From bus driver to president: Venezuela’s Maduro never escaped his predecessor’s shadow

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Nicolás Maduro, who rose from unionized bus driver to Venezuelan president and oversaw his country’s democratic undoing and economic collapse, was captured Saturday during an attack by U.S. forces on his capital.

U.S. President Donald Trump, in an early morning social media post, announced Maduro’s capture. Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, later announced that the whereabouts of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, remained unknown. Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, said Maduro and Flores, would face charges after an indictment in New York.

Maduro’s fall was the culmination of months of stepped-up U.S. pressure on various fronts.

He had spent the last months of his presidency fueling speculation over the intentions of the U.S. government to attack and invade Venezuela with the goal of ending the self-proclaimed socialist revolution that his late mentor and predecessor, Hugo Chávez, ushered in 1999. Maduro, like Chávez, cast the United States as Venezuela’s biggest threat, railing against Democratic and Republic administrations for any efforts to restore democratic norms.

Maduro’s political career began 40 years ago. In 1986, he traveled to Cuba to receive a year of ideological instruction, his only formal education after high school. Upon his return, he worked as a bus driver for the Caracas subway system, where he quickly became a union leader. Venezuela’s intelligence agencies in the 1990s identified him as a leftist radical with close ties to the Cuban government.

Maduro eventually left his driver job and joined the political movement that Chávez organized after receiving a presidential pardon in 1994 for leading a failed and bloody military coup years earlier. After Chávez took office, the former youth baseball player rose through the ranks of the ruling party, spending his first six years as a lawmaker before becoming president of the National Assembly. He then served six years as foreign minister and a couple months as vice president.

Appointed the political heir to Chávez

Chávez used his last address to the nation before his death in 2013 to anoint Maduro as his successor, asking his supporters to vote for the then-foreign affairs minister should he die. The choice stunned supporters and detractors alike. But Chávez’s enormous electoral capital delivered Maduro a razor-thin victory that year, giving him his first six-year term, though he would never enjoy the devotion that voters professed for Chávez.

Maduro married Flores, his partner of nearly two decades, in July 2013, shortly after he became president. He called her the “first combatant,” instead of first lady, and considered her a crucial adviser.

Maduro’s entire presidency was marked by a complex social, political and economic crisis that pushed millions into poverty, drove more than 7.7 million Venezuelans to migrate and put thousands of real or perceived government opponents in prison, where many were tortured, some at his direction. Maduro complemented the repressive apparatus by purging institutions of anyone who dared dissent.

Venezuela’s crisis took hold during Maduro’s first year in office. The political opposition, including the now-Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, called for street protests in Caracas and other cities. The demonstrations evidenced Maduro’s iron fist as security forces pushed back protests, which ended with 43 deaths and dozens of arrests.

Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela would go on to lose control of the National Assembly for the first time in 16 years in the 2015 election. Maduro moved to neutralize the opposition-controlled legislature by establishing a pro-government Constituent Assembly in 2017, leading to months of protests violently suppressed by security forces and the military.

More than 100 people were killed and thousands were injured in the demonstrations. Hundreds were arrested, causing the International Criminal Court to open an investigation against Maduro and members of his government for crimes against humanity. The investigation was still ongoing in 2025.

In 2018, Maduro survived an assassination attempt when drones rigged with explosives detonated near him as he delivered a speech during a nationally televised military parade.

Bedeviled by economic problems

Maduro was unable to stop the economic free fall. Inflation and severe shortages of food and medicines affected Venezuelans nationwide. Entire families starved and began migrating on foot to neighboring countries. Those who remained lined up for hours to buy rice, beans and other basics. Some fought on the streets over flour.

Ruling party loyalists moved the December 2018 presidential election to May and blocked opposition parties from the ballot. Some opposition politicians were imprisoned; others fled into exile. Maduro ran virtually unopposed and was declared winner, but dozens of countries did not recognize him.

Months after the election, he drew the fury after social media videos showed him feasting on a steak prepared by a celebrity chef at a restaurant in Turkey while millions in his country were going hungry.

Under Maduro’s watch, Venezuela’s economy shrank 71% between 2012 and 2020, while inflation topped 130,000%. Its oil production, the beating heart of the country, dropped to less than 400,000 barrels a day, a figure once unthinkable.

The first Trump administration imposed economic sanctions against Maduro, his allies and state-owned companies to try to force a government change. The measures included freezing all Venezuelan government assets in the U.S. and prohibiting American citizens and international partners from doing business with Venezuelan government entities, including the state-owned oil company.

Out of options, Maduro began implementing a series of economic measures in 2021 that eventually ended Venezuela’s hyperinflation cycle. He paired the economic changes with concessions to the U.S.-backed political opposition with which it restarted negotiations for what many had hoped would be a free and democratic presidential election in 2024.

Maduro used the negotiations to gain concessions from the U.S. government, including the pardon and prison release of one of his closest allies and the sanctions license that allowed oil giant Chevron to restart pumping and exporting Venezuelan oil. The license became his government’s financial lifeline.

Losing support in many places

Negotiations led by Norwegian diplomats did not solve key political differences between the ruling party and the opposition.

In 2023, the government banned Machado, Maduro’s strongest opponent, from running for office. In early 2024, it intensified its repressive efforts, detaining opposition leaders and human rights defenders. The government also forced key members of Machado’s campaign to seek asylum at a diplomatic compound in Caracas, where they remained for more than a year to avoid arrest.

Hours after polls closed in the 2024 election, the National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner. But unlike previous elections, it did not provide detailed vote counts. The opposition, however, collected and published tally sheets from more than 80% of electronic voting machines used in the election. The records showed Edmundo González defeated Maduro by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

Protests erupted. Some demonstrators toppled statues of Chávez. The government again responded with full force and detained more than 2,000 people World leaders rejected the official results, but the National Assembly sworn in Maduro for a third term in January 2025.

Trump’s return to the White House that same month proved to be a sobering moment for Maduro. Trump quickly pushed Maduro to accept regular deportation flights for the first time in years. By the summer, Trump had built up a military force in the Caribbean that put Venezuela’s government on high alert and started taking steps to address what it called narco-terrorism.

For Maduro, that was the beginning of the end.