Nicolas Maduro and the Bolivarian Revolution

by Meghna Chandra

In the early hours of January 3rd, 2026, the United States government abducted the democratically elected leader of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores. Later that morning, the White House Twitter posted a video of Maduro blindfolded, ears plugged, handcuffed. In the background, Notorious B.I.G.’s “Hypnotize” loops, and Trump struts down a White House Corridor, smirking.

The White House believes they signal the United States’ strength and virility. Like rapists, they believe that the ability to steal through violence shows power.

James Baldwin diagnosed what we are witnessing as sexual psychosis. White American masculinity manifests as violence and domination, masking deep insecurity. Trump’s abduction of Maduro does not show the Empire’s strength, but its profound weakness and existential terror. 

The United States empire has many reasons to be afraid. The world is profoundly different from the one in which the Monroe Doctrine operated in the 19th and 20th centuries. Internally, the country is on the brink of civil war, with the ongoing violence in America’s cities between Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and protestors. After decades of deindustrialization, austerity, and war, the American public no longer believes in American institutions. The ruling elite have failed to build consensus for war and empire among the American people.

Internationally BRICS nations led by India, Russia and China have increased their share of the world economy to over 40%. China has lifted its masses out of poverty without slavery and genocide, and every day surpasses the West with technological, economic, and social advances. BRICS institutions offer a hope of participatory democracy and a multipolar world, a true alternative to neocolonial domination.

Most importantly, nobody, domestically or internationally, believes that the capture of Maduro has anything to do with narco terrorism. Everyone knows it has everything to do with control over Venezuela’s massive oil reserves. As Maduro said in an interview with the former President of Ecuador last September, "They cannot say that Maduro has weapons of mass destruction [as they did with Saddam Hussein]... Nobody would believe them. So they bring out Hollywood style narratives where Maduro is the bad guy of the movie and the good guys are them. Then they are going to send in their army. The fair skinned, blonde, strapping good guys, come to find the Latino, the bad guy. But the truth of the movie, people know, is that… the bad guy is the one who writes the script...”

Hugo Chavez and the Significance of the Bolivarian Revolution

Maduro is the successor to the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement, a process started by Hugo Chavez in 1999. Hugo Chavez was born in 1954 and grew up in a poor family of African, Indigenous, and European descent. He joined the military at age 17 and became conscious of the army’s oppression of the Venezuelan masses and the corruption of the two party system. In 1989, he vowed never to turn his guns on his own people after the country’s ruling elite deployed him to shoot civilians protesting IMF shock therapy. Chavez led a coup attempt in 1992, after which he was imprisoned for two years. While in prison he studied history and philosophy, especially the works of Simon Bolivar and Fidel Castro. He also studied the French Revolution’s ideal of revolutionary constituent power, and became convinced that Venezuela must evolve its democracy. He emerged from prison with a clear sense of ideology, history, and human nature. 

Chavez launched the Fifth Republic movement in July 1997 and ran for president in 1998. He ran on a platform of redistribution and participatory democracy. Despite being silenced on TV, radio, and print media, Chavez and his party won in a landslide with overwhelming support from the poor, who were 80% of the population. 

The Fifth Republic Movement ratified a new constitution in 1999. This new constitution guaranteed the right to life, work, learning, education, social justice and equality. It enshrined free education, free health care, access to a clean environment, rights of minorities, and more. It introduced mechanisms for participatory democracy including referenda to recall elected officials and repeal laws, citizen initiatives to propose new legislation, and public consultations. As Chavez said, “This project of transformation means that, little by little, people who have been excluded will have access to posts and become empowered. This is true democracy, extending far beyond formal political democracy that limits choice to whether or not a particular governor should be elected.” 

Much to the horror of the West, the new constitution affirmed state sovereignty over national resources. The government halted the privatization of PDVSA, the nation’s oil industry, and directed its revenue to social welfare. With the help of the Cuban government, the Revolutionary government implemented Bolivarian Missions to expand access to food, housing, healthcare, and education. Chavez’s government banned enrollment fees and shoes as a requirement to enter public schools. Hundreds of thousands of children turned up for school and the army repurposed its barracks for their education. Chavez implemented Plan Bolivar to turn the Constitutional Army into a people’s army. Soldiers went to the country’s poorest sectors to repair food, build local markets, and provide food.
 
Beyond a new form of government, the people participating in the Bolivarian revolution gained a new sense of self. The Fifth Republic Movement gave the Venezuelan people a pride in their shared history and humanity. In a country dominated by a white skinned elite, Chavez proudly pointed out his African and Indigenous features. He recognized the elite’s hatred towards him as racist anger that someone with his curly hair and large lips dared assume the reins of history. Chavez identified Venezuela with the Bandung spirit of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, rather than with Spain and the United States.

Chavez was inspired by the Cuban Revolution and mentored by Fidel Castro, whom he said was like a father and a brother to him. Chavez and Fidel established a relationship of warmth and fraternity among the two nations. Cuban doctors, nurses, and teachers contributed to the Fifth Republic Movement’s welfare programs. Chavez defended Cuba and Fidel at the Summit of the Americas and refused Washington’s directives to isolate Cuba. The imperialist media tried to smear Chavez by disseminating stories about his relationship with Fidel, but it only made him more popular.

The country’s ruling elite had enough. On April 11, 2002, with the blessings of the Bush administration, opposition politicians called for a march on Miraflores Palace. The elite-owned media broadcast propaganda that the government and Chavez supporters shot at marchers, when the opposite was true. The military high command demanded Chavez’s resignation, which he refused to give. The coup government arrested Chavez and took him to an undisclosed location.

The Venezuelan people stopped the coup in its tracks within days. The people of Caracas mobilized on the streets in protest of the unconstitutional and illegal takeover. The palace guards recaptured the building and reinstated Chavez’s ministers. Rank and file soldiers found out Chavez’s location and brought him back as a hero. 

The extreme right wing tried to destabilize the Bolivarian Movement through oil strikes, recall referendums, and propaganda. Chavez fought back through his program on state owned media “Alo Presidente” in which he addressed the nation, defended the revolution, and gave people a chance to call in and speak to him directly. The Bolivarian Movement endures through Chavez’s suspicious death in 2013.

The Bolivarian Movement’s significance is that it is at the vanguard of the current world order. Twenty five years before the BRICS Kazan declaration, it rejected the idea that a nation must submit to the Western model of privatization, austerity, and debt. It centered the poor and marginalized in the fight for development and against neocolonialism. It transcended Western liberal democracy through new forms of participatory rule. It defeated a white, western-trained, technocratic upper class. It promoted a new world order based on sovereignty and respect for all peoples.

Maduro Inherits the Revolution

Nicolas Maduro Moros, a busdriver and trade unionist, inherited the Fifth Republic Movement. Maduro continued Chavez’s legacy of uncompromising truth telling. He strengthened principled ties with China, Russia and Iran. He fought gangs and drug trafficking that the US DEA claims to be concerned about. In his last interview before his abduction, he explained that he sees himself not as a sole decision maker, but an interpreter of popular power.

Maduro is one of the most courageous voices of the multipolar world. At the 2024 BRICS summit, he proposed bold measures for global economic and political reform. He called for a new international monetary system through the BRICS Development Bank and a basket of currencies to end American dollar hegemony. Maduro made a clear and undeniable case that Zionism and Imperialism undermine humanity’s aspiration for a peaceful world order. He recognized the impotence and obsolescence of the current UN system which had failed to protect the people of Gaza, and envisioned a new system arising from the multipolar world. In his words:

“...everytime a precision missile falls on a residential building in Gaza and kills men, women, and children, every time a missile falls on Beirut or on Southern Lebanon those missiles set fire to the UN system and destroy it. Where is the UN International Criminal Court or was it created only to persecute the countries of the Global South? Where is the UN justice system? Only to prepare documents, communiques? Are the lives of Palestinian children worthless? Let us be loud. Let us seek a practical, audacious plan to revitalize the UN system which is in agony in the face of the rise of the Nazi and fascist movements at this painful stage in history. A new world is possible. We believe that a new world is already emerging. BRICS is the epicenter of the birth and historical emergence of this new world. A world with deeply human values and principles.”

Finally, Maduro prophesied that the US empire’s response to the economic, military, technological, scientific, and cultural rise of the Global South would be war. This war would be waged to force American political, economic, cultural, and military hegemony on the world. Maduro said that in fact, World War III has already begun.

Faith in the Future and Freedom from Fear
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This abduction of Maduro, among other events, has shattered all illusions of international law and the so-called rules based order. Even white countries who prospered under Pax Americana know the game is up. As Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said recently, “If great powers abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from transactionalism will become harder to replicate.”

Now that the mirror of white supremacy has cracked and no one, any longer, anywhere, aspires to the empire’s standards, the last weapon of the American Empire is violence and fear. How the world responds to these tactics will decide the future.

Cuba provides an example. Thirty two Cubans, members of Maduro’s personal security detail, died alongside dozens of Venezuelans in the attack against Maduro and Venezuela. They came to Venezuela inspired by friendship, solidarity, and cooperation for a united America in the spirit of Simon Bolivar and Jose Marti. They persisted under bullets and enemy drones and against soldiers overprotected by planes, helicopters, and intentional blackouts. 

In light of this attack and Trump’s threats, the Cuban people have vowed that they will stay united. Instead of running from aggression, they will meet it head on. As Cuban President Miguel Diaz Canal said, “They would have to kidnap millions or wipe us off the map, and even then, the ghost of this small archipelago, which they had to pulverize because they couldn’t subdue it, would haunt them forever. No, imperialists, we are not afraid of you at all. And, as Fidel said, we don’t like being threatened. You will not intimidate us.”

The multipolar order stands upon the shoulders of the individuals and nations who refused to be afraid. Their sacrifices made democracy real because they proved that the darker nations would not consent to be slaves. They forged a new language and survived the last white country the world will ever see.

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Meghna Chandra is a member of the Saturday Free School for Philosophy and Black Liberation, and a peace activist based in Chicago.