María Corina Machado in Oslo: When Dignity Rises, Noise Falls Away.

EDITORIAL

Raysa White – Akerunoticias

There are moments when politics sheds its usual costume -the maneuvering, the pressure, the manufactured speeches- and becomes a clean gesture. A way of revealing an unadorned truth; a truth that requires no disguise.

The appearance of María Corina Machado in Oslo, during the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, is more than a symbolic act. It is an international acknowledgment of her struggle, her coherence, her political courage, and the cry of millions of Venezuelans who have endured two decades of institutional destruction. It is recognition -the kind that no propaganda machine can tarnish.

Some have tried to wrap it in controversy. They attempt to plant seeds of ambiguity. “Controversial,” some media outlets repeat, with the same intellectual laziness of those who won’t spend even a moment examining the context, the reasons, and the moral weight of this event.

It’s an old trick: when they cannot deny a fact, they relativize it. When someone’s presence threatens power, they stain it with doubt. When a woman rises too high, they search for a shadow.

But the truth -when it is genuine- stands on its own. To claim, as certain outlets echoing the regime do, that “the award is controversial,” is simply part of a worn-out strategy to distort what is self-evident.

For them, it is “controversial” that a Venezuelan woman, unarmed, without a traditional party machine, without state resources, has become the most legitimate figure of the democratic opposition -gathering the extraordinary strength of millions who still believe in the right to choose their own future.

That is what bothers them. That is what they cannot stand. That is what they try –unsuccessfully- to overshadow with recycled language.

No. The award is not controversial. What is controversial is the regime trying to discredit it.

María Corina is not there for show, or out of pity. She is there because her leadership has become an ethical, civic, democratic reference -in Venezuela and abroad.

Because she did not bow.  Because she did not negotiate her conscience -as others did. Because her voice represents an entire nation.

The “controversy” exists only in the laboratories of a dictatorship desperate to plant doubt in order to weaken hope. But there is something that cannot be concealed: the democratic world has recognized a woman who embodies one of the most steadfast civil resistances in the hemisphere.

And to seal this moment with dignity and clarity, U.S. Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar traveled to Oslo to support her.

This is no small detail: two Latin American women -strong, prepared, tempered by life-
raising together the flag that authoritarianism fears most: the flag of freedom. Salazar’s presence was not mere protocol. It was a moral endorsement. A way of saying:

“You are not alone, María Corina. Venezuela is not alone. The cause of freedom resonates far beyond its borders.”

That meeting brief yet powerful, became a symbol in itself: women who build, women who refuse to sell themselves, women who do not surrender, women who name things as they are -they are the ones reshaping the political landscape of our region.

Meanwhile, from Miraflores, the reaction was the predictable one: aggressions, insults, disqualifications -a litany of curses that, as with all things low, never reach the heavens.

Because truth, when it ascends, does not need to shout. Truth rises quietly and takes its rightful place.

And who lifts it? It is lifted by a people who refuse to kneel. By the determination of a nation that has survived everything -except surrender. This is what is happening now. Today, as María Corina rises,Venezuela rises with her.

The world is watching.

And the curses of those who have nothing left to offer but noise remain where they belong:

in the damp soil of fear,
in the mud of resentment,
in the desperate echo of a power
that senses its time is finally running out.