This analysis examines The Dictators: Nicolás Maduro - How to Cling to Power in historical and strategic context. It traces how the core developments unfolded, which institutions and actors shaped outcomes, and what those decisions changed on the ground. Rather than repeating headline-level claims, it focuses on concrete mechanisms, constraints, and tradeoffs that explain the trajectory of events.
The discussion moves from Key Developments through Strategic Implications to Risk and Uncertainty, then evaluates wider consequences. The goal is to clarify not only what happened, but why these developments still matter for current planning, risk assessment, and policy decisions.
Key Developments
And it relates to the almost apocalyptic state of decline that the country of Venezuela entered into in the period beginning in 2013. At the helm of it all, perched atop a crumbling country and a system which continues to fail its citizens, sits Nicolás Maduro - the onetime bus driver turned most powerful man in a country which was once one of the wealthiest in Latin America….and now one of its poorest. Venezuela has been in the news for its economic woes for a large part of the last decade, and just as it appeared to have faded from view it was hauled back into world attention in December 2023 when that same leader made wild claims seeming to threaten a neighbouring country with invasion - a topic we discussed in some length at the time.
Key Takeaways
- Nicolás Maduro was born in Caracas in 1962 into a working-class leftist family; he never finished high school and became a bus driver and trade union leader before entering politics under Hugo Chávez.
- Venezuela’s economic collapse in the mid-2010s stemmed from over a century of oil dependence, rampant corruption, and Dutch disease — a vulnerability Chávez deepened by failing to build a sovereign wealth fund or diversify the economy.
- When oil prices collapsed after Chávez’s death in 2013, Venezuela’s economy — 90% dependent on oil revenue — entered a crisis more severe than the Great Depression on a national level, triggering hyperinflation, mass emigration, and protests.
- Maduro clung to power by retaining the loyalty of the military, using it to brutally suppress protests, and was re-elected in 2018 in a result the opposition declared illegitimate, with the National Assembly naming Juan Guaidó interim president.
- The 1989 Caracazo — a violent government crackdown on austerity protests that killed potentially thousands — destroyed public faith in the established order and created the climate of discontent that allowed Hugo Chávez, and ultimately Maduro, to rise.
So today, we thought we’d explore just how this all fits together: who is Nicolás Maduro, what is the recent history of Venezuela - and just how did things get so bad over there? Nicolás Maduro Before we get there, some context on Venezuela’s current President. Nicolás Maduro Moros was born into a working-class family with leftist political leanings in the Venezuelan capital Caracas in 1962.
Nicolás Maduro Moros was born into a working-class family with leftist political leanings in the Venezuelan capital Caracas in 1962. Similar to other prominent leaders that we’ve covered, Maduro’s early life is shrouded in a little mystery and debate, with some speculation that he was actually born in neighbouring Colombia - his mother’s home country - one year earlier. This is a significant claim, since according to the Venezuelan constitution, the President must be a Venezuelan citizen from birth, and this could therefore have made Maduro ineligible to assume the presidency if true.
A young Maduro was said to be academically mediocre but politically expedient - becoming a class leader in Liceo José Ávalos, the high school he attended in his hometown district of El Valle. He didn’t graduate high school and became a bus driver, continuing his political activism and became, at some point, a trade union leader for public transport employees in the capital region. Maduro was drawn to Hugo Chávez - future President of Venezuela - as the latter made his first foray into political action, and he became a member of the civilian branch of Chávez’s Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario 200 (Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement or MBR 200) in the early 1990s.
Maduro supported Chávez when he attempted a coup d’état against the state in 1992, and became a key member of Chávez’s apparatus when he did eventually become President in 1999. During Chávez’s fourteen years as President, Maduro occupied several key government positions: he became President of the National Assembly of Venezuela in 2005, and Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2006 - all this despite having no academic qualifications other than a one-year course in political education received at an institution for aspiring communists in Cuba in the mid-1980s.
Strategic Implications
Similar to other prominent leaders that we’ve covered, Maduro’s early life is shrouded in a little mystery and debate, with some speculation that he was actually born in neighbouring Colombia - his mother’s home country - one year earlier. This is a significant claim, since according to the Venezuelan constitution, the President must be a Venezuelan citizen from birth, and this could therefore have made Maduro ineligible to assume the presidency if true. A young Maduro was said to be academically mediocre but politically expedient - becoming a class leader in Liceo José Ávalos, the high school he attended in his hometown district of El Valle.
He didn’t graduate high school and became a bus driver, continuing his political activism and became, at some point, a trade union leader for public transport employees in the capital region. Maduro was drawn to Hugo Chávez - future President of Venezuela - as the latter made his first foray into political action, and he became a member of the civilian branch of Chávez’s Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario 200 (Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement or MBR 200) in the early 1990s. Maduro supported Chávez when he attempted a coup d’état against the state in 1992, and became a key member of Chávez’s apparatus when he did eventually become President in 1999.
Nevertheless, Maduro was seen as having assumed his charge at the helm of Venezuelan diplomacy competently. During his six years at the helm of the Ministry, he fostered a network of diplomatic relations intended to strengthen Venezuela’s ties with countries on poor terms the United States, as well as regional powers in Central and South America - especially those with leftist governments such as Cuba, Bolivia, and Brazil. During this time, he also displayed devoted loyalty to Chávez, something which would pay dividends as he would assume the role of Vice-President in 2012, before ultimately succeeding Chávez as the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela on the fifth of March, 2013.
But while Maduro’s rise to power was punctuated by a series of often quite rapid successes, his presidency would be met immediately by a stark dose of reality - an economy in freefall, massive instability, hyperinflation, mass emigration, and massive protests indicative of a society brought to its very knees. So before we get to Maduro’s presidency and the context under which it has unfolded, it is important to dive here into what has made Venezuela’s economic situation so torrid, and why the years of Maduro’s reign have been so disastrous in Venezuela. Venezuela’s Problems What is important to recall is that the decisions which led to Venezuela’s well-documented economic collapse in the mid-2010s are not necessarily Maduro’s or even Chávez’s doing - at least, not entirely.
Rather, they are the result of a stream of decisions made by Venezuelan leaders over practically length of the twentieth century.
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Risk and Uncertainty
During Chávez’s fourteen years as President, Maduro occupied several key government positions: he became President of the National Assembly of Venezuela in 2005, and Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2006 - all this despite having no academic qualifications other than a one-year course in political education received at an institution for aspiring communists in Cuba in the mid-1980s. Nevertheless, Maduro was seen as having assumed his charge at the helm of Venezuelan diplomacy competently. During his six years at the helm of the Ministry, he fostered a network of diplomatic relations intended to strengthen Venezuela’s ties with countries on poor terms the United States, as well as regional powers in Central and South America - especially those with leftist governments such as Cuba, Bolivia, and Brazil.
During this time, he also displayed devoted loyalty to Chávez, something which would pay dividends as he would assume the role of Vice-President in 2012, before ultimately succeeding Chávez as the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela on the fifth of March, 2013. But while Maduro’s rise to power was punctuated by a series of often quite rapid successes, his presidency would be met immediately by a stark dose of reality - an economy in freefall, massive instability, hyperinflation, mass emigration, and massive protests indicative of a society brought to its very knees. So before we get to Maduro’s presidency and the context under which it has unfolded, it is important to dive here into what has made Venezuela’s economic situation so torrid, and why the years of Maduro’s reign have been so disastrous in Venezuela.
At the heart of it all lies oil: the country’s most valuable resource, its largest export - and in some ways, the source of all its misery. Venezuela discovered its vast oil reserves in the early 1900s. These oil reserves were - and remain - by some margin the very largest in the world.
According to OPEC data, Venezuela has proven reserves of around 303 billion barrels of oil - putting it far ahead of next-placed Saudi Arabia at around 260 billion proven barrels. Successive Venezuelan governments capitalised on this oil wealth - resulting in Venezuela soon becoming widely classified as both a rentier state and a petrostate. And Venezuela’s oil money certainly did lend itself to some good times.
In 1950 - with much of the world ravaged by the Second World War - Venezuela was the 4th-richest country in the world in GDP per capita: eclipsed only by the United States, Switzerland, and New Zealand. But the good times could not last. You see, while oil made Venezuela one of the richest countries in the world, it also brought a string of problems - including two potentially lethal ones for the country’s stability.
The first was rampant and routine corruption by state leaders of practically every political orientation, along with massive embezzlement of oil profits throughout much of this period of affluence.
Outlook
Venezuela’s Problems What is important to recall is that the decisions which led to Venezuela’s well-documented economic collapse in the mid-2010s are not necessarily Maduro’s or even Chávez’s doing - at least, not entirely. Rather, they are the result of a stream of decisions made by Venezuelan leaders over practically length of the twentieth century. At the heart of it all lies oil: the country’s most valuable resource, its largest export - and in some ways, the source of all its misery.
Venezuela discovered its vast oil reserves in the early 1900s. These oil reserves were - and remain - by some margin the very largest in the world. According to OPEC data, Venezuela has proven reserves of around 303 billion barrels of oil - putting it far ahead of next-placed Saudi Arabia at around 260 billion proven barrels.
The second was an economic phenomenon which befell Venezuela, known shorthand as ‘Dutch disease’. ‘Dutch disease’ is a circumstance wherein a country becomes so dependent on a given resource that it causes all other industries to become neglected, thereby increasing the country’s dependence on that one resource even further. The term was coined by The Economist to describe the decline in Dutch manufacturing following the discovery and rapid exploitation of gas in the country.
Ironically, the term first appeared in a 1977 article with the Dutch case in mind, but the phenomenon it revealed was actually already occurring in Venezuela at that same time - and it may realistically have equally been called the ‘Venezuela Virus’ even when it was first described. In short, Venezuela’s economy became so dependent on oil that it became closely tied to the market price of the resource, and therefore heavily influenced by world events which could cause the price to rise and fall. That is precisely what happened in the 1970s and 1980s.
First, in the 1970s, Venezuela experienced a significant economic boost. The 1973 Yom Kippur War and the 1979 Iranian Revolution heavily reduced oil supplies coming out of the Middle East. While this led to massive energy shortages in many parts of the world it was good news for Venezuela, which profited handsomely from the resulting rise in the market price of oil.
However, the period also saw corruption and oil money embezzlement reach its zenith: the Venezuelan NGO Pro Calidad de Vida estimated in 1997 that around one hundred billion US dollars in oil funds were wasted or stolen by Venezuelan officials during this period. Moreoever, the 1980s wouldn’t be nearly as kind to Venezuela. The start of the decade saw oil prices come crashing down and Venezuela’s economy came crashing with it, to the extent that Venezuela was forced to seek foreign loans to keep the country afloat.
With the quality of life in Venezuela tanking as a result of the crash, public dissatisfaction with the existing government grew, and reached a boiling point in 1989.
The Rise of Nicolás Maduro
The so-called Caracazo was an explosion of unrest on the streets of Caracas and other Venezuelan cities after the government of centre-left President Carlos Andrés Peréz announced a slew austerity measures intended to secure a bailout loan from the IMF. When the protests were met with a brutal government crackdown - resulting in the deaths of possibly up to several thousand people - the credibility of the government under disappeared entirely, and people began to yearn for a change. The rise of Chávismo It was in this climate of strife that Hugo Chávez Frías - a soldier in the Venezuelan army with leftist leanings - sensed an opportunity.
Chávez attempted a coup d’état in 1992, which was unsuccessful and for which he ended up in prison. However, his image as a sort of Venezuelan Robin Hood - vying for the good of the people - was born and following his release, he was ultimately elected President of Venezuela in 1999. Now, Chávez’s Presidency of Venezuela is looked at differently by different people.
Depending on political orientation, the fourteen years of so-called ‘Chávismo’ may be described as revolutionary, transformative, authoritarian, charitable, oppressive, and much more. There is no doubt that Chávez’s social programmes or misiones helped lift a lot of Venezuelans out of poverty, and his government provided benefits to Venezuelans that had not been provided to them until then by a state which did not really depend on its citizens’ tax money. However, Chávez also ensured strict control over the freedom of the press, and progressively eliminated political plurality in Venezuela.
He also weakened the judiciary, and withdrew from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: an international criminal court with jurisdiction over practically all of Latin America. Chávez also squashed private enterprise and nationalised private businesses - including those providing services of great importance to the citizens, something which Venezuela into even more dependence on its imports. Venezuela’s public debt also rose by almost three hundred percent during his presidency.
Perhaps above all though, Chávez did nothing to change the dependence of Venezuela on its central resource - oil. When employees of the state-run oil company PDVSA went on strike in 2002, Chávez responded by firing over nineteen thousand oil industry workers - something which caused Venezuela’s oil-producing ability to contract. Moreover, Chávez also didn’t set any money aside in a sovereign wealth fund to insulate Venezuela against the falls in oil price, which could be so critical for its monolithic economy - as he would well have known, given the events of the Caracazo which kickstarted his ascent to power.
In short, all these elements which would make the next looming economic crisis in Venezuela many times more disastrous than it necessarily may otherwise have been.
Venezuela’s Economic Downfall
But by the time that crisis hit, Chávez had done something which meant he would not foot any of the blame for what was coming: he died. After his death from cancer early in 2013, the reigns of the state wound up in the palms of Maduro, who’d been serving as his Vice-President since the previous year. And it would be only over the course of the following year that the full force of Venezuela’s problems would erupt, and Venezuela would buckle under the pressure.
2013 - Economic Meltdown Tragically, the economic crisis which had struck Venezuela in the late 1980s and had resulted in the Caracazo protests was actually smalltime in comparison with the crisis which struck Venezuela just after Chávez died. The 2013 Venezuelan crisis was - on a national level - more disastrous even than the fall of the Soviet Union and the Great Depression. Oil prices fell, and Venezuela’s exposed economy - by now dependent on oil for 90% of its revenue - crumbled.
As defaults rose, foreign lenders stopped issuing loans to Venezuelans. Due to its massive borrowing, Venezuela was not in a position to continue to import everyday goods as it had been doing before. The cost of essential commodities skyrocketed, hyperflation took hold, and the value of the Venezuelan Bolivar - the national currency - plummeted overnight.
Millions of Venezuelans fled abroad, and by 2020, the Marshall Centre reported millions of Venezuelans were seeking temporary refuge in neighbouring South American countries, with around 1.8 million Venezuelans sheltering in Colombia alone. Throughout this, Maduro stood impotent, and simply continued the tried-and-tested autocrat’s tactic of clinging to power as the country welted around him. Massive protests had broken out immediately in the wake of Chavez’s death, and these only grew as hyperinflation struck Venezuela and the price of everyday commodities reached astronomical levels.
However, Maduro continued to enjoy the support of the military - something which would prove crucial in the context of the spiralling economic situation. The protests were, resultingly, brutally put down under the new leader’s orders. Understandably, the Venezuelan public had not taken to their new leader, and within one year of taking office - as the country crumbled under the dire economic condition - Maduro’s approval rating stood at a paltry twenty-five percent.
It is partly this very visible lack of popularity which made Maduro’s re-elction as President in 2018 appear highly dubious. Officially, Maduro won reelection with around sixty-seven percent of the vote. The Venezuelan opposition, however, disputed the result of the election and declared a the results illegitimate, further claiming that this made President of the National Assambly Juan Guaidó the interim President.
Simon Whistler
Simon Whistler is one of YouTube's most prolific educational creators. WarFronts is his deep dive into military history and conflict analysis.
Frequently Asked Questions
How did Nicolás Maduro rise from bus driver to president?
Maduro dropped out of high school and became a bus driver and trade union leader in Caracas, where he was drawn to Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement in the early 1990s. He supported Chávez’s 1992 coup attempt and loyally served in key posts once Chávez became president in 1999 — including President of the National Assembly and Minister of Foreign Affairs — despite having no academic qualifications beyond a year-long political education course in Cuba. His unwavering personal loyalty earned him the Vice Presidency in 2012 and the presidency itself when Chávez died of cancer in March 2013.
What caused Venezuela’s catastrophic economic collapse?
Venezuela’s crisis was rooted in a century of oil dependence, corruption, and Dutch disease — the phenomenon where dependence on one resource causes all other industries to atrophy. Oil provided 90% of state revenue by the time the mid-2010s crisis hit. When global oil prices crashed after Chávez’s death, Venezuela had no sovereign wealth fund, no economic diversification, and a massive debt burden. Hyperinflation took hold, the bolivar collapsed, essential goods disappeared from shelves, and millions of Venezuelans fled to neighboring countries — by 2020 around 1.8 million were sheltering in Colombia alone.
How did Maduro retain power despite massive unpopularity?
The key was the loyalty of the military. With his approval rating at roughly 25% within a year of taking office, Maduro relied on the armed forces to brutally suppress the waves of mass protest that erupted as the economy collapsed. He also controlled the judiciary and state media, and used them to delegitimize the opposition. When he won re-election in 2018 with a claimed 67% of the vote — a result the opposition declared fraudulent — the military’s backing ensured he could hold on even as the National Assembly named Juan Guaidó interim president and much of the world refused to recognize Maduro’s legitimacy.
What role did the Caracazo play in Venezuela’s political trajectory?
The Caracazo of 1989 was an explosion of street unrest in Caracas and other Venezuelan cities after center-left President Carlos Andrés Pérez announced IMF-mandated austerity measures. The government responded with a brutal crackdown that may have killed several thousand people, destroying its own credibility and unleashing a profound public hunger for change. It was in this climate of political breakdown that army officer Hugo Chávez launched his 1992 coup attempt, gaining a popular following as a Robin Hood-style outsider vying for ordinary Venezuelans — the uprising that set the stage for Chávez, and later Maduro, to dominate Venezuelan politics.
Why is Venezuela so dependent on oil, and why did that dependence prove so damaging?
Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves — roughly 303 billion barrels according to OPEC data, far ahead of Saudi Arabia’s 260 billion. Successive governments channeled that wealth rather than diversifying, and by the mid-20th century Venezuela had become a classic rentier petrostate. When oil prices boomed in the 1970s after the Yom Kippur War and the Iranian Revolution, corruption reached its zenith; an estimated $100 billion in oil funds were stolen or wasted. When prices crashed in the 1980s and again in the 2010s, Venezuela had no buffer — its economy rose and fell entirely with the price of a single commodity.
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