A month after the elections for the Constituent Assembly, the body he created to render the National Assembly useless, the Venezuelan president received American journalist Jon Lee Anderson in his presidential office. On “the polished wooden desk” on the other side of the room was the chair from which Hugo Chávez had given his “last speech to the country” on December 8, 2012. As Jon Lee recalls, Maduro had left it “exactly as it was, to preserve the historical moment.” Perhaps therein lies at the same time the greatest of blessings and the greatest of curses for him. How to sustain Chavismo without Hugo Chávez. It’s not so much the chairs, but who sits on them.
Born in a working-class neighborhood of the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, in 1962, Nicolás Maduro soon became active in leftist movements. The son of a trade unionist, he joined the student union and, when he left school, he joined the Socialist League. At the age of 23, the Union of Young Communists of Cuba invited him to the Julio Antonio Mella school, in Havana, to study a political training program. Upon his return to Venezuela, he became a bus driver and became leader of the drivers’ union. It was at that time that it began to increase his sympathy and ideological veneration for Hugo Chávezthen a military leader of the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement 200, which the latter founded in 1982 with that name in tribute to the 200 years since the birth of Simón Bolívar.
The relationship between Maduro and Chávez began shortly after the latter’s coup attempt in 1992. When Chávez was imprisoned, Nicolás Maduro dedicated all his efforts to achieving his release. In addition to visiting him in prison, from when He became one of his most loyal advisorsMaduro then met what is now his wife, Cilia Flores, then Chávez’s lawyer. For Maduro, Chávez was always “the country’s greatest leader” since Bolívar. On more than one occasion, The Venezuelan president referred to Chávez as his “father”.
Coming to power with Chávez
With Chávez as a mentor, now pardoned and out of prison, Maduro helped the historic socialist leader in the organization and founding of the Fifth Republic Movement, or MVR, the political party with which the former would become President of Venezuela in 1998. From that moment, and always under the wake and protection of Chávez, Maduro’s political career was in crescendo, first in the MVR and later under the umbrella of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV); from deputy in the Venezuelan National Assembly, which he presided over, to vice president of the Government after passing through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Until Hugo Chávez died.
The death of Chávez was for Maduro, and for Chavismo in general, a blow that was difficult to digest. With Hugo Chávez, part of the potential of the movement that he had founded and with which he had presided over Venezuela without interruption since 1998 also left.with just a three-day hiatus after a military coup backed by the United States. During his last speech and four months before he died, Chávez announced Maduro as his replacement from that chair that no one dared to move.
With a replica of the Constitution, and somewhat crestfallen, Chávez said: “Listen to me carefully, to continue at the head of the Presidency of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, either to finish the few days that remain and, above all, to assume the new period for which I was elected by the vast majority of you, if something were to happen that would disqualify me in some way, Nicolás Maduro not only in that situation must conclude the period as the Constitution mandates, but my firm opinion, full as the full moon, irrevocable, absolute, total, is that in that scenario that would force the calling of presidential elections, you elect Nicolás Maduro as president. I ask you from my heart“To his left, Maduro attended with a devastated face.
Maduro, president
Those presidential elections took place a few months after Chávez’s death, in 2013. And even then it was known that something else had gone with Chávez. If he had defeated the opponent Henrique Capriles with an advantage of eleven points in 2012, Maduro won the elections with a difference of just 1% of the votes.
Maduro has not only had to fight to keep the spirit of the Bolivarian revolution alive, but, above all, to rescue a collapsing Venezuelan economy due to two key factors: the oil price crisis and the continued sanctions imposed by the United States. The economic crisis, which led to extreme hyperinflation, destroyed many of the social programs, such as food subsidies, that Hugo Chávez had developed to eliminate poverty. The social assistance programs that Chavismo implemented during the years of oil boom were relegated almost to oblivion and, with them, also the support of the lower classes, which added to growing figures of hunger and poverty. In recent years, millions of Venezuelans left the country.
As if that were not enough to address an economy in crisis, Maduro has had to deal with a increasing international pressure and constant threats of military intervention by the United Statesas has been demonstrated this Saturday and as a good percentage of its political opposition has been asking for for years. The response of the Venezuelan Government involved repression, as reported by different human rights organizations. The situation also got much worse when Maduro, after losing the National Assembly, decided to create a separate legislature related to his mandate, despite the results. Even many of his Latin American allies distanced themselves.
From the Latin American left, presidents and former presidents such as Gabriel Boric, Lula da Silva, Gustavo Petro or even Pepe Mujica denounced the self-proclamation of Nicolás Maduro as president after the last elections. Neither the UN nor the Carter Foundation guaranteed the integrity of the elections. For the first time, many countries that until then had recognized the cleanliness of the Venezuelan elections, questioned the result announced by the Venezuelan Governmentwho was asked to show proof of his victory, something he never did and which only fueled suspicions of electoral rigging, in addition to breaking a historic alliance on the Latin American left, from which it was requested to reach agreements with the opposition.
None of these leaders, however, defend or have ever defended . The Brazilian president, for example, did not recognize Maduro’s victory, but neither did that of the opposition. This Friday, after learning of the US military attacks, he condemned the bombings and the capture of Maduro. “These acts represent a serious affront to the sovereignty of Venezuela and create a extremely dangerous precedent for the entire international community“, said.
This Saturday, Donald Trump has fulfilled the threats that Hugo Chávez already predicted a few years ago. “There is recent history,” Chávez responded to a journalist who asked him why he considered the United States a threat. “The most important reason is that we have oil for more than 100 years and the United States is running out of oil. “The most important reason why they want to put in place a subordinate government is Venezuelan oil.”
