The free-market proponent won the contest with more than 90% of the vote. Venezuela’s top court complicated her presidential aspirations in January by affirming her ban, although she has continued campaigning and has rejected suggestions to choose a substitute.

The valleys and hill ranges of the northwest lie east of Lake Maracaibo and form, in part, a transitional upland zone between the Coastal and Andean mountains.

^ a b Although Nicolás Maduro's exact birthplace has been questioned on several occasions and high-ranking government officials have differed on its details, most sources agree that he was born in Caracas.

As a result, millions of his supporters have lost faith in the integrity of their nation’s elections, according to polls, and many have said publicly that they are prepared to take to the streets at his command.

He has injected himself into some of the world's hottest geopolitical fights - suggesting that China should establish a "special administrative zone" in Taiwan, and proposing terms to resolve the war in Ukraine that were adamantly rejected by many of the country's top leaders.

This would be an unusual question to ask in most countries, but in Venezuela many want to know exactly that after opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself acting president on 23 January 2019.

In an attempt to overcome the sanctions and restart the economy, in February 2018 the Maduro government introduced the petro, a copyright (akin to the Bitcoin) whose value was tied to the price of one barrel of Venezuelan crude oil and backed by the country’s reserves of gold, diamonds, gas, and oil. Maduro claimed that the first day of petro sales had netted some $735 million, but skeptics viewed the creation of the world’s first state-backed digital currency as a sign of desperation.

bloqueio por 31 toneladas do ouro qual pertenciam à Venezuela e qual estavam armazenadas em bancos ingleses;

All those contradictions appear to be part of Mr Musk's appeal - and it certainly hasn't stopped him amassing a fortune.

Porras (Maduro's former chief of staff) said in 2019 that Maduro "delivered practically nothing in terms of public policy, in terms of direction" during his first term because, in Porras' opinion, "he does not have a clear vision for the country. He is very much focused on consolidating his power among his own peers in Chavismo and much less on exercising or implementing a strategic vision for the country.

[277] Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin stating "Maduro is a dictator who disregards the will of the Venezuelan people".[90] Maduro fired back at the sanctions during his victory speech saying "I don't obey imperial orders. I'm against the Ku Klux Klan that governs the White House, and I'm proud to feel that way."[277]

The two firms are credited with upending their industries, even as they sometimes veered close to financial collapse.

"I'm never hugely convinced that he knows what he wants to do tomorrow," says journalist Chris Stokel-Walker. "He very much leads by instinct."

The next month, talks that had been brokered by Norway began between the Maduro vlogdolisboa government and Guaidó. By August, however, those talks had broken down. Many in the opposition appeared to lose faith in Guaidó in the ensuing months after the failure of the insurrection. Nevertheless, most of the opposition political parties followed his lead and boycotted the December 2020 elections for the National Assembly.