Nicolás Maduro

Nicolás Maduro Moros (born 23 November 1962) is a Venezuelan politician and former union leader who has been serving as the president of Venezuela since 2013. A member of the United Socialist Party (PSUV), he previously served as the 24th vice president under President Hugo Chávez from 2012 to 2013 and was also the minister of foreign affairs from 2006 to 2012.

Beginning his working life as a bus driver, Maduro rose to become a trade union leader before being elected to the National Assembly in 2000. He was appointed to a number of positions under President Hugo Chávez, serving as President of the National Assembly from 2005 to 2006, as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2006 to 2012 and as the vice president from 2012 to 2013 under Chávez. After Chávez's death was announced on 5 March 2013, Maduro assumed the presidency. A special presidential election was held on 14 April 2013, where Maduro was declared the winner with 50.62% of the vote as the United Socialist Party of Venezuela candidate. He has ruled Venezuela by decree since 2015 through powers granted to him by the ruling party legislature.

Shortages in Venezuela and decreased living standards led to a wave of protests in 2014 that escalated into daily marches nationwide, repression of dissent and a decline in Maduro's popularity. An opposition-led National Assembly was elected in 2015 and a movement toward recalling Maduro began in 2016, which was ultimately cancelled by Maduro's government; Maduro maintained power through the Supreme Tribunal, the National Electoral Council (CNE) and the military. The Supreme Tribunal removed power from the elected National Assembly, resulting in a constitutional crisis and another wave of protests in 2017. As a response to the protests, Maduro called for a rewrite of the constitution, and the Constituent Assembly of Venezuela was elected in 2017 under voting conditions that many concluded were irregular. On 20 May 2018, presidential elections were held; President Maduro was sworn in on 10 January 2019 with widespread condemnation, and the president of the National Assembly, Juan Guaidó, was declared interim president on 23 January 2019 by the opposition legislative body—kicking off a presidential crisis that spanned nearly four years and divided the international community. In 2024, he ran for a third term in an election which the Maduro-aligned National Electoral Council claimed he won—without providing evidence—casting Venezuela into a political crisis. The opposition gathered vote tallies that showed their candidate, Edmundo González, had won the most votes. Maduro was sworn in for his third term on 10 January 2025.

Maduro is widely considered a dictator, leading an authoritarian government characterized by electoral fraud, serious human rights abuses, rampant corruption, and severe economic hardship. Between 2013 and 2023, Venezuela dropped 42 places in the Press Freedom Index. According to estimations by the United Nations (UN) and Human Rights Watch, under Maduro's administration, more than 20,000 people have been subject to extrajudicial killings and seven million Venezuelans have been forced to flee the country. The UN Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela concluded that the country's justice system independence has been deeply eroded; the mission also identified frequent due process violations, including political external interference and the admission of evidence through torture. Most Venezuelan television channels are controlled by the state, and information unfavourable to the government is not covered completely. In 2018, a Board of Independent Experts designated by the Organization of American States (OAS) alleged that crimes against humanity have been committed in Venezuela during Maduro's presidency. In 2021, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced the opening of an investigation regarding the situation in the country.

Nicolás Maduro Moros was born on 23 November 1962 in Caracas, Venezuela, into a working-class family. His father, Nicolás Maduro García, who was a prominent trade union leader, died in a motor vehicle accident on 22 April 1989. His mother, Teresa de Jesús Moros, was born in Cúcuta, a Colombian border town at the boundary with Venezuela. He was born into a leftist family and "militant dreamer of the Movimiento Electoral del Pueblo (MEP)". Maduro was raised in Calle 14, a street in Los Jardines, El Valle, a working-class neighborhood on the western outskirts of Caracas. The only male of four siblings, he had three sisters, María Teresa, Josefina, and Anita.

Maduro was raised as a Roman Catholic. In 2012, it was reported by the New York Times that he was a follower of Indian Hindu guru Sathya Sai Baba and previously visited the guru in India in 2005. He stated in a 2013 interview that "my grandparents were Jewish, from a Sephardic Moorish background, and converted to Catholicism in Venezuela".

Maduro has been married twice. His first marriage was to Adriana Guerra Angulo, with whom he had his only son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, also known as "Nicolasito", who was appointed to several senior government posts, Chief of the Presidency's Special Inspectors Body, head of the National Film School, and a seat in the National Assembly.

In July 2013, he married Cilia Flores, a lawyer and politician who replaced Maduro as president of the National Assembly in August 2006, when he resigned to become Minister of Foreign Affairs, becoming the first woman to serve as president of the National Assembly. The two had been in a romantic relationship since the 1990s when Flores was Hugo Chávez's lawyer following the 1992 Venezuelan coup d'état attempts and were married months after Maduro became president. While they have no children together, Maduro has three step-children from his wife's first marriage to Walter Ramón Gavidia; Walter Jacob, Yoswel, and Yosser.