Nicolás Maduro

Controversies

Disputed presidency

With widespread condemnation, President Maduro was sworn in on 10 January 2019. Minutes afterwards, the Organization of American States (OAS) approved a resolution declaring his presidency illegitimate and calling for new elections. The National Assembly invoked a state of emergency, and some nations removed their embassies from Venezuela, with Colombia, and the US saying Maduro was converting Venezuela into a dictatorship. The president of the National Assembly, Juan Guaidó, was declared interim president on 23 January 2019; the US, Canada, Brazil and several Latin American countries supported Guaidó as interim president the same day; Russia, China, and Cuba supported Maduro. The Supreme Tribunal rejected the National Assembly decisions, while the Supreme Tribunal of Justice of Venezuela in exile welcomed Guaidó as interim president. The United States Department of State stated that Maduro had used unconstitutional means and a "sham electoral system" to maintain an unlawful presidency not recognized by Venezuela's neighbors.

Maduro disputed Guaidó's claim and broke off diplomatic ties with several nations who recognized Guaidó's claim. Maduro's government stated that the crisis was a coup led by the US to topple him and control the country's oil reserves."

Dictatorship accusations

Maduro has been accused of authoritarian leadership since he took office in 2013. After the opposition won the 2015 parliamentary elections, the lame duck National Assembly—consisting of pro-Maduro Bolivarian officials—filled the Supreme Tribunal of Justice with Maduro allies; the New York Times reported that Venezuela was "moving closer to one-man rule".

In 2016, the Supreme Tribunal refused to acknowledge the democratically elected National Assembly's attempts to recall Maduro, and the words dictator and authoritarianism began to appear: Foreign Affairs wrote of a "full-on dictatorship", Javier Corrales wrote in Americas Quarterly that Venezuela was "transition[ing] to a full dictatorship", and OAS General Secretary Luis Almagro said Maduro was becoming a dictator. After election officials aligned with the government blocked an attempt to summon a recall referendum against Maduro, Venezuelan political analysts cited in The Guardian warned of authoritarianism and a dictatorship.

The Supreme Tribunal took over the legislative powers of the National Assembly in March, provoking the 2017 Venezuelan constitutional crisis. With the 2017 Constituent National Assembly poised to declare itself the governing body of Venezuela, the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned President Maduro, labeled him a dictator, and prevented him from entering the US. Chilean president Sebastián Piñera labeled Maduro a dictator. Human Rights Watch described the process that led to the National Assembly being taken over, and Venezuela a dictatorship, and said the "Venezuelan government is tightening its stranglehold on the country's basic institutions of democracy at a terrifying speed." The Financial Times discussed "international censure of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela's thuggish president". The Chicago Tribune wrote that "the Trump administration should harbor no illusions about Maduro, who appears bent on assuming the mantle of dictator." Vox Media published an opinion titled "How Venezuela went from a rich democracy to a dictatorship on the brink of collapse."

The Economist Intelligence Unit stated that during Maduro's presidency, the country's democracy deteriorated further, with the 2017 report downgrading Venezuela from a hybrid regime to an authoritarian regime, the lowest category, with an index of 3.87 (the second lowest in Latin America, along with Cuba), reflecting "Venezuela's continued slide towards dictatorship" as the government has side-lined the opposition-dominated National Assembly, jailed or disenfranchised leading opposition politicians and violently suppressed opposition protests.

Venezuelan presidential elections were held prematurely in May 2018; the New York Times printed a piece headlining the word dictator, "Critics Say He Can't Beat a Dictator. This Venezuelan Thinks He Can". Miguel Angel Latouche, a political science professor at Central University of Venezuela wrote a piece entitled, "Venezuela is now a dictatorship", and CNN reported that US Republicans were using the term Venezuelan dictator to describe a Democratic candidate. Roger Noriega wrote in the Miami Herald that a "lawless regime" and "narcodictatorship" headed by Maduro, Tareck El Aissami and Diosdado Cabello had driven "Venezuela to the brink of collapse".

The 10 January 2019 second inauguration of Nicolás Maduro was widely condemned and led to commentary that Maduro had consolidated power and become a dictator, from the Times, the Council on Foreign Relations, German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and the Economist.

Canada's prime minister Justin Trudeau labeled Maduro an "illegitimate dictator" responsible for "terrible oppression" and the humanitarian crisis. Presidents Mauricio Macri of Argentina and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil condemned what they called Maduro's dictatorship.

Univisión announcer Jorge Ramos described his detention following a live interview of Maduro, saying that if Maduro does not release the seized video of the interview, "he is behaving exactly like a dictator". U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders stated "of course Maduro is a dictator". Reporter Kenneth Rapoza wrote an opinion piece for Forbes with the title, "Basically everyone now knows Venezuela is a dictatorship."

Birthplace and nationality

Maduro's birthplace and nationality have been questioned, with some placing doubt he can legally hold the presidency, given that Article 227 of the constitution states that "To be elected as president of the Republic it is required to be Venezuelan by birth, to not hold another nationality, to be over thirty years old, to not be a member of the clergy, to not be subject to a court conviction and to meet the other requirements in this Constitution."

By 2014, official declarations by the Venezuela government shared four different birthplaces of Maduro. Tachira state's governor José Vielma Mora assured that Maduro was born in El Palotal sector of San Antonio del Táchira and had relatives in the towns of Capacho and Rubio. The opposition deputy Abelardo Díaz reviewed the civil registry of El Valle, as well as the civil registry referenced by Vielma Mora, without finding any proof or documentation that could confirm Maduro's birthplace. In June 2013, two months after assuming the presidency, Maduro claimed in a press conference in Rome that he was born in Caracas, in Los Chaguaramos, in San Pedro Parish. During an interview with a Spanish journalist, also in June 2013, Elías Jaua claimed that Maduro was born in El Valle parish, in the Libertador Municipality of Caracas.

In October 2013, Tibisay Lucena, head of the National Electoral Council, assured in the Globovisión TV show Vladimir a la 1 that Maduro was born in La Candelaria Parish in Caracas, showing copies of the registry presentation book of all the newborns the day when allegedly Maduro was born. In April 2016 during a cadena nacional, Maduro changed his birthplace narrative once more, saying that he was born in Los Chaguaramos, specifically in Valle Abajo, adding that he was baptized in the San Pedro church.

In 2016, a group of Venezuelans asked the National Assembly to investigate whether Maduro was Colombian in an open letter addressed to the National Assembly president Henry Ramos Allup that justified the request by the "reasonable doubts there are around the true origins of Maduro, because, to date, he has refused to show his birth certificate". The 62 petitioners, including former ambassador Diego Arria, businessman Marcel Granier and opposition former military, assuring that according to the Colombian constitution Maduro is "Colombian by birth" for being "the son of a Colombian mother and for having resided" in the neighboring country "during his childhood".

The same year several former members of the Electoral Council sent an open letter to Tibisay Lucena requesting to "exhibit publicly, in a printed media of national circulation the documents that certify the strict compliance with Articles 41 and 227 of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, that is to say, the birth certificate and the Certificate of Venezuelan Nationality by Birth of Nicolás Maduro Moros in order to verify if he is Venezuelan by birth and without another nationality". The document mentions that the current president of the CNE incurs in "a serious error, and even an irresponsibility, when she affirms that Maduro's nationality 'is not a motto of the National Electoral Council'" and the signatories also refer to the four different moments in which different politicians have awarded four different places of birth as official. Diario Las Américas claimed to have access to the birth inscriptions of Teresa de Jesús Moros, Maduro's mother, and of José Mario Moros, his uncle, both registered in the parish church of San Antonio of Cúcuta, Colombia.

Opposition deputies have assured that the birth certificate of Maduro must say that he is the son of a Colombian mother, which would represent proof that confirms that the president has double nationality and that he cannot hold any office under Article 41 of the constitution. Deputy Dennis Fernández Solórzano has headed a special commission that investigates the origins of the president and has declared that "Maduro's mother is a Colombian citizen" and that the Venezuelan head of State would also be Colombian. The researcher, historian and former deputy Walter Márquez declared months after the presidential elections that Maduro's mother was born in Colombia and not in Rubio, Táchira. Márquez has also declared that Maduro "was born in Bogotá, according to the verbal testimonies of people who knew him as a child in Colombia and the documentary research we did" and that "there are more than 10 witnesses that corroborate this information, five of them live in Bogotá".

On 28 October 2016, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice issued a ruling stating that according to incontrovertible evidence, it had absolute certainty that Maduro was born in Caracas, in the parish of La Candelaria, known then as the Libertador Department of the Federal District, on 23 November 1962. The ruling does not reproduce Maduro's birth certificate. Instead, it quotes a communique signed on 8 June by the Colombian vice-minister of foreign affairs Patti Londoño Jaramillo: "No related information was found, nor civil registry of birth, nor citizenship card that allows [us] to infer that president Nicolás Maduro Moros is a Colombian national". The Supreme Court warned the deputies and the Venezuelans that "sowing doubts about the origins of the president" may "lead to the corresponding criminal, civil, administrative and, if applicable, disciplinary consequences" for "attack against the State".

On 11 January 2018, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice of Venezuela in exile decreed the nullity of the 2013 presidential elections after lawyer Enrique Aristeguieta Gramcko presented evidence about the presumed non-existence of ineligibility conditions of Maduro to be elected and to hold the office of the presidency. Aristeguieta argued in the appeal that, under Article 96, Section B, of the Political Constitution of Colombia, Nicolás Maduro Moros, even in the unproven case of having been born in Venezuela, is "Colombian by birth" because he is the son of a Colombian mother and by having resided in that territory during his youth. The Constitutional Chamber admitted the demand and requested the presidency and the Electoral Council to send a certified copy of the president's birth certificate, in addition to his resignation from Colombian nationality. In March 2018 former Colombian president Andrés Pastrana made reference to the baptism certificate of Maduro's mother, noting that the disclosed document reiterates the Colombian origin of the mother of the president and that therefore Maduro has Colombian citizenship.

Conspiracy theories

Maduro continued the practice of his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, of denouncing alleged conspiracies against him or his government; in a period of fifteen months following his election, dozens of conspiracies, some supposedly linked to assassination and coup attempts, were reported by Maduro's government. In this same period, the number of attempted coups claimed by the Venezuelan government outnumbered all attempted and executed coups occurring worldwide in the same period. In TV program La Hojilla, Mario Silva, a TV personality of the main state-run channel Venezolana de Televisión, stated in March 2015 that Maduro had received about 13 million psychological attacks.

Observers say that Maduro uses such conspiracy theories as a strategy to distract Venezuelans from the root causes of problems facing his government. According to American news publication Foreign Policy, Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chávez, "relied on his considerable populist charm, conspiratorial rhetoric, and his prodigious talent for crafting excuses" to avoid backlash from troubles Venezuela was facing, with Foreign Policy further stating that for Maduro, "the appeal of reworking the magic that once saved his mentor is obvious". Andrés Cañizales, a researcher at the Andrés Bello Catholic University, said that as a result of the lack of reliable mainstream news broadcasting, most Venezuelans stay informed via social networking services, and fake news and internet hoaxes have a higher impact in Venezuela than in other countries.

In early 2015, the Maduro government accused the United States of attempting to overthrow him. The Venezuelan government performed elaborate actions to respond to such alleged attempts and to convince the public that its claims were true. The reactions included the arrest of Antonio Ledezma in February 2015, placing travel restrictions on American tourists and holding military marches and public exercises "for the first time in Venezuela's democratic history". After the United States ordered sanctions to be placed on seven Venezuelan officials for human rights violations, Maduro used anti-U.S. rhetoric to bump up his approval ratings. However, according to Venezuelan political scientist Isabella Picón, only about 15% of Venezuelans believed in the alleged coup attempt accusations at the time.

In 2016, Maduro again claimed that the United States was attempting to assist the opposition with a coup attempt. On 12 January 2016, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, threatened to invoke the Inter-American Democratic Charter, an instrument used to defend democracy in the Americas when threatened, when opposition National Assembly members were barred from taking their seats by the Maduro-aligned Supreme Court. Human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, and the Human Rights Foundation called for the OAS to invoke the Democratic Charter. After more controversies and pursuing a recall on Maduro, on 2 May 2016, opposition members of the National Assembly met with OAS officials to ask for the body to implement the Democratic Charter. Two days later on 4 May, the Maduro government called for a meeting the next day with the OAS, with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez stating that the United States and the OAS were attempting to overthrow Maduro. On 17 May 2016 in a national speech, Maduro called OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro "a traitor" and stated that he worked for the CIA. Almagro sent a letter rebuking Maduro, and refuting the claim.

The Trump administration described Maduro's government as a "dictatorship". When meeting with Latin American leaders during the seventy-second session of the UN General Assembly, US President Donald Trump discussed possible United States military intervention in Venezuela, an offer rejected by those present. Maduro's son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, stated during the 5th Constituent Assembly of Venezuela session that if the United States were to attack Venezuela, "the rifles would arrive in New York, Mr. Trump, we would arrive and take the White House".

Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank, said "a military action of the United States against Venezuela would be contrary to the movements of the Trump administration to retire troops from Syria or Afghanistan." John Bolton declared that "all options are on the table" but has also said that "our objective is a peaceful transfer of power".

Censorship

During Maduro's first tenure, between 2013 and 2018, 115 media outlets were shut down, including 41 print outlets, 65 radio outlets and 9 television channels. During the first seven months of 2019, the Press and Society Institute of Venezuela found at least 350 cases of violations of freedom of expression.

Since the beginning of the presidential crisis, Venezuela has been exposed to frequent "information blackouts", periods without access to the Internet or other news services during important political events. Since January, the National Assembly, and Guaido's speeches are regularly disrupted, television channels and radio programs have been censored, and many journalists were illegally detained. The Venezuelan press workers union reported that in 2019, 40 journalists had been arrested unlawfully as of 12 March. As of June 2019, journalists have been denied access to seven sessions of the National Assembly by the National Guard.

The state controls most Venezuelan television channels, and information unfavorable to the government is not covered completely. Newspapers and magazines are scarce, as most cannot afford paper to print. The underfunded web infrastructure has led to slow Internet connection speeds. The information blackouts have promoted the creation of underground news coverage that is usually broadcast through social media and instant message services like WhatsApp. The dependence of Venezuelans on social media has also promoted the spread of disinformation and pro-Maduro propaganda.

Venezuela's rank on the World Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders has dropped 42 places since 2013. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has made a call to the Maduro administration to reestablish TV and radio channels that have been closed, cease the restrictions on Internet access, and protect the rights of journalists.

Human rights

A Board of Independent Experts designated by the Organization of American States (OAS) published a 400-page report in 2018 that alleged that crimes against humanity have been committed in Venezuela during Maduro's presidency. The Board concluded that Maduro could be "responsible for dozens of murders, thousands of extra-judicial executions, more than 12,000 cases of arbitrary detentions, more than 290 cases of torture, attacks against the judiciary and a 'state-sanctioned humanitarian crisis' affecting hundreds of thousands of people".

In February 2018, the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that it would open preliminary probes into the alleged crimes against humanity performed by Venezuelan authorities. On 27 September 2018, six states parties to the Rome Statute: Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Chile, Paraguay and Peru, referred the situation in Venezuela since 12 February 2014 to the ICC, requesting the Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to initiate an investigation on crimes against humanity allegedly committed in the territory. The following day, the Presidency assigned the situation to Pre-Trial Chamber I.

Judicial independence

On 16 September 2021, the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela released its second report on the country's situation, concluding that the independence of the Venezuelan justice system under Maduro has been deeply eroded to the extent of playing an important role in aiding the state repression and perpetuating state impunity for human rights violations. The document identified freq

US indictment of Maduro

On 26 March 2020, the United States Department of Justice charged Maduro and other Venezuelan officials and some Colombian former FARC members for what Attorney General William Barr described as "narco-terrorism": the shipping of cocaine to the US to wage a health war on US citizens. According to Barr, Venezuelan leaders and the FARC faction organised an "air bridge" from a Venezuelan air base transporting cocaine to Central America and a sea route to the Caribbean. The US government offered $15 million for any information that would lead to his arrest. Nicolas Maduro has frequently denied any ties to a drug trafficking syndicate.

Reward increases

After Maduro was inaugurated for a third term on 10 January 2025, the US State Department announced that the reward against Maduro was increased from $15 million to $25 million. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said that the decision to raise the bounty as part of "a concerted message of solidarity with the Venezuelan people", meant "to further elevate international efforts to maintain pressure on Maduro and his representatives". Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the US "does not recognize Nicolas Maduro as the president of Venezuela" and a US Treasury Under Secretary, Bradley Smith, added that the US stood with its "likeminded partners" in "solidarity with the people's vote for new leadership and rejects Maduro's fraudulent claim of victory".

The reward was increased again to $50 million on 7 August 2025, with Attorney General Pam Bondi accusing Maduro of collaborating with foreign terrorist organizations, such as Tren de Aragua, the Sinaloa Cartel, and the Cartel of the Suns, to bring deadly violence to the United States. In a video message, Bondi described Maduro as one of the "world's most notorious narco-traffickers" and a "threat to national security", which prompted the reward to be doubled. She concluded, "Under President Trump's leadership, Maduro will not escape justice, and he will be held accountable for his despicable crimes", before providing the public with a hotline number to report tips to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

In a Fox News interview, Bondi stated that the DOJ had seized approximately $700 million in assets linked to Maduro. The assets allegedly included multiple luxury homes in Florida, a mansion in the Dominican Republic, private jets, vehicles, a horse farm, jewelry, and large sums of cash. Bondi described Maduro's government as an "organized crime operation" that continued to function despite the seizures.

This led to mockery of Bondi and the Trump administration on social media, with the phrase "He's in Venezuela" trending on Twitter. Some internet users claimed it was a deliberate distraction from the controversy surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein client list. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil dismissed the announcement as a "crude political propaganda operation", adding that he was not surprised given Bondi's failure to deliver the client list of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez dismissed Bondi's allegations as a "shameless", accusing her of staging a "cardboard cutout" performance to continue a "ridiculous and cheap show" against Maduro. Rodríguez further claimed that Bondi was not in her right mind, suggesting that the Epstein case was keeping her up at night. Maduro, for his part, dared Trump to arrest him during a nationally televised speech and warned American leaders not to even attempt such an action, saying it would provoke a response that could also lead to the end of the American empire.