Nicolás Maduro: who he is, biography, controversies –

Nicolas Maduro is the current president of Venezuela, having been in that role since 2013. Maduro assumed the interim presidency of that country after the death of Hugo Chávez, being elected president that same year. He entered politics during the 1990s and is currently heavily criticized for the way he governs Venezuela.

Nicolás Maduro’s government is accused of being authoritarian and responsible for numerous human rights violations, including the execution of citizens. In addition, that government was accused of being responsible for the economic crisis that strongly affected Venezuela. Because of this, the Maduro government has suffered several sanctions from the US government.

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Summary about Nicolas Maduro

• Nicolás Maduro is a politician who is known for being the President of Venezuela since 2013.

• He had simple origins, worked as a bus driver and joined political militancy during his youth.

• He joined the PSUV, a party founded by Hugo Chávez, in 2007.

• He won the 2013 presidential election, defeating opponent Henrique Caprilles by a minimal vote lead.

• His government is accused of being authoritarian, corrupt and largely responsible for the economic crisis that hit Venezuela.

Biography of Nicolas Maduro

Nicolas Maduro Moros was born in the capital of Venezuela, Caracas, on November 23, 1962. He was the son of a simple family, his father was called Nicolás Maduro Garcia, and his mother, Teresa de Jesús Moros. Maduro’s father, by the way, was very engaged with militancy and labor movements.

Due to the influence of his father, Maduro, already in the school phase, he became involved with militancy through the student movement. As an adult, Maduro became a bus driver, working for a public transport company in Caracas. For a few years, Maduro was also a security guard for a Venezuelan president named José Vicente Rangel.

While working as a bus driver, Maduro had a prominent role in the militancy of labor movements and became leader of the union that defended the rights of bus drivers in the country’s capital.

In the early 1990s, Maduro joined the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement 200O MBR-200. This group organized a military coup against Venezuelan President Carlos Pérez in 1992, but it failed. After joining the MBR-200, Maduro was introduced to Hugo Chávez, at the time a Venezuelan military man who aimed to gain power in the country.

With the failure of the military coup, Hugo Chávez and other soldiers were arrested. Chávez’s arrest prompted Maduro and other Venezuelan left-wing militants to stage a series of protests across the country demanding the release of the military man. Still in the 1990s, Maduro was one of those responsible for founding the V República Movement (MVR), the party that launched Chávez as a presidential candidate in 1999.

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→ Maduro in Venezuelan Politics

In the same year that Hugo Chávez ran for president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro ran for office in the country’s politics. Mature was elected, in 1998, to occupy a position in the Chamber of Deputies and, the following year, he joined the National Constituent Assembly, an institution that emerged to draft a new Constitution for Venezuela.

With the new Constitution, some changes took place in Venezuela’s politics, and the country’s Chamber of Deputies was replaced by the National Assembly. In 2000, he ran for a position in the National Assembly for the MRV and was elected. In 2005, he was re-elected as a deputy, remaining in the National Assembly.

Nicolás Maduro remained a deputy in the National Assembly until 2006, when he was appointed by Hugo Chávez to head the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Maduro remained in that role until 2012. That year, he became vice president of the country, after the then vice president, Elías Jaua, left the post.

He assumed the vice presidency of Venezuela by being the president of the National Assembly. A Hugo Chávez’s death, however, made it possible for Maduro to seek the presidency of the country. Before he died, Chávez had appointed Maduro as his successor, should he not resist cancer treatment.

With the death of Chávez, In 2013, Maduro assumed the interim presidency of Venezuela. A new presidential election was called, and Maduro ran for president against Henrique Caprilles. The result of that election was extremely tight: Maduro won with 50.61% of the votes. His opponent got 49.12% of them.

• United Socialist Party of Venezuela, the party of Nicolas Maduro

The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) is the current party of Nicolás Maduro and was created in 2007 on the initiative of the former president of the country, Hugo Chávez. Maduro’s political career, however, did not start in the PSUV, but in the V República Movement (MVR). The PSUV was an initiative by Hugo Chávez, shortly after the 2006 elections, to create a country that would group all the leftist movements in the nation into a single party. Maduro joined the PSUV in the year of its founding.

A number of parties, such as the MRV, the Unidad Popular Venezuela (UPV) and the Socialist League (LS), decided to merge to form the PSUV, while others, such as the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), did not accept the merger. . In the election to compose the National Assembly in 2015, the PSUV won only 55 seats, a loss of 43 seats compared to the 2010 election. In 2014, Nicolás Maduro was elected president of the party.

→ Maduro in the presidency of Venezuela

It was in the presidency of Venezuela that Nicolás Maduro reached the peak of his political career. His government, however, is the target of numerous controversies due to the chaotic state in which the country has been since then. When Maduro took office, Venezuela was already showing the first signs of an economic crisis. Since his inauguration, the country’s situation has worsened exponentially.

In the view of the community and international analysts, the crisis in Venezuela is a direct result of the bad administration of the country by Hugo Chávez and, mainly, by Nicolás Maduro. The opposition to Maduro in the country still accuses the president of abusing his power, promoting the persecution of opponents.

Allegations of arbitrary arrests, threats, torture and even execution of opponents of the regime were carried out. The Maduro government claims that the country’s economic crisis is the fault of sanctions carried out by the United States, but reports from 2012 already show the lack of basic items in the country, that is, well before when the US imposed first economic sanctions to Venezuela.

In any case, economic sanctions do, in fact, impact the Venezuelan economy. See some of them below:

• blockade of 31 tons of gold that belonged to Venezuela and that were stored in British banks;

• imposition of a license obliging US companies to invest in Venezuela only with that license issued by the US government;

• receipt of US government sanctions by thousands of Venezuelan citizens;

• prohibition of the sale to Venezuela of parts that can be used for war material, such as airplane parts, for example;

• prohibition of economic transactions involving digital currencies by the Venezuelan government;

• sanctions on Russian companies that bought and transported Venezuelan oil.

Maduro’s government has also denied accusations of authoritarianism, but there are concrete indications that his regime opted for the authoritarian way to govern the country. Amnesty International, for example, even claimed that human rights violations in Venezuela were the worst in that country’s history.|1|.

The situation in Venezuela became very tense, and part of the opposition to the Maduro regime chose to join the armed resistance against the government. In addition to the political crisis, the economic crisis has deeply affected the country’s population, which suffers from poverty.

That situation caused millions of people to seek shelter in neighboring countries, such as Colombia. The lack of food, low wages and very high inflation are major problems for the country’s population. For comparison purposes, at the beginning of 2019, the minimum wage in Venezuela corresponded to the equivalent of 77 reais|two|. Current data on the Venezuelan minimum wage are conflicting, but a 2022 survey points out that the minimum wage was 103.12|3|.

Maduro’s authoritarianism is evidenced by actions such as the one carried out in 2016, when he obtained the approval of the Supreme Court for the decision to withdraw the powers of the National Assembly, the institution that represents the Legislature in the country. Furthermore, denunciations of the extermination of opponents and critics of the government are carried out against the Special Forces of the Bolivarian Police|4|.

Opposition to Maduro, given the critical situation in which the country finds itself, is so great that the president was the target of an attempt on his life in 2018. In that attack, Maduro was speaking about the 81 years of the National Guard when a bomb was carried by a drone exploded. He wasn’t hurt.

→ Dispute with Juan Guaidó

In January 2019, a new controversy was established in Venezuela, when Juan Guaidó, president of the National Assembly, declared himself interim president of the country. This was part of an effort by the opposition to Maduro to oust him from the presidency. Guaidó’s action took place as a result of the election held in 2018, when the opposition accused this election of having been rigged.

Maduro, naturally, did not recognize Guaidó’s announcement and acted to sustain his position in the country’s presidency. However, countries such as Brazil, the United States and Spain have recognized Guaidó as president from Venezuela at the time. This brought some political instability to Maduro, but Guaidó’s actions did not have the desired effect.

Over the years, Guaidó’s position has weakened and he lost the support it had. In 2022, for example, the Venezuelan opposition met and decided, through a vote, to end the interim government of Juan Guaidó. Guaidó’s weakening left the Venezuelan opposition momentarily without a leader.

A forecast is that the Venezuelan opposition will choose a candidate for the elections presidential elections of 2024. As a result, it is estimated that in October 2023, primaries will be held between the opposition parties to define the candidate who will face Maduro and try to prevent the current president from being re-elected.

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