On January 23, 2019, Washington recognized Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president, and more than 35 countries followed. He was 35 years old, an industrial engineer, and had led the opposition-controlled National Assembly only since January 5. The Congressional Research Service recorded the moment in a February 2019 note.
Getting there took two decades.
From Chávez to Maduro
Hugo Chávez won the presidency in 1998 on a socialist platform. The Council on Foreign Relations credits his “Bolivarian missions” with cutting poverty by roughly 20 percent. The costs were less visible. After a 2002-2003 industry strike he fired thousands of experienced workers at the state oil company PDVSA. He also ended term limits, in the CFR’s words, and “effectively took control of the Supreme Court” while nationalizing hundreds of private and foreign-owned businesses.
Nicolás Maduro took over after Chávez’s death. Oil prices collapsed in mid-2014, and the CFR says Maduro “consolidated power through political repression, censorship, and electoral manipulation.” His 2018 reelection was “widely condemned as unfair and undemocratic.”
A second president
Guaidó was elected president of the National Assembly on January 5, 2019. He declared himself interim president on the strength of a reading of the constitution that treated Maduro’s hold on office as usurpation. The CRS counted 14 Western Hemisphere governments in his camp, among them Canada, Brazil and Colombia, plus 24 European countries. Italy blocked a unified EU position. Russia, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Turkey, Syria and Iran stayed with Maduro; Mexico and Uruguay pushed for mediation instead. The CFR’s later tally puts Guaidó’s recognition at nearly sixty countries.
Washington added pressure: targeted sanctions on officials and on PdVSA, and $20 million in humanitarian aid staged near the border. President Donald Trump said “all options are on the table,” although the CRS judged military intervention unlikely. It also noted the weak point: Maduro kept the military. More than 40 people died and over 800 were detained after January 23.
The challenge faded. Maduro’s party won control of the National Assembly in 2021 and swept regional elections that November. In December 2022 the opposition “voted to remove Guaidó and dissolve his government,” the CFR reports.
Sanctions and flight
The sanctions kept shifting. After the United States let Chevron resume limited operations in November 2022, in exchange for talks between Maduro and the opposition, Washington “further eased sanctions” on the oil sector the following October. Then it “reimposed oil sanctions in April 2024,” after the government failed to meet democratic conditions.
The economy took the damage. GDP “shrank by roughly three-quarters” between 2014 and 2021, according to the CFR. Hyperinflation topped 130,000 percent in 2018 and was still 190 percent in 2023. Half of Venezuela’s 28 million people live in poverty, and nearly “eight million” have left for neighboring countries since 2014. Venezuela’s foreign ministry says over three hundred thousand have come back since September 2020.
Sources
- Venezua crisis backgrounder (Council on Foreign Relations)
- Venezuela: U.S. Recognizes Interim Government (Congressional Research Service, IN11024)
