Who is Nicolás Maduro? From Chávez’s heir to Venezuela’s undoing

You could level many accusations against Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, the ex-union leader and bus driver, whose corruption and incompetence have helped steer the economy of his oil-rich Latin American nation off a cliff. But responsibility for America’s lethal drug habit is not one of them. That didn’t stop Donald Trump trying, however.

After having him captured, along with his wife, first lady Cilia Flores, at his lair in Caracas, the Trump administration now intends to prosecute him for drug offences. We’ve already seen the Pentagon bombing small Venezuelan boats it claims were carrying drug smugglers.

Quite apart from the dubious legality and ethics of the campaign, it won’t make a bit of difference to America’s disastrous and unending war on drugs. The proportion of narcotics entering the US via Venezuela is relatively tiny and almost certainly doesn’t include much fentanyl. The Trump administration knows all this. The drug war claim looks, and always has looked, like a pretext for regime change in Venezuela.

And now, acting on its threats, Washington has deposed Maduro – a move that will see few tears shed in Venezuela, even if it leaves a thousand unanswered questions over the future of the beleaguered South American nation.

Under Maduro, Venezuela’s murder rates are among the world’s highest. Widespread shortages of food and medicine have seen people dying of preventable illnesses and rooting through rubbish piles to feed themselves. The collapse has sent millions of refugees fleeing across Latin and North America.

Yet the rot in Venezuela didn’t start with Maduro, who was born on 23 November 1962 to a working-class family. His bungling and corruption have certainly made things immeasurably worse – but the damage was already well under way.

It began 25 years ago with Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s larger-than-life mentor and a darling of the international left. The impoverished masses, disgusted by the money-grabbing elite lording it over them, were drawn to Chávez’s vision of a socialist utopia – or at least the promise of free healthcare and enough food to eat.

But Chávez spent far more money than he ever had on welfare programmes and imposed fixed prices on almost everything. His regime’s obsession with nationalisation led to pointless land-grabs, confiscating farmlands only to abandon them. Chávez, like any good Marxist, cut ties with the US and jumped into the pockets of China and Russia, both of which loaned Venezuela vast sums of money and made the country hostage to fortune – particularly the price of oil.

Chávez’s authoritarian instincts were already clear by 2009, when he closed 32 privately owned radio stations and proposed a law to punish so-called “media crimes”. When he died in 2013, his final “gift” to the Venezuelan people was picking the hapless Maduro to succeed him. Maduro ensured the train continued at full speed into the buffers.

With none of Chávez’s charisma and little of his guile, Maduro became a populist with little or no popular support. Under his leadership, the economic collapse accelerated. The scandals of rigged elections and human rights abuses multiplied. His cronies and family members prospered while the masses grew poorer and poorer. Maduro’s family members, as a leading part of the so-called “Bolibourgeoisie” that sprang up under decades of Venezuela’s corrupted socialism, enjoyed lavish lifestyles.

Business leaders, alongside members of the military and the judiciary, were allowed to engage in highly profitable graft in return for supporting the regime. Maduro’s government faced strict US sanctions in 2020, and he was indicted on corruption charges, which he denied.

Emboldened by the West’s renewed need for Venezuelan oil after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Maduro embarked on a third term in January 2025 following an election widely denounced as fraudulent.

As the economy entered free-fall, fear of state-organised repression began to exceed that of ordinary crime. Venezuelans spoke darkly of “la situación” – shorthand for a country where ever more grotesque categories of crime emerged. These included run-of-the-mill “express kidnappings”, in which ransoms were paid by speedy bank transfers and victims released within hours. But as jails, hospitals and torture chambers filled with political prisoners, people whispered about something worse: la represión.

In 2025, after fleeing the country, opposition leader María Corina Machado received the Nobel Peace Prize for highlighting Maduro’s crimes.

Not every attempt to oust Maduro was noble – or competent. Some were as shambolic as Maduro’s own governance, most notably in May 2020, when American mercenaries and armed Venezuelan rebels launched an inept coup d’état.

Now, rather than merely contending with a second Trump presidency, Maduro has had the misfortune to face a Latino US secretary of state in Marco Rubio – a man with a deep personal grudge against leftist regimes in Latin America. Rubio also has something to prove, given his embarrassing failure to persuade Trump to stand up for freedom and democracy in response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Encouraging Trump to strike Venezuela offered Rubio a chance, he hopes, to remain relevant. It helped that he had an enormous carrot to dangle: Venezuela’s immense oil reserves. Trump sees oil wells and dollar signs; Rubio imagines political redemption by whacking a leftist Latin American dictator.

Long-suffering Venezuelans, however, may still be no nearer to the peace and stability they crave. It is possible that high-ranking officials and military figures had already sold out Maduro, which would explain the ease with which he was captured.

But history tells us that American attempts at regime change rarely end well. And if the venal figures of the Venezuelan state retain power – no matter how politically malleable they appear under American duress – then the pain for the country’s beleaguered population is almost certainly not over.