From Bus Driver To President: Maduro In Chavez&#8217 S Shadow

Caracas (Venezuela)- Nicolas Maduro, who rose from unionised bus driver to Venezuelan president and oversaw his country's democratic undoing and economic collapse, was captured Saturday during an attack by US forces on his capital.

US President Donald Trump, in an early morning social media post, announced Maduro's capture. Venezuela's vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, 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 US pressure on various fronts.

He had spent the last months of his presidency fuelling speculation over the intentions of the US government to attack and invade Venezuela with the goal of ending the self-proclaimed socialist revolution that his late mentor and predecessor, Hugo Chavez, ushered in 1999.

Maduro, like Chavez, 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 travelled 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 Chavez organised after receiving a presidential pardon in 1994 for leading a failed and bloody military coup years earlier.

After Chavez 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.

MENAFN03012026000215011059ID1110551482