Nicolas Mature he is known for being the current president of Venezuela, having been in that role since 2013. Maduro assumed the provisional presidency of that country after the death of HugoChavez, being elected president that same year. He entered politics during the 1990s and is currently much criticized for the way he runs Venezuela.
Biography
Nicolás Maduro Moros was born in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, on November 23, 1962. He was the son of a simple family, his father was called Nicolás Maduro Garcia, and his mother Teresa de Jesús Moros. Maduro's father, in fact, was very engaged with militancy and labor movements.
Due to his father's influence, Maduro, already in school, became involved in militancy through the student movement. As an adult, Maduro became a bus driver working for a public transport company in Caracas. For a few years, Maduro was also the security guard of a Venezuelan president named José Vicente Rangel.
While working as a bus driver, Maduro played a prominent role in the militancy of movements and became leader of the union that defended the rights of bus drivers in the capital from the country.
In the early 1990s, Maduro joined the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement 200, O MBR-200. This group organized a military coup against Venezuelan President Carlos Pérez in 1992, but failed. After joining the MBR-200, Maduro was introduced to Hugo Chávez, at the time a Venezuelan military man who wanted to conquer the country's power.
With the failure of the military coup, Hugo Chávez and other soldiers were arrested. Chávez's arrest prompted Maduro and other Venezuelan left-wing militants to stage a series of protests in the country demanding the military's release. Still in the 1990s, Maduro was one of those responsible for founding the Movement V Republic(MVR), the party that launched Chavez as a presidential candidate in 1999.
Mature in Venezuelan politics
In the same year that Hugo Chávez ran for president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro ran for positions in the country's politics. Maduro was elected, in 1998, to occupy a position in the Chamber of Deputies and, the following year, he joined the AssemblyNationalConstituent, an institution that emerged to draft a new Constitution for Venezuela.
With the new Constitution, some changes took place in Venezuela's policy, and the country's Chamber of Deputies was replaced by the AssemblyNational. In 2000, he ran for National Assembly position by the MRV and was elected. In 2005, he was re-elected as a deputy, remaining in the National Assembly.
Nicolás Maduro remained a deputy in the National Assembly until 2006, when he was appointed, by Hugo Chávez, to the post of head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Maduro remained in this role until the year 2012. That year, he became the country's vice president, after the then vice president, Elías Jaua, left his post.
He assumed the vice presidency of Venezuela by being the president of the National Assembly. The death of Hugo Chávez, however, made it possible for Maduro to aspire to the presidency of the country. Before he died, Chavez had indicated Mature as his successor if he did not resist cancer treatment.
With Chávez's death in 2013, Maduro assumed the interim presidency of Venezuela. A new presidential election was called, and Maduro disputed the presidency against Henrique Caprilles. The result of this election was extremely tight: Maduro won with 50.61% of the votes. Your opponent got 49.12% of them.
→ United Socialist Party of Venezuela
The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) is Nicolás Maduro's current party and was created in 2007 on the initiative of the country's former president, Hugo Chávez. Maduro's political career, however, did not begin with the PSUV, but with the Movement V Republic (MVR). The PSUV was an initiative of Hugo Chávez, right after the 2006 elections, for the emergence of a party that would unite all the leftist movements in the country.
A number of parties, such as the MRV, the Venezuelan Popular Unit (UPV) and the Socialist League (LS), resolved merge to form the PSUV, but others, such as the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), did not accept the Fusion. In the election to compose the National Assembly in 2015, the PSUV obtained only 55 seats, a loss of 43 seats compared to the 2010 election. In 2014, Nicolás Maduro was elected president of the party.
mature in the presidency
Protests by the Venezuelan population against Maduro's government have become bigger and more frequent.**
It was during the presidency of Venezuela that Nicolás Maduro reached the peak of his political trajectory. His government, however, is the target of numerous controversies due to the chaotic state in which the country finds itself since then. When Maduro assumed the presidency, Venezuela was already showing the first signs of the economic crisis. Since his inauguration, the country's situation has deteriorated exponentially.
In the view of the community and international analysts, the crisis in Venezuela is a direct result of the country's mismanagement by Hugo Chávez and, above all, by Nicolás Maduro. Opposition to Maduro in the country still accuses the president of abusing his power, promoting the persecution of opponents.
Complaints of prisonsarbitrary, threats, tortures really executioninopposers of the regime were carried out. Maduro's government claims that the country's economic crisis is to blame for sanctions carried out by the United States, but reports from 2012 already evidence the lack of basic items in the country, that is, well before when the US imposed the first economic sanctions on Venezuela.
Maduro's government also denies accusations of authoritarianism, but there are concrete signs that his regime has chosen the authoritarian path to govern the country. The situation in Venezuela became very tense, and part of the opposition to the Maduro regime opted to join the armed resistance against the government. In addition to the political crisis, the economic crisis has profoundly affected the country's population, which suffers from poverty.
This situation has caused millions of people to seek shelter in neighboring countries such as Colombia. Lack of food, low wages and extremely high inflation are major problems for the country's population. For comparison purposes, at the beginning of 2019, the minimum wage in Venezuela corresponded to the equivalent of 77 reais1.
Maduro's authoritarianism is evidenced by actions such as the one carried out in 2016, when Maduro obtained the approval of the Supreme Court for the decision of withdraw the powers of the National Assembly, institution that represents the legislature in the country. In addition, accusations of extermination of opponents and critics of the government are carried out against the Special Forces of the Bolivarian Police2.
Opposition to Maduro, given the critical situation in which the country finds itself, is so great that the president was the target of an attempt on his life in 2018. In this attack, Maduro spoke about the 81 years of the National Guard, when a bomb carried by a drone exploded. He wasn't hurt.
In January 2019, Juan Guaidó, president of the National Assembly, declared himself interim president of Venezuela.***
The last controversy involving Maduro's presidency is from January 2019, when JuanGuaido, president of the National Assembly, declared himself acting president of the country. This is part of a new effort by the Maduro opposition to overthrow the president, and Guaidó's move came as a result of the election held in 2018. Opposition to Maduro accused this election of having been rigged.
Maduro, of course, did not recognize Guaidó's announcement and guaranteed that he will resist as president of the country. However, countries like Brazil, the United States and Spain have recognized Guaidó as president of Venezuela, which brings a climate of uncertainty about the Venezuelan future. In spite of that, until this moment, Maduro continues as president of the country.
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1Maduro announces a 300% increase in Venezuela's minimum wage. To access, click on here.
2Police punish Maduro critics in a poor area of Venezuela. To access, click on here [in Spanish].
*Image credits:golden brown | Shutterstock
**Image credits:Edgloris Marys | Shutterstock
***Image credits:Ruben Alfonzo | Shutterstock
By Daniel Neves
Graduated in History
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/biografia/nicolas-maduro.htm