In Venezuela’s ‘darkest hours’, will peace prize boost opposition or backfire?

Maria Corina Machado's Nobel award puts focus on country but analysts doubt it will produce democratic change

In March 2019 as a nationwide blackout plunged Venezuela into darkness, hundreds of citizens huddled on a basketball court in the city of Maracaibo to hear their leader promise to guide them out of the gloom.

We are, quite literally, living through our darkest hour. But these are also the brightest of times," Maria Corina Machado told supporters as they used mobile phones to illuminate the night.