Nobel peace laureate’s decision to flee on people-smuggling route is highly symbolic, but will her influence wane if unable to return?

• Venezuelan Nobel laureate reunited with family after perilous journey to receive prize

Thousands of Venezuelan migrants have braved the seas off Falcón state in recent years, fleeing their shattered homeland towards the Caribbean islands of Aruba and Curaçao in rickety wooden boats called yolas . Many lost their lives chasing a brighter future after their overcrowded vessels capsized or were smashed apart by rocks.

This week, the opposition leader María Corina Machado got a taste of that perilous journey herself as the Nobel laureate began her surreptitious 5,500-mile-plus odyssey from her authoritarian homeland to Norway to collect her peace prize.