The end of Maduro, from bus driver to three-time president
The successor to Hugo Cavez, Maduro was the longest-serving Venezuelan chief executive in the country's political history
Key points
From bus driver to three presidential mandates: Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela's overlord father, at the head of a cruel repression, and captured by the Pentagon together with his wife Cilia Flores during an air raid on Caracas, was the longest-serving Venezuelan chief executive in the country's political history. Known also for his role as deputy, foreign minister and vice-president during the governments of Hugo Chávez - who nominated him as his successor in 2012 - the leader plunged the South American state into a record economic crisis, with GDP having collapsed by 80% in ten years, inflation at over 500% and an unprecedented wave of migration.
The Head of State began his political career as a child, encouraged by his father, Nicolás Maduro Garcia, an economist and founder of socialist parties. Born in the neighbourhood of Los Chaguaramos in Caracas in 1962 into a Colombian family and an avid fan of the Caracas Leones baseball team, Maduro was already participating in rallies and election campaigns at the age of five. While his mother, seeing him wearing altar boy's clothes, would have wanted him to be a priest.
At the José Avalos High School, the leader approached Liberation Theology, a progressive current of the Catholic Church, and in 1980 at the age of 18 he joined the Marxist-Leninist Socialist League. Among the founders of the movement was Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, father of the current Vice-President Delcy and head of the National Assembly Jorge Rodríguez. With this group, the president obtained a scholarship and trained in Cuba.
Campaign for Chavez
Although his career as a trade unionist and bus driver did not portend his rise, it was the campaign to free Hugo Chavez, after the failed coup in 1992, that marked the turning point for Maduro. It was in this context that the Bolivarian met the lawyer Cilia Flores, who became his partner and political ally, with a union later sealed by marriage in 2013, when he ascended to the leadership of the country and Celia won the title of 'first fighter'.
The repression of student movements
But Maduro's government, which during the last electoral campaign in 2023 boasted the nickname 'gallo pinto', has been marked from the beginning by moments of great violence, with the bloody repression of student movements.
