Yoris as a replacement candidate, who was later replaced by Edmundo González Urrutia. The opposition presented vote tallies, claiming that González Urritia won the election in a landslide, while the Maduro government claimed victory without presenting any evidence. Shortly after the 28 July election, Machado announced that she had gone into hiding, citing fears for her life and freedom under the authoritarian Maduro regime.

Machado has received international recognition for her activism. In 2025, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy". Machado was also named one of BBC's 100 Women in 2018, and listed among Time magazine's 100 most influential people in 2025. In 2024, Machado received the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize and, with Edmundo González, the Sakharov Prize for representing Venezuelans fighting for democracy.

This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 02:36 UTC on Saturday, 11 October 2025.

For the full current version of the article, see María Corina Machado on Wikipedia.

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