Machado isn't a despot or anything close.
Her receipt of the peace prize was hailed by long-standing Trump critic and frequent MSNBC guest Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/10/maria-machado-nobel-peace-prize/684510/ Machado was awarded the 2024 Václav Havel Human Rights Prize by the Council of Europe, and the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament. The Sakharov Prize is "an honorary award for individuals or groups who have dedicated their lives to the defence of human rights and freedom of thought." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakharov_Prize Other recipients of the Sakharov Prize include Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan, Reporters Without Borders, Malala Yousafzai, Alexei Navalny and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Seems to me she's in pretty good and definitely non-despotic company.
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