Political satire often forces us to question reality. The author uses the image of a hypothetical Donald Trump holding a Nobel Peace Prize medal with childish satisfaction, while María Corina Machado barely holds it, to illustrate how the award can become a toy track serving the whims of power.
Historically, rejecting the Nobel Prize has been almost unheard of. A partial case was that of Boris Pasternak, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958, who wished to accept it but was forced to renounce it publicly by the Soviet regime. This situation demonstrated how recognition can become a problem when power intervenes.
The first voluntary rejection was by Lê Đức Thọ, who refused the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. It had been awarded to him for the Paris Accords, intended to end the Vietnam War, shared with Henry Kissinger. Lê Đức Thọ argued that he could not accept the prize because, despite negotiations, the war continued, exposing the fiction of a non-existent peace.
“"Accepting the Nobel meant letting others decide what you represented. Human beings are condemned to be free."
The other famous case of rejection is that of Jean-Paul Sartre, who refused the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964. In his case, the reason was purely philosophical: he distrusted prizes in general, believing they turned the author into an institution and separated him from social conflict and individual freedom.
