Nicolás Maduro Fast Facts – Nicolás Maduro is the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Chairman of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela since 2013. He is the world’s youngest leader ever and the first democratically elected president to rule the country entirely peacefully for over 30 years. As President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro is also the world’s longest serving elected leader in the history of the world, having been elected to the office of the presidency for over 33 years (he was sworn in in April 14, 2002). While serving for Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro made history as the world’s youngest democratically elected leader for a time. He is the first leader in the world who ever achieved the triple crown of power – leader of the revolutionary government, head of state and head of state of his country.
More than 3 million people have joined a hunger strike in Venezuela demanding the release of President Maduro and other political prisoners. The strike began in 2016 after President Maduro said that he would not extend the term of President Juan Guaidó because he was “too little for the job”. During this time, there were thousands of political prisoners in the country detained for “rebellion” and “insurrection”, including a few members of the Maduro’s government.
In July of 2019, a new Bolivarian National Assembly was elected, one of the largest parliaments in the world, which led to the dismissal of Vice-President Tareck El Aissami. El Aissami is a former military commander who served as Commander of the Air Force and as Minister of Defense, after the military seizure of power in 2014. After the elections, El Aissami was arrested and jailed on charges of “corruption and influence peddling”. Although, a few days later, the new Bolivarian congress released him, Maduro ordered the arrests of the new members of the Bolivarian assembly and even threatened to kill the elected representatives. El Aissami and Maduro are two main leaders and figures that many in the U.S. and Latin America will be thinking about in the next months, as the Venezuelan President is leading a massive country-wide protest movement.
In the same year that El Aissami was arrested, Maduro
