Nicolás Maduro Moros

Politician

• Born: November 23, 1962
• Place of Birth: Caracas, Venezuela

• Education: José Ávalos High School

A lifetime politician, Nicolás Maduro earned a reputation as an effective manager and organizer while serving as a union leader during his time spent driving buses in Caracas for a living. His formal career in government began in 1998, when he was elected to the Venezuelan Chamber of Deputies. Maduro has been a prominent figure in Venezuelan national politics since 2005, when he served as speaker of the National Assembly. A longtime confidant of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, Maduro was an active member and supporter of Chávez’s Fifth Republic Movement, from its founding in 1997 until its dissolution in 2007. That year, Maduro supported the party’s union with a coalition of over twenty other parties in the formation of Chávez’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela. Over the course of Chávez’s fourteen-year tenure as Venezuela’s president, Maduro served as his minister of foreign affairs and vice president. As reports of Chávez’s declining health began to circulate in late 2012, political analysts speculated that Maduro was in line to inherit control over Chávez’s popular but controversial socialist government. Following Chávez’s death in March 2013, Maduro was elected president. However, the circumstances of his election were controversial. Opposition party members and their supporters claimed that Maduro stepped into the vacuum of Chávez’s deep-rooted political legacy, leveraging his influence within the government to ensure the election results swung in his favor. Tension between Maduro and Venezuela’s opposition party continued during his presidency, resulting in episodes of street demonstrations and political violence in early 2014. Despite being sworn in for a second term in January 2019, a number of countries and international organizations condemned the election as illegitimate and did not recognize him as president. Similarly, Maduro claimed victory in the contested 2024 presidential election but refused to release official results and cracked down on opposition protests, prompting the US and other observers to refuse to recognize his government as legitimate.

Background

Official government records maintain that Nicolás Maduro Moros was born on November 23, 1962, in the Los Chaguaramos neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela. However, there has been widespread speculation in the media and among his political opponents that he was born in Colombia—a claim that Maduro denies. The issue of Maduro’s birthplace is politically contentious because federal law requires that the office of the president be held by a native Venezuelan. Nonetheless, Maduro has not denied records indicating that his parents, Jesús Nicolás Maduro and Teresa de Jesús Moros Acevedo, were married in Bogotá, Colombia. During Maduro’s childhood, his father worked as a union leader.

Maduro’s interest in politics began at a young age. He served as president of the student union at Jose Avalos High School in the El Valle neighborhood of Caracas. Raised in a Roman Catholic family, Maduro was a fan of rock music and an avid baseball player. A diplomatic cable made public by the organization Wikileaks in 2006 reported that Maduro declined a contract offer from a Major League Baseball scout as a young man. After taking a job as a bus driver, Maduro—like his father before him—became involved in union politics. Although he did not graduate from high school, his work as a union leader earned him a reputation as a focused and effective public speaker. In the early 1980s, he helped lead an effort to organize employees of the Caracas Metro company, against the wishes of company officials.

When he was twenty-one years old, Maduro served as a bodyguard to leftist national political candidate José Vicente Rangel. Rangel later served as minister of foreign affairs under President Hugo Chávez in 1999. Maduro first met Hugo Chávez in 1994, following Chávez’s failed military coup in 1992. Prior to their meeting, Maduro was already a strong supporter of Chávez’s socialist and populist political philosophy. Maduro campaigned in support of Chávez’s release from prison and supported his successful 1998 presidential bid. Maduro participated in the assembly that drafted a new constitution for Venezuela following Chávez’s ascendance to the office of president. He became a trusted member of Chávez’s inner circle and a staunch believer in Chávez’s effort to reorient Venezuelan politics and culture under the rhetoric of a socialist revolution—a brand of political leadership colloquially known as "Chavismo." Beginning in 2005, Maduro served as speaker of the National Assembly, the head of Venezuela’s national legislature. In this role, he helped President Chávez undertake what he referred to as a "Bolivarian Socialist Revolution"—named for Latin American independence leader Simón Bolívar.

In 2006, Maduro was named minister of foreign affairs. As foreign minister, he helped to create strong diplomatic ties between Venezuela and many world leaders considered objectionable and controversial by Western officials, including Cuba’s Fidel and Raúl Castro, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Maduro served as a key player in a Chávez administration that worked to garner domestic and international support by characterizing American foreign policy and President George W. Bush as a colonialist threat to Latin America and the world.

Questions surrounding who would be positioned to inherit Chávez’s political mantle began circulating in June 2011, following his public admission of a cancer diagnosis. After his reelection as president in October 2012, Chávez named Maduro as his vice president. Before the election, Chávez had declared himself free of cancer after a series of medical procedures in Cuba, although rumors pertaining to his declining health persisted. In December 2012, Chávez announced that he was returning to Cuba to undergo more cancer treatments. He stated that should he be unable to complete his presidential term, Venezuelans should support Maduro as his successor. After Chávez’s death was announced on March 5, 2013, Maduro was named as the country’s interim president. Maduro appointed Jorge Arreaza to the office of vice president.

President of Venezuela

Venezuela’s constitution stipulates that in the event a president dies in office, an election for a new president should take place within thirty days. Running as the candidate for the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, Maduro faced off against Henrique Capriles Radonski of the opposition Justice First party in a presidential election held on April 14, 2013. Maduro was declared winner of the election by a narrow margin. Official results showed Maduro having defeated Capriles by earning approximately 1.8 percent more of the nearly 15 million votes cast. Capriles and his supporters initially rejected the election numbers, claiming that voting irregularities had occurred. Capriles conceded defeat following a partial federal election audit—but continued to allege vote tampering and criticize the post-election vote counting.

Upon taking office as president, Maduro took over control of a national economy suffering from a shortage of basic goods, high inflation, widespread unemployment, and regular disruptions in electricity. Under Chavismo, the Venezuelan economy had become largely reliant on federal stimulus programs rooted in profits accrued from the national oil industry. President Maduro blamed corruption and "destructive capitalist logic" as the root causes of the country’s economic woes. In October 2013, he requested that the national legislature grant him special powers to govern by presidential decree to combat what he referred to as "economic sabotage"—a move criticized by the opposition as a power grab. Maduro’s request was granted in November 2013, allowing him to make unfettered macroeconomic decisions, including decisions on price controls, trade laws, and exports, for a period of twelve months. According to Maduro, his leadership of the economy required a special dispensation from the National Assembly because opposition political leaders and foreign powers were colluding to take down the Venezuelan government.

In addition to his economic policies, Maduro has worked to decrease crime in cities throughout Venezuela. In May 2013, he unveiled operation "Safe Homeland," assigning three thousand members of the Venezuelan military to work alongside local police forces to decrease incidents of theft and homicide. Widespread incidence of crime has been a major political issue in Venezuela since the late 1990s.

The issue of violent crime returned to national prominence in January 2014, when Venezuelan actress and former Miss Venezuela Monica Spear and her husband were murdered during a robbery. The couple’s murder was witnessed by their five-year-old daughter, who was also injured in the attack. By mid-February 2014, opposition protests began taking place throughout Venezuela. In addition to violent crime, opposition leaders and their supporters organized rallies to protest the country’s economic malaise, mounting allegations of political and financial corruption against President Maduro and his administration. The demonstrations turned violent, with members of pro-government paramilitary groups attacking protestors in collaboration with government security forces. Maduro responded to the demonstrations by citing them as evidence of efforts by internal opposition leaders and outside forces working to overthrow his government.

Despite allegations of government complicity in violence against demonstrators, Maduro maintained that his administration was committed to public safety and human rights. In March 2014, the government announced the creation of the Council of State for Human Rights to investigate allegations of wrongdoing, with Maduro claiming that members of government security forces accused of violence had been arrested. Nevertheless, regional leaders and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights publicly criticized the Venezuelan government for violence against demonstrators. In April 2014, the Venezuelan conference of Roman Catholic bishops criticized "the brutal repression of political dissent" in the country.

A large contingent of forces from the Venezuelan government—including over nine hundred members of the National Guard—moved on encampments of opposition protestors in May 2014. Maduro continued to allege that the protestors were "fascists and extreme right thugs" hoping to foment an overthrow of his administration. Meanwhile, widespread criticisms of the government’s economic policies continued throughout the country.

In 2016, the opposition-controlled assembly attempted to pass legislation to reduce the presidential term from six years to four; while the amendment would have been constitutional, the Supreme Court ruled that it could not be retroactively applied to Maduro. They then tried to get him recalled, however, when the petition received the necessary number of signatures to move forward in May of that year, Maduro declared a state of emergency. In July 2017, the country held an election to replace the National Assembly with members who were pro-Maduro. The election caused protests throughout the country, leading to the deaths of at least six people; Maduro ultimately claimed victory while opposition leaders said the vote was fraudulent.

In January 2018, Maduro announced he would be running for reelection. Scheduled for April, the election was not actually held until May and was boycotted by many voters with the assumption that it would not be fair. Shortly after, Maduro announced his win, while opponents, including many countries and international organizations, declared the election illegitimate. Despite objections, Maduro was sworn in for his second term in January 2019. Many nations refused to acknowledge him as the president, and independent human rights groups continued to call for interventions. Only weeks after Maduro declared his presidency, Juan Guaidó announced the country was without a legal president, so he declared himself acting president. Several countries recognized Guaidó as Venezuela's leader, which enraged Maduro. Supported by Russia, Cuba, Mexico, and Turkey, he declared the act a coup d'état and declared American diplomats in the country persona non grata, giving them 72 hours to leave the country. Later that year, Maduro blocked foreign aid supplies from entering the country, fearing another coup.

In March 2020, the US Department of Justice filed criminal charges against Maduro and other Venezuelan officials, for allegedly conspiring with drug traffickers and terrorist organizations to send tons of cocaine to the United States with the intent of harming US communities over the course of two decades.

In May 2020, a group of armed Venezuelans attempted to overtake the president, but they were unsuccessful. The US was rumored to have played a role in the plot. Following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Maduro's relationship with Vladimir Putin strengthened, but due to the rising price of oil resulting from the invasion, Maduro and the US began discussions. The US even lifted some sanctions.

Maduro ran for a third term in 2024. The previous year, Venezuela's comptroller general banned popular opposition leader María Corina Machado from holding public office for fifteen years, citing her support for former opposition leader Guaidó and US sanctions on Maduro's government. Running against Maduro in Machado's place, opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia campaigned against the regime's violent repression, and corruption. The opposition, anticipating that Maduro's government would rig the election, gathered and published more than 80 percent of the nation's voting machine tallies, which appeared to show that González had defeated Maduro in a landslide. When Maduro claimed victory anyway and refused to release the full official vote tally, supporters of the opposition protested and the US and other international observers refused to recognize his win. Maduro's government detained hundreds of opposition supporters and investigated the opposition party for allegedly causing unrest, spreading false information, inciting insurrection, and conspiracy, among other charges. It also accused the US of trying to orchestrate a coup. González and Machado went into hiding. After a Venezuelan court issued an arrest warrant for González, he fled the country and was granted asylum by Spain. Machado vowed to remain in Venezuela.

In September 2024, the United States seized Maduro's airplane while it was on the ground in the Dominican Republic after the US alleged that the plane's purchase in Florida had violated US sanctions against Maduro's government. Maduro used the plane for international travel. His government accused the US of piracy and escalating aggression against Venezuela.

Impact

Following Chávez’s death, many political analysts were skeptical about whether any subsequent administration could match his charisma, penchant for rhetorical flamboyance, and natural abilities as a political showman—skills that were essential to his maintaining firm control over Venezuela’s military, government, and economy. Indeed, the challenge of both maintaining Chávez’s widespread popularity and channeling it into workable policy solutions has proved daunting for Maduro and his colleagues in government. Furthermore, Venezuela’s economy faces daunting structural challenges for which there are no easy solutions. After a decade of initiatives aimed a shoring up state control of the country’s major industries, the economy suffers from a lack of diversity, and unemployment is rampant.

Some members of the media have referred to the 2014 opposition protests in the country as the "Venezuelan Spring"—a comparison to the Arab Spring revolutions that began in late 2010 and resulted in the overthrow of governing regimes in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Yemen. Others have countered that such comparisons are overblown, and that Maduro has been able to contain the country’s opposition movement through public criticism and the use of the state security apparatus.

However, it is clear that the challenges facing the Maduro government—in particular, high crime and economic malaise—continued to pose a threat to the administration’s political livelihood and its ability to administer new programs and policies.

By 2024, Venezuela's economy had collapsed, shrinking from being Latin America's fifth-largest economy to that of a medium-sized city, leaving millions of Venezuelans impoverished, and pushing 8 million to emigrate during Maduro's presidency. Maduro attributed the collapse to sanctions imposed by the US and other countries. His government's violent political repression, refusal to concede the contested 2024 election, and alleged corruption have lowered Venezuela's standing among democratic nations.

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