My collaboration from last week (The Nobel Prize winners who reject authoritarianism) provoked a good number of expressions and most of them contrary to my argument.
Of some, I suspect, they did not read the article and stayed only on what has to do with the Prize awarded to the Venezuelan María Corina Machado and it immediately caused emotional rejection and, even someone, upset, asked that I be kicked out of the office because of my reflections. staff from Sinembargo.mx contributors
Fortunately, the Sinembargo.mx directors are clear about the value of plurality and in this digital newspaper, there is space for different interpretations of a dynamic reality, which would be impossible for a democracy to have a single and definitive one.
So, in the following lines we will seek to elaborate on the nature of the Peace Prize and try to explain why it provokes hilarity from those who do not agree with this recognition of the Venezuelan opposition leader.
It should be said, at the outset, that this award was created in 1901, and that means that the hegemonic values were those of liberalism even when the left already existed, and had manifested itself in the First and Second Workers’ Internationals promoted by the ideologist of anarchism Mikhail Bakunin, of communism Karl Marx and social democracy, of the “renegade” Karl Kautsky.
Furthermore, in the second half of the 19th century, the first class parties were formed, which over time would consolidate an ideology that sought to create its own hegemony in open dispute with the dominant liberal thought.
The essence, then, of the Nobel Peace Prize is a prize with liberal roots. A vision of the world is imposed on him. You cannot ask for anything other than the permanence of those values.
However, this does not mean that this vision includes everything that rhetorically vindicates only the values of the West, that is, freedom, equality and fraternity, but that its practice in the construction of solid institutions is also important.
In the case of Machado, her distinctive feature is the militant questioning of an autocracy (she, and others, speak of a dictatorship) claiming the basic principles of liberalism, which in political terms means rules of the game valid for all those who aspire to access to power and counterweights in decision-making.
It’s not too much to ask, Rule of Law.
For this reason, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Machado has provoked congratulations throughout the world, but, especially, in the Western world, however, it has also been severely questioned among the forces of that left that does not even accept the arguments that seek to elaborate an explanation about the nature of the Prize and, even less, from those who try to answer why it was awarded to Venezuelan politics.
This Nobel Prize was born in a liberal context with an ideal of universal pacification that is intertwined with the moral hegemony of the West.
That is to say, it is a prize of bourgeois liberal democracy, however, just because it is a Prize of the West, it does not cease to have its qualities that distance it from values of war or hegemony.
This is frequently forgotten, and there is questioning from the so-called global South and the anti-imperialist movements that accuse it of being a reward for figures aligned with Western diplomacy, but, not always, we must not forget that this Award has been received by figures who are claimed by political progressivism, as with the cases of Martín Luther King (1964), Adolfo Pérez Esquivel (1980), Barack Obama (2009).
And even more, the orthodox left, even with these recognitions, says that the Prize seeks to silence the national liberation or socialist processes, which is an excess considering its temporality and circumstance, its exponents even point out that it is a tool of “soft power”, (soft power), to legitimize pro-American interventions or leadership.
We have seen this type of criticism in the discourse of the so-called Bolivarian left and it is partially right, because the award does have a symbolic and geopolitical charge, but it also seeks to problematize its propaganda use by authoritarian regimes.
Doesn’t the Bolivarian criticism of the imperial peace also conceal its own authoritarianism? To what extent does anti-imperialism become rhetoric of internal legitimation? These are not minor questions and its spokespersons always seek to turn them around to put in focus a part of the film that we are all watching.
Both discourses (the Nobel humanitarian liberal and the humanitarian communist) operate symbolically, because they both dispute moral hegemony over the idea of peace.
That is to say, the promoters of both discourses seek to bring grist to their political and moral mill, to win, others will say, the public debate that is very difficult in a fast-paced world.
Since the announcement of the award of the Prize, an ideological and geopolitical dispute has become visible. In this way, Bolivarian circles have seen in it an operation of imperial legitimation and a form of diplomatic pressure, disguised as humanitarian recognition.
This conflict is not new, in the 124 years of the Nobel Peace Prize it has been repeated: Every time it is awarded to a figure from the Western world, or to leaders associated with processes of political change, a question is immediately reopened about whether the Prize consecrates peace or pacification in the service of the global order.
And that explains the positions and gestures of the political leaders, as happened with the mutis Claudia Sheinbaum, Gustavo Petro and Pedro Sánchez, even the annoyance of Trump himself who expected to receive him.
Those who welcome the award to a woman who opposes a dictatorship applaud. But, equally, in the opposite sense, there are those who reproach – for example, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, the Argentine Nobel Prize winner – who, in a public letter he sent to Machado, affirms the existence in Venezuela of a “democracy with its lights and shadows” when Maduro insists on not losing power.
In short, the Nobel Peace Prize can be seen from the varied ideology of the left with its nuances, however, we must not forget the liberal nature of that prize and there is no other, it is what it is and that’s it, the rest is noise and the desire to triumph in an ideological and geopolitical debate that is resurrected every year like the Phoenix bird.