For more than ten years, Venezuela’s 63-year-old Nicolas Maduro held onto his position of power.
On Saturday, January 3, his and his wife, First Lady Cilia Flores, were abducted by American forces, who abruptly took them out of the country.
On drug- and weapons-related charges, the two are allegedly being tried in a US court.
Maduro, who is he? How did he become Venezuela’s leader? And how did the US end up abducting him? What we are aware of is this.
Early life of Maduro
On November 23, 1962, Maduro was born in the Caracas El Valle neighborhood.
His parents, Teresa de Jesus Moros and Nicolas Maduro Garcia, both had three daughters: Maria Teresa, Josefina, and Anita Maduro, are trade union leaders.
Maduro’s political father had a significant influence on his early life.
When Maduro first arrived in Venezuela, he claimed that his grandparents were of Sephardic Jewish descent and that they later embraced Catholicism.
Maduro was a fan of Western rock music as a child and frequently cited John Lennon.
There are no records that indicate that he graduated from El Valle’s public high school, the Liceo Jose Avalos, where he reportedly served as the president of the student union.
Become a powerful force
Organized labor gave way to Maduro’s political rise.
In the early 1980s, he is alleged to have enrolled in the Marxist-Leninist party, the Socialist League of Venezuela.
Maduro was a member of the Socialist League’s (UJC) team that traveled to Cuba for a year of political training at the Escuela Nacional de Cuadros Julio Antonio Mella, which was founded at the age of 24 in 1986.
After returning, he began driving buses for the city of Caracas before starting the SITRAMECA, or Sindicato de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras del Metro de Caracas, in 1991.
In the late 1980s and the early 1990s, Maduro started one of the company’s first informal labor syndicates, gradually gaining foothold in the power centers through union politics. He also founded one of the company’s first informal labor syndicates.
Maduro was on the national committee of the Socialist League, according to a 2006 cable from the US Embassy in Caracas that WikiLeaks obtained. He “reportedly turned down a baseball contract from a U.S. Major League Baseball scout.”
Hugo Chavez, a Venezuelan lieutenant colonel who led the armed Bolivarian movement rebelling against the two-party democracy system and the current president, Carlos Andres Perez, cited corruption, moved him.
After being imprisoned for the failed coup in 1992, Maduro joined MBR-200, the movement’s civilian wing, and continued to fight for Chavez’s release.
Cilia Flores, Maduro’s future wife, was Maduro’s attorney who won Chavez’s freedom in 1994.
Maduro joined the socialist political party Movement of the Fifth Republic in 1997 to run for president in the 1998 elections following Chavez’s pardon and release. Despite having won the presidency, Maduro was elected to the National Constituent Assembly.
After serving for six years as the minister of foreign affairs, Maduro was close to Chavez when the new constitution was being drafted in 1999. Maduro became Venezuela’s vice president in October 2012 as a result of Chavez’s rapidly deteriorating health.
Power consolidation in Caracas
In a televised address in December 2012, Chavez, the outgoing leader, named Maduro, the then vice president, as his political replacement as he fell ill and was taking a trip to Cuba to treat cancer.
In the elections following Chavez’s passing, Maduro won by a slim margin in April 2013.
He called US diplomats “historical enemies” and charged them with poisoning Chavez as they entered his presidency. He referred to the domestic opposition as “fascists” trying to “divide the nation.”
The first lady then rose to the position of attorney general and chamber chief, respectively.
Maduro seized complete control of key institutions, including the Supreme Court, the military, and the state media, which Chavez had already transformed.
The former union leader, however, struggled with a collapsed economy and opposition, including Maria Corina Machado, who later won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, which sparked protests all over the nation. He did not have his mentor’s charisma. At least 43 protestors were killed when Maduro attacked them.
In 2017 to neutralize the legislature, which is now under the control of the opposition, Maduro established a pro-government constituent assembly in response to mounting opposition pressure and declining popularity. More than 100 people were killed by Venezuelan forces in a subsequent round of protests and a further crackdown.
Venezuela’s nearly 30 million people were experiencing shortages of essentials, and oil production was sagging behind, all the while the economy suffered.
Maduro was unopposed in the following 2018 election, but 45 nations, including the US, did not recognize him, and he imprisoned some opposition leaders and forced others to flee.
The election council failed to provide the tally sheets, so Maduro was once again chosen as the winner in the 2024 presidential election, which was widely accepted to be opaque. Following that, more extensive demonstrations were staged and severely repressed.
Why did Trump decide to oust Maduro from power?
Trump raised the stakes against the Venezuelan leader after winning a second term in January of last year.
Caracas was subject to a 25% tariff, Maduro received a double bounty, and members of his family were subject to sanctions.
US forces have launched strikes on vessels off Venezuelan coast since September, which the White House claims were involved in “narco-terrorism.”
Maduro and his wife were taken to the US on Saturday to stand trial for charges brought against them there.
