The presidency of Nicolás Maduro

The death of Chávez elevated Vice Pres. Nicolás Maduro to the presidency. A special election to choose a president to serve out the remainder of Chávez’s six-year term was held on April 14 between Maduro, who Chávez had indicated was his preferred successor, and Capriles. Maduro won a very narrow victory, and Capriles demanded a full recount, alleging that there had been widespread voting irregularities. The National Election Council ordered an audit of the ballots in the 46 percent of precincts that had not already been automatically audited under Venezuelan election law, but Capriles refused to participate when the Council chose not to examine the signatures and fingerprints of voters on the registers as part of the audit. He vowed to challenge the results in court. In the meantime, Maduro was sworn in as president on April 19.

As the year progressed, growth of the Venezuelan economy slowed to a crawl, inflation climbed above 50 percent, and staples such as toilet paper, milk, and flour became increasingly difficult to obtain. Discontent with the Maduro government’s handling of the economy and with the growing crime rate led to street protests by students in San Cristóbal in western Venezuela in early February 2014 that soon spread to other cities, including Caracas, over the coming weeks. By February 12, security forces and armed pro-government civilian groups had begun responding violently to the escalating protests, which by the last week of the month had resulted in about a dozen deaths.

Largely in response to declining world oil prices, Venezuela’s economy continued to struggle in 2015, with GDP tumbling and inflation further ballooning. Seemingly anxious to shift attention away from the country’s domestic woes, Maduro’s government was quick to focus on border-related disputes with neighbours Guyana and Colombia. A long-standing dispute with Guyana over a large portion of that country (everything west of the Essequibo River) that had been claimed by Venezuela since the 19th century began to intensify in May 2015. The impetus for the escalating war of words was the discovery of oil offshore of the contested region.

The shooting of three Venezuelan military officers near the Colombian border in August and accusations of smuggling led Venezuela to close the border and deport some 1,400–1,500 Colombians living in Venezuela. Perhaps as many as another 20,000 Colombians fled Venezuela, fearing reprisals and deportation. Venezuela and Colombia both withdrew their ambassadors. In September the ambassadors returned, after Maduro and Colombian Pres. Juan Manuel Santos—meeting in Quito, Ecuador, with Uruguayan Pres. Tabaré Vázquez and Ecuadorian Pres. Rafael Correa—agreed to progressively normalize relations between their countries.

Seemingly disenchanted with the shortage of goods, galloping inflation, and lack of better short-term prospects for the economy as a whole, Venezuelans went to the polls in large numbers on December 6, 2015, and handed the ruling PSUV a devastating loss, ending 16 years of rule by the chavismo movement. The election had been widely viewed as a referendum on Maduro’s presidency. Having secured a majority in the 167-seat legislature, the centrist-conservative opposition was in a position to enact legislation that would grant amnesty to opponents of the Maduro regime who had been jailed. However, the opposition indicated that it would not roll back popular social reforms instituted by the PSUV.

At the end of March 2016, the opposition made good on its promise to enact legislation in the National Assembly to free imprisoned opponents of the Maduro regime, whom it characterized as political prisoners. Pledging to veto the legislation, Maduro called those who would be freed “terrorists and criminals.” He also had the option of referring the legislation to the Supreme Court.

Social unrest, looting, and violence were on the rise, and in April the government was forced to reduce its workweek to two days in order to save energy (partly because of shortages of hydroelectric power brought about by El Niño-derived drought). Meanwhile, the opposition pushed forward with an effort to put Maduro to a recall vote. By early May some 1.8 million signatures (nine times the amount required) had been collected on a petition to trigger a broader petition (that would require the signatures of 20 percent of eligible voters) on whether to hold a recall vote. The election commission, however, widely regarded as sympathetic to Maduro, was slow to begin and carry out the validation process, prompting angry, sometimes violent demonstrations. On May 14 Maduro—claiming that right-wing elements within Venezuela were plotting with foreign interests to destabilize the country—declared a renewable 60-day state of emergency that granted the police and army additional powers to maintain public order. The opposition-led National Assembly responded quickly by rejecting the president’s declaration, but Maduro made it clear that he would not abide by the legislature’s vote.

Despite the rapprochement between Maduro and Colombian President Santos in September 2015, the Venezuela-Colombia border had remained effectively closed for most individuals. When the border was temporarily reopened over a weekend in mid-July 2016, an estimated 100,000 Venezuelans crossed into Colombia to purchase the food, medicine, and other staples that were in such short supply in Venezuela. In August 2016 Maduro and Santos met again and agreed to reopen the border. That month UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon responded to the shortages of food, water, and health care in Venezuela, as well as to what he identified as the resulting political instability, by saying that the country was experiencing a “humanitarian crisis,” an observation that Venezuela’s UN delegate, Rafael Ramírez, was quick to dismiss as both “wrong” and “strange.” Nevertheless, in 2016 Venezuela was experiencing triple-digit inflation.

Also in August 2016, the National Election Council ruled that the opposition had collected almost twice as many signatures as were necessary for the first petition for a referendum on Maduro’s recall to be valid. However, it did not set a date for the next step in the process, which required some four million signatures to be collected in three days. Frustrated by that delay, the opposition again took to the streets, most notably on September 1, when Venezuelans from all over the country went to the capital for a massive demonstration called the “Takeover of Caracas.”

Before long, dates were set in October for the three-day window during which the signatures of 20 percent of eligible voters in each of the country’s states would have to be collected to bring about a recall referendum. Virtually on the eve of the signature drive, however, several lower courts declared that fraud had compromised the first-round petition effort. Responding quickly to these rulings, the election commission indefinitely suspended the second round of signature collection. Earlier in October, the electoral commission had already enraged the opposition by postponing several gubernatorial elections in which the opposition had seemed likely to do well. All of these developments sparked ever-heightening criticism of Maduro, who was accused of having moved from authoritarian to dictatorial rule. Before the end of October, however, Francis I, the first pope from Latin America, succeeded in persuading Maduro and the opposition to begin crisis talks.

Those talks initially bore fruit, with the cessation of street protests and the Maduro government’s release of a handful of jailed activists. By December, however, the talks had broken down, as Maduro dragged his feet on releasing dozens of other political prisoners and refused to allow the delivery of foreign humanitarian aid, which would have signaled official acknowledgement that the country was in crisis. Although the central bank had stopped releasing statistics, it was leaked that the bank had measured an 18.6 percent drop in Venezuela’s GDP for 2016, along with an inflation rate of 800 percent. After beginning the century with one of South America’s most-thriving economies, Venezuela saw its economy devolve into one of the continent’s worst-performing, with shortages of food and medicine growing increasingly acute.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court, dominated by Maduro partisans, further marginalized the National Assembly by repeatedly invalidating laws enacted by it. Indeed, when Maduro delivered his annual address on the state of the country in January 2017, it was in the presence of the Supreme Court rather than before the legislature as dictated by tradition and the constitution. Maduro’s authoritarian power grab intensified at the end of March when the Supreme Court effectively dissolved the legislature and assumed its functions after declaring that the body was in contempt. The charge was grounded in accusations of election fraud against a trio of legislators who no longer served in the National Assembly but who the court charged had not been adequately prosecuted by legislative leaders. International condemnation of the action was swift and widespread, and, before a week had passed, Maduro compelled the court to revoke its declaration.

Massive street protests, which erupted in response to the court’s attempt to dissolve the National Assembly and continued in April when Capriles was banned from running for public office for 15 years, became almost daily occurrences over the coming weeks. As the opposition’s defiance escalated, violent clashes between protesters and security forces resulted in more than 60 deaths and injured more than 1,200 people by early June. Maduro’s response included a call for convocation of a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution, an action many of his opponents viewed as yet another authoritarian power grab.

On June 27 matters appeared to escalate yet again when militants in an apparently stolen police helicopter attacked the Supreme Court in Caracas, dropping several grenades and strafing the building with gunfire. Prior to the attack, a video had been posted online in which a policeman surrounded by masked uniformed gunmen claimed responsibility for the upcoming attack, saying that they represented a coalition of military, police, and civilian personnel who opposed what he characterized as “this transitional, criminal government.” Maduro labeled the incident an “armed terrorist attack” and part of an attempted coup. That the attackers seemed to have easily escaped apprehension raised suspicions among some in the opposition that the incident had been staged by the government to justify additional repressive measures.

The opposition made a grand attempt to delegitimize Maduro’s rule on July 16 by holding an unofficial plebiscite (branded in the language of the constitution as a “popular consultation”) that addressed three matters: whether voters rejected Maduro’s proposed constituent assembly; whether they desired the armed forces to uphold the constitution; and whether they wanted elections to be held before the official end of Maduro’s term in 2018. According to the university administrators who oversaw the tallying of the voting, some 7.2 million Venezuelans participated in the plebiscite (including nearly 700,000 Venezuelans living abroad). Of those who voted, some 98 percent indicated that they rejected the constituent assembly, wanted the military to defend the constitution, and desired early elections.

The opposition boycotted the July 30 election for Maduro’s constituent assembly, and thousands took to the streets as violent protests rocked the country. At least 10 people were killed, and an opposition politician was shot dead in his home just hours before polls opened. Maduro characterized the result, which placed his allies in a position to dramatically strengthen his power, as a “vote for the revolution.” The opposition claimed that nearly 90 percent of voters had abstained, however, and the absence of anti-fraud measures and independent observers led many in Venezuela and abroad to dismiss the legitimacy of the election. The United States responded by freezing Maduro’s assets and barring trade with him; sanctions had already been enacted against more than a dozen of his associates, and Maduro became the fourth sitting head of state to be personally targeted with economic sanctions by the U.S. Two days after the election, opposition leaders Leopoldo López and Antonio Ledezma were taken from their homes in the middle of the night by state security agents. The two had been under house arrest for their alleged connection to antigovernment protests in 2014, but the Maduro-backed Supreme Court ordered their rearrest, spurring a fresh wave of international condemnation.

Originally scheduled for December 2016 but postponed by the election commission, gubernatorial elections were held in Venezuela’s 23 states in mid-October 2017. Preelection preference polling had indicated that the opposition was poised to gain control of a majority of the states for the first time in some two decades. The results—which were challenged not only by the opposition but also by a number of foreign governments—told a very different story, as the PUV captured 18 of the governorships. Maduro hailed the outcome as a victory for chavismo, and the Maduro-friendly election commission pronounced the elections clear. In refuting the results, the opposition alleged that there had been widespread ballot manipulation and pointed to the last-minute relocation of hundreds of polling places without public notice (often away from opposition strongholds) and the absence of international observers. After initially refusing to pledge allegiance to the constituent assembly (Maduro’s requirement for taking office), four successful opposition candidates changed their minds and bowed to Maduro’s will. Their actions prompted Capriles to announce on October 25 that he was leaving the opposition coalition in protest. Ironically, one day later the European Union awarded the opposition the EU’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

As 2018 dawned, the Venezuelan economy was in shambles. European sanctions in response to Maduro’s increasingly autocratic rule had joined those imposed by the United States, Venezuelan oil production had plummeted, Venezuela’s GDP had experienced another year of crippling decline in 2017 (14 percent, according the International Monetary Fund), and shortages of food and medicine were endemic. Moreover, with hyperinflation entering orbit at 2,400 percent, the national currency, the bolivar, was nearly worthless. In an attempt to overcome the sanctions and restart the economy, in February 2018 the Maduro government introduced the petro, a cryptocurrency (akin to the Bitcoin) whose value was tied to the price of one barrel of Venezuelan crude oil and backed by the country’s reserves of gold, diamonds, gas, and oil. Maduro claimed that the first day of petro sales had netted some $735 million, but skeptics viewed the creation of the world’s first state-backed digital currency as a sign of desperation.

In an attempt to limit the opposition’s ability to organize a campaign to unseat him, Maduro pushed for an early presidential election, which ultimately was scheduled for May 2018. The most popular likely opposition candidates were already prohibited from running for office or were in prison, and, convinced that the contest would be rigged in Maduro’s favour, opposition leaders called for a boycott of the election. Nonetheless, Henri Falcón, onetime governor and disaffected former Chávez supporter, undertook an active campaign, as did evangelical minister Javier Bertucci. On election day, May 20, according to the National Election Council, only 46 percent of eligible voters went to the polls (opposition estimates indicated a considerably lower turnout). Some 5.8 million people, about 68 percent of those who voted, cast their ballots for Maduro, handing him a second six-year term. Falcón, who finished second with about 1.8 million votes, was joined by a chorus of international critics (most notably the governments of the United States, Canada, and more than a dozen Latin American countries) in declaring the results of the election to be fraudulent, but Maduro now stood to rule the country until 2025.

On August 4 Maduro was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt undertaken with two explosive-laden drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) that were detonated near him while he spoke to National Guard troops after a commemorative parade in Caracas. Maduro was unharmed. Responsibility for the assault was unclear.

On January 23, 2019, not quite two weeks after Maduro’s inauguration, Juan Guaidó, the newly elected leader of the opposition and head of the National Assembly, declared himself Venezuela’s acting president, claiming that the constitution justified his action because the allegedly fraudulent election of Maduro had left the country without a president. The United States and a raft of other countries quickly recognized Guaidó as the legitimate leader of Venezuela. Another group of countries, including Russia, condemned Guaidó’s declaration and offered statements of support for Maduro, who claimed that the opposition’s action was part of a conspiracy orchestrated by the United States.

In February, defying a travel ban against him by the Maduro government, Guaidó went to Colombia, where international aid in the form of food and medicine was being stockpiled in the border town of Cúcuta. The aid was blocked from entering Venezuela because Maduro claimed it was masking a coup attempt. When a group of demonstrators led by Guaidó attempted to act as a shield to peacefully guide aid-bearing trucks through the blockade on February 23, Venezuelan security forces turned them back with tear gas and rubber bullets as violence exploded. Results were similarly violent when the opposition attempted to enter Venezuela from Brazil with relief supplies. Despite some defections to the opposition, the Venezuelan military again remained largely loyal to Maduro, whose authority Guaidó brazenly flouted by prominently reentering the country on March 4 by plane at the Caracas airport.

On April 30 Guaidó and the opposition staged a coup attempt. It began in the morning with the release of a video in which Guaidó—flanked by López (who had departed house arrest) and supportive soldiers—announced that the “final phase” of the operation to remove Maduro from power had begun. Guaidó claimed that important contingents of the country’s security forces had joined the opposition. The head of Venezuela’s intelligence apparatus had, in fact, switched sides, but, before the day was over, it became clear that the military and the security forces had once again remained loyal to Maduro. The insurrection sputtered and died out. Guaidó was left to explain its failure, and López took asylum in the Spanish embassy in Caracas and ultimately fled to exile in Spain.

The next month, talks that had been brokered by Norway began between the Maduro government and Guaidó. By August, however, those talks had broken down. Many in the opposition appeared to lose faith in Guaidó in the ensuing months after the failure of the insurrection. Nevertheless, most of the opposition political parties followed his lead and boycotted the December 2020 elections for the National Assembly. Only about 31 percent of eligible voters went to the polls, which allowed the PSUV to capture nearly 68 percent of the vote and hence secure an overwhelming majority in the Assembly (the opposition parties that chose to participate took less than 18 percent of the vote). International organizations and observers were quick to dismiss the elections as a sham.

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis only deepened. Shortages of food and medicine became more acute, and Venezuelans were increasingly dependent on government-provided survival packages. By the beginning of 2021, more than five million Venezuelans had fled the country since 2015. Against this backdrop and with the health care system crippled, Venezuela was no match for the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. First reported in China in late 2019, the virus began sweeping the globe in early 2020, and it soon afflicted Venezuela. By June 2021 the country had recorded more than 260,000 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and nearly 3,000 Venezuelans had died from COVID-19-related causes. If there was a silver lining, it was that Guaidó and the Maduro government indicated a readiness to restart negotiations.

In the meantime, Guaidó’s popularity among the opposition waned significantly. In December 2022 the National Assembly, which continued to function despite the expiration of its official term, voted to remove Guaidó from office. The Assembly also dissolved his government and replaced it with a three-member leadership team led by Dinorah Figuera, a surgeon living in exile in Spain.