Assassination attempts, foreign interference, political opposition, disappointing election results: in the almost thirteen years that Nicolás Maduro was in power in Venezuela, he survived it all. It earned him the name among his small but loyal following Super Bigote, or ‘Supermustache’ op. As if he were a superhero who managed to defuse or at least endure every crisis.
Now the Maduro era has come to an end. This Saturday, the United States carried out attacks in the Venezuelan capital Caracas. A few hours later, President Donald Trump posted via his social media account Truth Social know that President Maduro was arrested and flown out of the country with his wife Cilia.
In recent months, Maduro has faced the biggest challenge since taking office in early 2013. Under the guise of combating drugs, the US has built up a force in the international waters around the South American country. Boats from Venezuela were torpedoed, killing at least 80, because the US said they had drugs on board. Maduro was pressured to resign, including in a direct telephone conversation with Trump. Which the Venezuelan refused.
After more than twelve years of autocracy, economic mismanagement and a long list of human rights violations, Maduro has been overthrown by the country against which he, like his predecessor and mentor Hugo Chávez, has been fanatically agitating for years: the United States.
From bus driver to president
Anti-imperialist training was ingrained in Maduro from an early age. In 1986, at the age of 24, he left for communist Cuba where he received ideological training for a year. It is the only form of study he will pursue after high school. Upon returning to Carácas, the capital of Venezuela, he starts working as a bus driver and trade union leader. He is also committed to the release of Hugo Chávez, who ended up in prison after a failed coup in 1992.
After Chávez’s release, Maduro became increasingly involved in politics, especially when the former putschist was elected president in 1998. Initially as a representative of the people, later as speaker of parliament: by keeping a low profile, working hard and, in particular, trying to please the great leader of Venezuela, Maduro quickly managed to rise in the Chavista ranks.
Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s much more charismatic predecessor, on the campaign trail in 1998.
photo John van Hasselt/Sygma via Getty Images
When he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs and Vice President in 2006, he became an increasingly well-known face of the Netherlands internationally. chavismo, Chávez’s socialist, left-wing populist political reform project.
Chávez died of cancer in 2013. In his last speech he calls on the people to elect Maduro as his successor. He gratefully emphasizes this expression of support in his presidential campaign, including by saying that the late president visited him in the form of a bird. With a minimal difference (officially 50.7 percent of the votes), Maduro, without any ideas or charisma, is elected president.
Dismantling democracy
While his mentor had already started to dismantle democracy in Venezuela, Maduro is fanatically continuing that authoritarian trend. He has been president for less than a year when he faces his first major challenge. Partly due to falling oil prices, the economy is in free fall. Venezuelans are taking to the streets en masse to demand Maduro’s resignation.
That first test provides a preview of how he will spend his time at the helm of the country. Dozens of people are killed as security forces crack down on protests. For a moment, the people, whose will has always been law according to Maduro and his followers, have been silenced.
The first wave of protests against Maduro, in 2014, was immediately put down with brutal violence.
Photo Corbis via Getty Images
The economic malaise is now growing to unimaginable proportions. Between 2012 and 2020, the Venezuelan economy contracted by 71 percent. Inflation rises to 130,000 percent. Declining oil revenues and heavy US sanctions are causing empty supermarket shelves, medicine shortages and a huge exodus of Venezuelans. Nearly 8 million people are leaving, out of an original population of 40 million, while Maduro mainly blames the Americans and their “imperialist sabotage” for the problems at home.
At least 80 percent of Venezuelans now live in poverty. More than half of them have no money for basic necessities and therefore live in extreme poverty. Media has been completely taken over by the regime. Colectivos, militias employed by the government suppress any form of protest. And election results are determined unilaterally in favor of the regime.
Guaidó’s coup
Already during Trump’s first term (2017-21) as president, the US used blatant ballot fraud to get rid of Maduro. Washington embraces Juan Guaidó, then speaker of parliament, as the perfect person to replace Maduro as president. Guaidó and the rest of the opposition boycotted the 2018 presidential elections in protest against all political repression. Because of that boycott, dozens of Western countries, led by the US, do not recognize Maduro’s ‘re-election’.
Guaidó declares himself ‘interim president’ of Venezuela with Western support. There will be a broad international lobby for Guaidó, led by the influential Cuban-American Senator Marco Rubio, now Trump’s Secretary of State and interim National Security Advisor.
Juan Guaidó declared himself interim president after another fraudulent election and tried in vain to provoke a military coup against the Maduro regime with Western support.
Photo Miguel Gutiérrez/ANP / EPA
Guaidó has been inviting the Venezuelan army to support him for months, including by handing out flyers at barracks. On the eve of the 2019 May Day celebrations, this culminates in a failed coup: the army leadership nips it in the bud and most officers remain loyal to Maduro. The hoped-for mass protests by the population have not materialized. Guaidó’s entire campaign ultimately leaves Maduro reeling slightly for just a few hours.
It is the prelude to a further escalation of domestic repression in Venezuela. The number of political prisoners, imprisoned and tortured in prisons, is increasing. The last opposition members flee the country. A shadowy operation in 2020, in which American ex-soldiers, among others, tried in vain to invade the country, actually helped Maduro. He can now peddle the storyline that the US wants to violently overthrow him and is the eternal enemy of the Venezuelan people.
Guaidó is denied return to Venezuela in 2023 when he travels to Colombia for a conference, and he flees to the US.
Stronger from every crisis
Every time, Maduro emerges stronger from crises. Even in 2024, when Edmundo González, according to international observers, beats him by almost 40 percent in the presidential elections, the Venezuelan leader will remain in the saddle. His regime comes up with a completely different result and flatly denies the loss. After those elections, Venezuelans know one thing for sure: Maduro can no longer be dethroned at the ballot box.
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Maduro may have destroyed his country economically and socially, but during his three terms he set up a very effective police state. He protects the army by, among other things, transferring gold mines and oil companies to generals and other high-ranking officers. He also allows drug trafficking by these generals, as long as they remain loyal. However, there is no evidence that he himself heads a clearly structured drug cartel or terrorist group, as the US claims.
Politics is also completely militarized. Ministries and state-owned enterprises are headed by generals. And although Chavista propaganda still dominates rallies and party meetings, ideology is anything but leading under Maduro. His rule is now only about privileges for loyalists, a purely transactional way of governing. Anyone who resists is imprisoned or driven out of the country. Only citizens who support the state and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) can count on benefits, government jobs and, very importantly, food parcels.
Over the years, all poverty, unemployment, hunger and scarcity become precisely the strength of the same regime under which this malaise originated. By pledging loyalty to the PSUV, citizens gain access to food. Time, energy and courage to take to the streets are wasting away.
Especially after the last, heavily manipulated presidential elections of 2024, hardly anyone in Venezuela dares to hope for improvement. While an imposing American force is being built up outside Venezuelan waters, Venezuelans are getting on with their lives – or, most importantly, surviving. While Chávez relied on revolutionary speeches, mass rallies and a promise of reform, Maduro uses that ideology to disguise his repression and crush any opposition. He remains in power due to popular exhaustion.
Trump’s pressure
However, the pressure on Maduro from his great American enemy will be of a different caliber from the end of summer 2025, when the first drug boats are blown up. And then the clandestine oil exports by tankers of the Russian shadow fleet are also being tackled by the US. The regime’s financial lifeline is in danger of being cut off. Trump looks like Rubio carte blanche to increase the pressure on Maduro so much that exile remains the least worst option for him – but he does not choose that. In the meantime, the US continues to push for his departure and replacement by at least a milder Chavista and preferably by a leader of the right-wing opposition, such as Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado in Caracas early last year. She is now abroad.
Photo Ariana Cubillos/ASSOCIATED PRESS
In November writes The New York Times that panic strikes Maduro and his inner circle. He sleeps in a different place almost every night and constantly changes mobile phones. For fear of being ratted out or kidnapped, he replaces his Venezuelan bodyguards with Cubans.
In public, Maduro continues to play the carefree leader, although he is significantly scaling back his public appearances. He insists on the importance of peace, sings ‘Imagine‘ by John Lennon, dances along to electronic music. At the same time, he continuously warns against US intervention. The Venezuelan people will come together and fight for the homeland, he argues.
Whether the troubled Venezuelans will now have a less authoritarian leader or whether the population should prepare for more repression and dictatorship remains to be seen.
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