Nicolás Maduro: the Venezuelan president in Trump's crosshairs has been captured

For more than ten years, Maduro has presided over one of Latin America's most entrenched political, social and economic crises. When he inherited the presidency from Chávez in 2013, Venezuela was still sustained by revolutionary language and the promise of social transformation. Today, it is a country marked by repression, mass migration and institutional decay. And up until 2, January 2026 Maduro remained in power. His longevity can be chalked up to a combination of populist performance, authoritarian control and pragmatic adaptation.

Improbable rise

Maduro's rise was improbable but far from accidental. Born in Caracas in 1962 into a working-class family, he spent his early years as a bus driver and trade union organiser. Those years in the capital's streets shaped a politician who learned to engage, negotiate and survive within hostile environments. For him, politics became a matter of endurance rather than ideology.

In the 1980s, he joined the Socialist League, a small Marxist group later aligned with Chávez's Bolivarian movement. Maduro's reliability and discretion soon made him a trusted figure in the emerging revolutionary circle. When Chávez came to power in 1998, Maduro's reputation as a disciplined operative positioned him for continuous advancement.

By 1999, he had entered the National Constituent Assembly, helping draft the constitution that would become the foundation of the Bolivarian state. He later served as a member of parliament and then as Speaker of the National Assembly. In 2006, he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, a role through which he strengthened Venezuela's alliances with Cuba, Russia, China and Iran. His calm, low-profile style earned Chávez's personal trust. In 2012, he became Vice President, and upon Chávez's death in 2013, the chosen successor. One month later, he narrowly won the presidency. 

Political analyst Imdad Oner argues that Maduro's political identity cannot be separated from Chávez's shadow. He inherited not only the symbols and slogans of the Bolivarian Revolution but also its contradictions. While Chávez's populism was theatrical and mobilising, Maduro's was defensive and grounded in fear. Oner calls him "a populist without popularity," a leader who deploys revolutionary language not to inspire but to survive.

Maduro's populism thrived on the rhetoric of siege. By framing Venezuela's collapse as the product of foreign aggression, particularly from the United States, he turned the crisis into a loyalty test. His speeches blended religious devotion with nationalist defiance, depicting his rule as a sacred mission against imperial enemies. The narrative had proved durable, sustaining a shrinking yet committed base even as living standards continued to fall.

The mechanics of survival

Maduro's longevity, however, relies on transforming the Venezuelan state into an apparatus of control. Comparative politics scholar Javier Corrales (2023) describes this process as "autocratisation," the gradual dismantling of democratic institutions while preserving the appearance of elections and legality.

Under Chávez, the concentration of power had already begun, but Maduro intensified it. He fused the executive, the ruling party and the armed forces into a single organism in which loyalty outweighs competence. Corrales argues that this marks a transition from revolutionary populism to bureaucratic authoritarianism. His socialism is not about redistribution but about survival through selective inclusion and repression.

This system rests on three central mechanisms. First, the militarisation of politics. Once a professional institution, the armed forces are now embedded across government and industry. Senior officers run ministries, state enterprises, and food distribution networks and are rewarded with privileges and protection from prosecution.

Second, the fusion of the ruling party and the state through the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). It operates more as an extensive network of patronage and surveillance than as an ideological movement. Access to employment, benefits and basic goods often depends on political affiliation.

Third, selective repression. Dissent is managed rather than eliminated. Opposition leaders are harassed or co-opted, the press is constrained, and civic organisations are weakened. Yet elections continue in tightly choreographed form, maintaining the illusion of democratic legitimacy.

Tropical Leninism

If Chávez embodied revolutionary populism and Corrales views Maduro as the architect of bureaucratic control, historian Andreas Kappeler (2024) described Maduro's rule as "Tropical Leninism," an adaptive system that converts ideological weakness into political strength.

Kappeler argued that Maduro's government was neither a continuation of Chávez's socialism nor a conventional dictatorship. Instead, it was a hybrid regime in which ideology became instrumental—a means of consolidating personal and institutional power. Like Lenin, Maduro presided over a single-party structure that fuses state and party, subordinates the military and equates dissent with treason. Unlike Lenin, however, his revolution didn't seek transformation; it existed to perpetuate itself.

According to Kappeler, this tropical form of Leninism "thrived in scarcity, patronage and the exhaustion of ideology." The state's weakness became its primary resource. Citizens relied on government networks for food, employment and security, binding their survival to political loyalty. Patronage replaces persuasion, and control is maintained through necessity rather than belief.

The revolutionary symbols—red banners, marches, and anti-imperialist speeches—remained, but their significance waned. Chavismo became a ritual without conviction, a vocabulary of power detached from the ideals it once promised.

Assets and challenges

Maduro's central challenge was ruling a society that no longer believed in the cause. The charisma and mass participation that defined Chávez's era faded, giving way to dependency and fatigue. Programmes such as the Local Committees for Supply and Production distribute basic goods to registered supporters, ensuring loyalty through scarcity.

Meanwhile, the opposition was weakened by internal divisions and disillusionment. International sanctions and diplomatic isolation reinforced its siege narrative. Each foreign condemnation was presented as proof that Venezuela's revolution was under attack. Kappeler referred to this as "reactive legitimacy," a dynamic in which external pressure strengthens domestic control. In this logic, isolation becomes a political asset.

Maduro's greatest political asset was his capacity to adapt. Unlike Chávez's ideological fervour, his leadership was transactional and flexible. Over the past decade, he reshaped Chavismo to function without oil wealth, mass enthusiasm or strong geopolitical allies.

Economically, he allowed limited liberalisation, tolerating dollarisation and private commerce while maintaining political control over key sectors. Politically, he alternated between negotiation and coercion, using dialogue to divide opponents and repression to prevent defection. Ideologically, he preserved the language of socialism but emptied it of redistributive purpose.

Corrales described this as governance through selective inclusion and repression—a balancing act that rewards loyalty and neutralises threats. Oner sees it as the final phase of populism, a model that no longer inspires but enforces conformity. Kappeler interprets it as the culmination of Leninist adaptation, where ideology functions as a technology of power rather than a guide for change.

Taken together, these analyses reveal a political order that persisted not through ideological conviction but through control. In such a landscape, legitimacy becomes less a matter of public support than of managed endurance. As society grew weary and the state turned further inward, the government tightened the conditions of daily life around loyalty. What remained was a political order sustained by pressure, scarcity and isolation. And it was within this constricted terrain that Maduro's most effective instrument comes into focus: his ability to adapt faster than the crisis surrounding him.

Venezuela under Maduro persevered for so long not through strength but through exhaustion, a system that turned crisis into routine and loyalty into survival.