Three months prior to death, Hugo Chavez made it clear to his loyalists he wanted Vice-President Nicolas Maduro to replace him if he did not win his battle against cancer.
The chosen successor had already made a momentous declaration just hours before Chavez’s death, laying the blame for the Commandante’s illness on his political enemies and announcing that two US Air Force officials had been expelled from the country for spying on the military and plotting to destabilize the country.
Maduro made it all the way up to the top of Venezuelan political elite from a grassroots level. He was a bus driver and later a trade unionist for the workers of the Caracas Metro transport system. Maduro got acquainted with Hugo Chavez while he served his prison term for an unsuccessful 1994 coup. Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, was a lawyer leading Chavez’s defense.