Jeb Bush (left) and Marco Rubio (right) shake hands during a Florida fundraising in 2015. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images/File photo.
By Misión Verdad – Nov 20, 2025
The recent announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to María Corina Machado constitutes a political move that distorts and reduces the award to an absurd instrument of geopolitical legitimization for actors aligned with the interventionist interests of the US empire.
The de-legitimization of the award stems from the fact that Machado’s candidacy was directly promoted by then-Senator Marco Rubio, through the letter he addressed to the Norwegian Committee in 2024.
This promotion is not accidental. It is part of an organic relationship spanning more than a decade, in which Machado has consistently operated as a useful piece within the political network that Rubio orchestrates from Washington.
This network not only responds to the ideological logic of the most extremist or conservative sectors of the Republican Party, but also to a powerful pressure structure composed of conservative think tanks, federal contractors, retired intelligence operatives and, particularly, the corporate groups of the oil lobby, who have opted for a model of political change in Venezuela subordinated to their own corporate and geostrategic calculations.
In this context, María Corina Machado has functioned as an external spokesperson and political operator for this political-financial faction, aligning herself without nuance with the agendas of pressure, illegal sanctions, and foreign tutelage promoted by Rubio and his entourage.
Operator of the transnational oil company
The web of interests that drives María Corina Machado did not originate in Venezuela. Her main political support comes from the Bush-Rubio lineage and the Texas oil complex historically associated with ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and energy conglomerates.
The organic relationship that Machado maintains with Marco Rubio, one of the main political heirs of this structure, directly inserts her into that corporate lobbying system, which has used tensions with Venezuela as a geostrategic platform to reposition US oil power in the Caribbean.
Rubio’s support for Machado should be read as the logical continuation of a political project that originates from Bush capital, is fueled by Texan financing, and is pointing towards the expansion of ExxonMobil’s energy interests. Rubio was molded by Jeb Bush, sponsored by Texas oil donors, and turned into a key operator of the sanctions policy against PDVSA.
That same apparatus, which includes contractors, neoconservative foundations, and financial networks linked to the Gulf of Mexico, is the one that supports the consecration of Machado as a “democratic” figure. Consequently, the economic plans that Machado has promoted are a direct translation of that ideological and corporate matrix.
Her insistence on privatizing the oil industry, fragmenting PDVSA, opening the Venezuelan energy market under criteria of free foreign operation and “competition,” and handing over strategic areas to international consortiums coincides exactly with the design that ExxonMobil and its operators have promoted for Venezuela from time immemorial.
Ultimately, this is the historical agenda of the Texas oil ecosystem to reshape Venezuela’s energy structure to its advantage.
Thus, Machado’s oil vision responds to the same principle that guides Rubio: to dismantle state control of Venezuelan oil and replace it with a model aimed at maximizing the presence of US corporations, especially those with which the Bush family and Rubio’s circle have maintained direct links.
And all of this was reflected in 2005, when María Corina met at the White House with then-President George W Bush, in a meeting that symbolized her formal entry into the power networks that orbit around that Bush family.
That meeting was the confirmation that Machado is part of the political-business circuit that, from Washington, has promoted the intervention, the dismantling of PDVSA, and the energy recolonization of Venezuela.
She is the figure functional to the strategic needs of that network, acting in a manner equivalent to an operator, or, in cruder terms, a political puppet, whose narrative, proposals, and actions are systematically aligned with the interests of the political and corporate class linked to the Bush-Rubio-ExxonMobil axis.
Think Tanks: extremist platforms
Machado’s projection is neither spontaneous nor the product of independent recognition.
Her appearances in US regime events are part of an architecture carefully designed by the most extreme political-intellectual faction in Washington, whose think tanks, media, legislators, and operators have given her spaces that no foreign figure would obtain without direct political patronage.
To appear in these closed, competitive, and deeply ideologized circuits, an internal “bridge” is required, and that bridge has been precisely the Bush-Rubio axis and the oil and neoconservative lobby networks associated with it.
Machado’s entry into this constellation was marked early on by her links with US leadership programs such as Young Global Leaders (2005 and 2011) and Yale World Fellows (2009), both funded by institutions and foundations that operate as a kind of seedbed of pro-US thought.
And that’s not to mention her close ties to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). From that moment on, her career began to align with the interests of the centers of power that shape regime change doctrines and economic pressure strategies against sovereign nations.
Over the past decade, that network has consistently provided her with visibility:
• In 2014, she was registered by another country [Panama] as an alternate envoy to the OAS and participated in a joint event of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Atlantic Council, in the context of her intervention in the Permanent Council.
• In June 2023, she returned to CSIS to speak about the opposition primaries, a space typically reserved for US figures linked to the national security apparatus.
• In February 2024, she was presented at the Atlantic Council, another bastion of interventionist thinking, to analyze the Venezuelan electoral scenario. The panel was organized by directors with close ties to the US State Department and to funders in the energy sector.
• In October 2024, she participated in a panel at the Georgetown Institute of the Americas, dedicated to the “democratization of Venezuela,” where she shared the stage with academics linked to the neoconservative establishment.
• On February 26, 2025, she appeared on Triggered, Donald Trump Jr.’s show, aligning herself with Trumpism.
These appearances are part of a coordinated political strategy. Machado has been carefully positioned within the circuit of the most aggressive US think tanks and media outlets regarding regional intervention, which operate as legitimizing hubs for figures who fulfill a geopolitical function useful to the US entity.
Reuters: María Corina Machado Behind US’s False ‘Tren de Aragua’ Narrative Used to Attack Venezuela
Her distinguished record with the NED
Her curriculum is marked from the beginning by her connection with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), one of the central pillars of US soft power.
Her NGO, Súmate, emerged in the early 2000s precisely at the moment when Washington was expanding its policy of “unconventional” intervention in Latin America and was looking for new local operators to make its regime change agenda in Venezuela viable.
Súmate itself acknowledged in its 2004 report having received direct funding from the NED, an institution then headed by Carl Gershman, a figure closely linked to the neoconservative circles of the George W. Bush administration. Under his leadership, and with the influential lobbyist Vin Weber at the head of the Board of Directors, the NED increased its budget for Venezuela, quadrupling the funds allocated before and after the April 2002 coup.
For the NED, Machado represented what Gershman described as a “natural ally of the United States.” In this context, Súmate was designed as a platform parallel to the National Electoral Council, with logistical and financial support from the promoters of the NED. The cooperation between Machado and the US foreign policy apparatus was not limited to financial matters.
A diplomatic cable leaked by WikiLeaks revealed the level of direct communication she maintained with the US Embassy in Caracas. In the document, classified as “confidential,” Machado and Alejandro Plaz approached Ambassador William Brownfield seeking strategic guidance regarding potential legal action against them.
It must be noted that this same ambassador, William Brownfield, is known for calling for “accelerating the collapse of PDVSA” as part of the pressure against Venezuela.
According to the cable, Machado asked the ambassador if it was preferable for her cause to accept prison, go into hiding, or request asylum, to which the US diplomat responded by even evaluating the “political value” that her imprisonment would have.
The text details how the embassy recommended that Machado activate specific international networks: Amnesty International, the US Congress, Moisés Naím, and even representatives of the lobbying firm Patton Boggs, hired by the Venezuelan government itself in Washington.
The document also records the Canadian ambassador’s willingness to facilitate refugee status for Machado and her family. In short, María Corina Machado is not a political leader who emerged from Venezuelan dynamics, but rather a carefully constructed creation of the extremist, conservative, and corporate faction in the US empire.
Her career is the result of that power system: funded by the NED, promoted by the Bushes and Rubios, backed by the Texas oil lobby and legitimized by the think tanks of that system. Machado embodies that same old project of turning Venezuela back into a US protectorate.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/AU
