After having escaped her country in secret, Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado said Thursday that she got help from the U.S. government to leave hiding in Venezuela and collect her award.
Machado, 58, credited President Donald Trump's "decisive" actions in making the Venezuelan regime "weaker than ever," her latest show of support for the White House as it builds military pressure against Caracas. And she vowed she would do her best to return home to end the “tyranny” of President Nicolás Maduro.
“Yes, we did get support from the United States’ government," Machado said at a news conference in Oslo, Norway, speaking about a journey from her homeland that was fraught with risk and shrouded in secrecy.
NBC News has asked the White House for comment on Machado's statement that the U.S. helped her.
She won the Peace Prize in October for being one of the most prominent opponents of Maduro’s regime. She has been in hiding for most of this year and is under a decadelong travel ban.
“I cannot give details, because these are people that could be harmed,” she said of those who helped her. “Certainly, the regime would have done everything to prevent me from coming. They did not know where I was in hiding in Venezuela, so it was hard for them to stop me.”
She called the operation to get her out "quite an experience" and said she hadn't seen her children in two years, describing the reunion as "one of the most extraordinary spiritual moments of my life."
Though Machado failed to reach Oslo in time for Wednesday’s official ceremony — her daughter collecting it in her stead — she appeared hours later on the balcony of Oslo’s Grand Hotel, where she waved to crowds and joined them in singing the national anthem.
Thursday, she vowed to take the prize back to her homeland.
“I came to receive the prize on behalf of the Venezuelan people, and I will take it back to Venezuela at the correct moment,” she said as she left the Norwegian parliament. “Of course, I will not say when that is.”
She said she hoped "we will turn the country into a beacon of hope, opportunity and democracy," thanking both her fellow activists in Venezuela and the Norwegian people.
The choice of Machado has attracted significant criticism in addition to praise after she dedicated her award to Trump, whose strategy on Venezuela she endorses.
Alongside the fans on Oslo’s streets, there were also demonstrators outside the Nobel Institute, with placards including “No Peace Prize for Warmongers.”
Hours before she spoke in Norway, the U.S military seized an oil tanker off Venezuela as the administration continues to escalate military activity in the region.
At a news conference alongside Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, Machado was asked whether she would support a U.S. military intervention in Venezuela.
"People talk about invasion in Venezuela, the threat of an invasion in Venezuela. And I answer, Venezuela was has been already invaded," she said.
"We have the Russian agents, we have the Iranian agents, we have terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas operating freely in accordance with the regime," she said. "We have the Colombian guerrilla, the drug cartels that have taken over 60% of our populations, and not only involving drug trafficking, but in human trafficking, in networks of prostitution."
She said those networks had "turned Venezuela into the criminal hub of the Americas," with trafficking of drugs, arms and humans, alongside the oil black market, funding the regime's "repression system."
Without mentioning Trump by name, she said, she had "asked the international community to cut those forces."
The protesters' criticisms are shared by the Venezuelan government, which denies any involvement in crime and the charges of authoritarianism.
Jorge Rodríguez, president of the Venezuelan parliament, said this week that giving the Nobel to someone “who calls for military action against Venezuela and celebrates the killing of human beings in the Caribbean” showed “the hypocrisy of peace organizations.”
Venezuela’s foreign affairs minister, Yván Gil Pinto, said on social media that the U.S. seizure of the oil tanker was “blatant theft” and “an act of international piracy.”
