# Nicolás Maduro Ruler of [[Venezuela]] from 2013 until **3 January 2026**, when U.S. special forces took him from his Caracas residence and flew him to New York. He is held in federal detention in Brooklyn on narcoterrorism and cocaine-trafficking charges before Judge Alvin Hellerstein, has pleaded not guilty — "I am still president of my country" — and is scheduled for trial on **June 1, 2027**; the court rejected a head-of-state-immunity motion to dismiss in July 2026. The vault's interest is less in the man than in what his removal proved: the regime he led survived him intact ([[Delcy Rodríguez]] succeeded him within two days), which makes Venezuela the strongest available case against decapitation as a theory of regime change. ## Path to power Born 1962 in Caracas, a bus driver on the Caracas metro and a transit-union organizer, Maduro was a founding member of [[Hugo Chávez]]'s movement in the 1990s and one of the few chavista leaders with a genuinely working-class biography, which is what Chávez valued in him. He rose as a loyalist rather than a rival: National Assembly member from 1999, its president 2005–06, foreign minister 2006–13 (the years of Chávez's alliances with Cuba, Iran and Russia), vice president from October 2012. Chávez, dying of cancer, named him successor on television in December 2012. He won the April 2013 special election by 1.5 points over Henrique Capriles, who refused to concede. ## Rule Everything Chávez's model depended on — high oil prices, [[PDVSA]] revenue, a charismatic leader — Maduro lacked. Oil fell in 2014; the economy contracted by roughly three-quarters over the following seven years, with hyperinflation, shortages and the emigration of some seven million people, the largest displacement in the hemisphere's history. His answer was consolidation: after the opposition won the National Assembly in 2015 he had the Supreme Court strip it of powers, then in 2017 convened a parallel Constituent Assembly that governed in its place. The 2018 re-election was boycotted and unrecognized by most of the West; in 2019 the United States and some sixty countries recognized [[Juan Guaidó]] instead, a strategy that collapsed by 2023. The Justice Department indicted him for narcoterrorism in March 2020 — the charge he now faces — with a reward that rose from $15 million to $50 million by August 2025. The [[2024 Venezuelan Presidential Election]] was the turning point: the opposition, barred from running [[María Corina Machado]], ran [[Edmundo González Urrutia]], collected the precinct tallies, and published them showing a two-to-one defeat for Maduro. The electoral council declared him the winner without releasing results. He was inaugurated for a third term in January 2025; González went into exile; Machado went into hiding and won the [[Nobel Peace Prize]]. Through 2025 the United States built up naval forces in the Caribbean and struck boats it said were trafficking drugs — the campaign the [[Venezuela]] page documents — and then took him. ## In American argument Maduro is the contemporary case the American right cites most as the endpoint of left populism — "Venezuela" as a one-word rebuttal to any redistributive program — which [[Venezuela in American Political Rhetoric]] examines. The right's account tends to skip the sanctions regime, the oil-price collapse and the fact that his successor signed the [[Venezuela Oil Government Equity Stake]] with the same administration that jailed him; the left's account tends to skip the 2017 assembly, the 2024 tallies and the seven million who left. He also belongs to the vault's [[Dictators in World History Hub]] as the case where the strongman was removed and nothing else changed — see [[Venezuelan History Hub]] for why. ## See Also - [[Venezuela]] · [[Venezuelan History Hub]] · [[Bolivarianism]] · [[Hugo Chávez]] · [[Delcy Rodríguez]] · [[PDVSA]] - [[2024 Venezuelan Presidential Election]] · [[María Corina Machado]] · [[Edmundo González Urrutia]] · [[Juan Guaidó]] - [[Venezuela Oil Government Equity Stake]] · [[Sanctions Designation Pipeline]] · [[Foreign Terrorist Organization]] · [[Cuba]] · [[Colombia]] - [[Venezuela in American Political Rhetoric]] · [[Dictators in World History Hub]]