![\"Nicol\u00e1s](\"https:\/\/media.cnn.com\/api\/v1\/images\/stellar\/prod\/gettyimages-162799198.jpg?c=original&q=w_1280,c_fill\/f_avif\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n When Nicol\u00e1s Maduro became president of Venezuela in 2013, it was on the heels of the death of influential leftist leader Hugo Chavez, who was in charge of the country for more than a decade.\n <\/p>\n
\n Chavez, the founder of Chavismo, cast himself as a \u201c21st century socialist,\u201d<\/a> frequently disparaging capitalism and the United States, and redirecting much of the country\u2019s vast oil wealth to massive social programs for the country\u2019s poor. He also had a legacy of repression against politicians and private media who opposed him.\n <\/p>\n \n Maduro, a long-time ally of Chavez, became the leader of the Chavismo movement following his predecessor\u2019s death.\n <\/p>\n \n Chavismo, a leftist ideology, prioritizes the redistribution of wealth to the country\u2019s marginalized. It also values Venezuela\u2019s sovereignty as something to be protected from \u201cimperialist\u201d powers.\n <\/p>\n \n Washington-based anti-poverty charity The Borgen Project<\/a> says that some other tenets of Chavismo are the \u201cnationalization of industries, and a strongly anti-neoliberal stance on economic issues.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n While Chavismo may \u201c(work) well theoretically, as most populist ideologies do,\u201d the reality was that many in Venezuela were unhappy with the way the country was being run under Maduro, according to the Borgen Project.\n <\/p>\n \n And \u201cinstead of listening to the demands of the people, Maduro decided to take the thuggish route\u201d and attempted to quell dissent<\/a>, it said.\n <\/p>\n \n In the years since he got into power, Maduro\u2019s government was accused of committing a number of crimes against humanity.<\/a> In a December 2025 report<\/a>, the United Nations accused the country\u2019s Bolivarian National Guard of conducting \u201ca decade-long pattern of killings, arbitrary detentions, torture and sexual violence\u201d targeting protesters and Maduro\u2019s opponents.\n <\/p>\n \n CNN\u2019s Mariano Castillo contributed to this reporting.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Nicol\u00e1s Maduro became president of Venezuela in 2013, it was on the heels of the death of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-387520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}