Was Cilia Flores the real brains of the Maduro regime?

0:02Jose Enrique Arrioja:Sky News, the full story first.

0:09Coming up, Venezuela's president is in US custody awaiting trial, but so too is the woman seen as the power behind Nicolas Maduro's throne, his wife Celia Flores. So, who is she?

0:25On Friday the 3rd of January as the rest of us were taking down the decorations and having just one more chocolate the United States was getting busy In a raid either audacious or illegal depending on your politics Donald Trump did exactly what he promised Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was seized and taken to the states to face trial Precious few tears were shed at his toppling Maduro's Venezuela had become brutal and authoritarian democracy and afterthought. Thousands were incarcerated for their political views. Dissent was repressed, often violently. But Maduro did not act alone. His time in power is inextricably linked to his wife Celia Flores, also now in US custody.

1:08Like her husband, she came to political prominence under Hugo Chavez, the Marxist populist authoritarian who brought Venezuela socialist revolution and state control of oil. Before becoming First Lady, she was a member of Venezuela's parliament, eventually becoming the first woman to preside over it. To understand Maduro, we need to understand his wife and the role she played in shaping Venezuela. OK, let's speak to José Enrique Arrioja, the managing editor of America's Quarterly. He's a Venezuelan-American journalist who's been covering the region for more than 20 years. We have obviously plenty to discuss when it comes to Maduro's wife.

1:49But for those who don't know Venezuela very well, just describe what the country has been like under his presidency.

1:57Jose Enrique Arrioja:Coming from the heydays of the oil boom that Hugo Chavez was leading in the early 2000s to the beginning of a steady decline, not only economically, but also morally in the country. Maduro, since he took power in 2013, succeeding Chavez, who died in Cuba, decided to continue the Bolivarian revolution. This political project that Hugo Chavez created, he initially started with a very repressive regime, trying to obliterate opponents. And of course, that created animosity among the opposition. and therefore, since the get-go, his administration was considered, hey, we are entering a new era when a dictator actually is going to be taking full control of the Venezuelan apparatus.

2:51What then, during that period, was the role of Isile Flores?

2:55Jose Enrique Arrioja:Her role has been fascinating. She entered history being one of the leading lawyers of Hugo Chavez. When he was incarcerated after the coup in 1992, She helped Chavez, assisting legally facing those charges, and that's how she entered into the Venezuelan history. During those years, she managed to meet Maduro, get emotionally involved, and they lived together for a long period of time, more than a decade or so. And when Maduro got elected in 2013, they decided to actually, you know, formalize the relationship and get married. Since that moment forward, she takes a very prominent public role. She becomes maduro-confident, not only emotionally, but more important, playing a strategic role.

3:46Jose Enrique Arrioja:Sort of like an architect of what his regime was about to become. And her background is very important for our audience to know. She's a lawyer. She's a very skillful speaker, very good at strategizing. And therefore, from there, she managed to play this crucial role in Maduro's life. So she was an important figure in Chavez's regime when she met Maduro. And they were connected through Chavez, weren't they? I remember Maduro when, back here in 2003, I interviewed President Chavez when he attended one meeting at the United Nations. And the guy was a charmer. He was a very cordial, very amenable individual that everybody sort of overlooked him because he was known as the bus driver.

4:34Jose Enrique Arrioja:He was coming from a very humble beginning, but nevertheless with that cunning intelligence for politics. And most of the people sort of always underestimate him because he was that, a bus driver, a security guard who was protecting the big echelon. But he has martyred everybody else until this day. To what extent did the political paths that both Celia and Nicolas took, to what extent did they only achieve what they did because of the other? I mean, Celia Flores, as a politician, she has had an inverted commas distinguished career in Venezuela. Certainly, she has been very successful as a politician.

5:12Jose Enrique Arrioja:She was the first woman to preside the National Assembly back in 2000. She was part of that golden era where everything was possible. But when Chávez was buying out international favors in the region, in the Caribbean, even here in the United States, I remember him just offering oil, free oil, to heat the houses in the U.S. So this was a regime that took every proportion, given the revenue coming from oil. How would you describe the relationship once Maduro became president? To what extent does he rely on her for political advice, for emotional support? I mean, what is her role as First Lady? A very pragmatic, power-driven individual that her role was pretty much seen in the country as the perfect enabler for Maduro to perpetuate himself in power.

6:12Jose Enrique Arrioja:She, in 2012, was named, and it was still under Hugo Chavez, the Attorney General. She took the control of the judiciary system for pretty much a year. And during that stint, she managed not only to oversee the judicial system as a whole, who controlled it completely, but she also took a good hold of the police forces in the country. So she became not only a power-driven individual, a person who was controlling the levers of the judicial system, but also controlling part of the security apparatus. We have then some elements of accusation of corruption, the involvement in drug trafficking, which are the charges that she's facing here in the United States right now, and the famous case, which is the case related with her nephews who were captured and sent to the US.

7:05I was going to just mention that. I mean, there have been a number of occasions, haven't there, where corruption charges have come very, very close to it. I mean, you mentioned them there. I think they were known for a time as the narco nephews.

7:16Jose Enrique Arrioja:The narco-nephews, two of them, were captured trying to smuggle 800 kilos of cocaine into the U.S. back in 2015. And the confirmation of all the suspicions that were linking Celia and Maduro to the narco-trafficking activities in Venezuela and the Caribbean. Everyone should wear charge in 2017, and they were released in a prisoner swap between the Biden administration and the Maduro regime in 2022. One thing that we know from the history books already is that along with those kind of corruption allegations, plenty of allegations of nepotism. A number of members of our family were appointed to some quite senior posts.

7:57Jose Enrique Arrioja:That was typical in how the regime as a whole operated. I'm not talking about only during Maduro year, but also during Chavez. In her case, when she was confronted with that sort of allegations, she was always, of course, adamant defending family members that were having particular positions in governments and ministeries, saying, hey, they deserve that because they have earned it and I can defend them anytime. But the reality, Neil, is that those family members and the inner circle that surrounded Celia and Maduro were living in a separate planet in a different dimension in Venezuela. Of course, it wasn't easy to explain to the regular and average Venezuelan, you know, the source of that wealth.

8:43Jose Enrique Arrioja:How come they were having these luxurious living standards while the rest of the population was under a severe humanitarian crisis? How would you then characterize her? If asked to describe the woman in as blunt terms as you feel necessary, what would you say? She was hungry for power, willing to sacrifice any principal, any individual in order to achieve their ultimate goals was and will be probably most relevant of all her traits and what people will know her well. She was as Maduro dancing on the street, putting a show for the masses. She was a silent companion behind the trunk, dictating, you know, what the best move should be given the circumstances.

9:37Jose Enrique Arrioja:And she was this steady, loyal advisor who was there not only sharing a family, but more importantly, a big structure, a big apparatus of power and repression. Well, it does appear that the fairy tale has come to a rather abrupt end. I mean, what do we know about the charges that are being brought against the couple in the United States? There are four charges specifically, Neil, that the couple is facing here. The most important of them is the conspiracy to smuggle drugs into the United States, the participation as well into that ring of narco-trafficking. we have to remember as well that besides those strictly criminal charges against Maduro and Celia, back in 2018, when she was sanctioned first by the US and then also for Canada, she also has to reckon with the fact that she was involved in the political repression in the widespread torture system that has been quite famous in Venezuela for the past decade or so.

10:44Do you think there will be any tears shed in Venezuela over her departure? No, absolutely no.

10:52Jose Enrique Arrioja:And we actually saw this in the early hours after the raid that was carried out by the U.S. forces. You will expect people will go on the street, But we didn't see any of those mass representations or signals of pain and tears for the captured leaders. And that tells you about the very low popularity that the Maduro regimes enjoyed until very recently. Because the simple oppression, the fact that this was a government who tried to subvert the rules of the system, I'm not talking even in the democratic rule because Venezuela hasn't been a democracy for years. But there was a system, a regime trying to suburb every possible rule to stay in power, regardless of the well-beings of the Venezuela and the rest of the society.

11:49Jose Enrique, I believe I'm correct to say that you are Venezuelan-American yourself. And I'm kind of wondering where you and your friends' heads are at right now, whether there is hope for the future for your country, but at the same time perhaps concern at the manner in which Maduro and his wife were taken out of the country?

12:08Jose Enrique Arrioja:Yeah, this is a very relevant question, Neil. If you see the operation that the U.S. perpetrated in Venezuela, if we see it from the very legal point, the action is indefensible. The thing here is that Venezuelans as a whole try every possible avenue, every possible path to concede a political transition, and all of those fail. The lack of hope in the country was absolutely at the all-time high. This extraordinary action is just simply the ultimate reflect of an extraordinary situation that Venezuela as a whole and Venezuela as a society couldn't handle and couldn't solve. So my sense right now, Neil, is yes, I'm seeing this with hope.

13:03Jose Enrique Arrioja:We hope it will lead eventually to the redemocratization of the country. We don't know that yet, okay, because we still have the old regime in power right now with the interim president, Delcey Rodriguez, fighting for survival while the U.S. is trying to control the streams of powers from overseas. but the course of action has already been called and we only hope that this one will lead to a better future. We are keeping our fingers crossed. José Enrique, it's been a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for your time. And that's your lot for this week on The Daily. Thanks for listening. Have a great weekend.