Juan Guaidó

Juan Guaidó was recognised as interim president of Venezuela by around sixty governments while Nicolás Maduro continued to run the country. He was an engineer and a relatively obscure opposition deputy for Vargas state when he became president of the National Assembly in January 2019, under a rotation agreement between opposition parties. Days later he invoked articles of the constitution providing for the assembly's president to assume executive power when the presidency is vacant, arguing that Maduro's re-election in 2018 had been fraudulent and the office was therefore unoccupied. The United States recognised him within minutes, and much of Latin America and Europe followed. What he never obtained was the army. An attempted military uprising in April 2019 drew a handful of officers, and a bizarre armed incursion by American contractors in 2020 embarrassed the opposition badly. The parallel government controlled Venezuelan assets abroad, including Citgo, and very little inside the country. Support ebbed as the years passed and Maduro did not fall. In December 2022 the opposition parties voted to dissolve the interim presidency altogether. He left Venezuela in 2023. He was thirty-five when he claimed the presidency and had been in the post of assembly president for five days. The episode is now studied as a case of what international recognition can and cannot achieve: sixty governments and control of foreign assets did not move a single Venezuelan institution. Maduro remained in office throughout and won a further disputed election in 2024. Popular Will, his party, had been the most confrontational of the opposition groups and several of its leaders were already in prison or in exile when he took the assembly chair. He now lives in the United States.

• Lived: 1983 CE – ?
• Nationality: Venezuelan
• Roles: politician