Nicolas Maduro

Nicolas Maduro Moros, born November 23, 1962, in Caracas to a working-class family whose father was a prominent trade union leader, began his working life as a bus driver for the Caracas Metro, where he founded an unofficial trade union, before joining Hugo Chavez's political movement in the early 1990s. He was elected to the National Assembly in 2000, serving as its president from 2005 to 2006, then served as Minister of Foreign Affairs under Chavez from 2006 to 2012 before being appointed Vice President of Venezuela in October 2012. Following Chavez's death on March 5, 2013, Maduro assumed presidential powers and won a special election that April by a narrow 1.5 percent margin over opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, who contested the result; he was inaugurated as Venezuela's president on April 19, 2013, and was reelected in a disputed 2018 vote that led opposition leader Juan Guaido to declare himself interim president in 2019. Evidence indicated he lost the 2024 election by a wide margin, though he claimed victory and remained in office; on January 3, 2026, United States forces captured him during a military intervention, and he was returned to the United States to face drug trafficking charges, to which he pleaded not guilty, remaining in American custody.