Who is Cilia Flores, Venezuela’s ‘first combatant’?
In the early hours of January 3, the United States’ Delta Force abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from the presidential residence in the capital, Caracas.
The operation, which was paired with attacks on the Venezuelan capital that killed at least 40 people, according to Venezuelan officials, extracted the country’s first couple to New York in the US, where they are expected to be put on trial as early as Monday.
Early life
Flores, 69, was born on October 15, 1956, in Tinaquillo in central Venezuela. She grew up in areas of western Caracas that CNN has described as “working-class neighbourhoods”.
She graduated from Universidad Santa Maria in Caracas as a lawyer specialising in labour and criminal law. Her rise to prominence came when she led the team that provided legal assistance to military leader Hugo Chavez in 1992, after he attempted to overthrow then-Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez.
Flores reportedly helped secure Chavez’s release from prison in 1994, setting up his eventual successful run for president in 1999.
She would become an important member of the Chavismo movement, named for Chavez. It was through the Chavismo movement that she met her future husband, Maduro, who is 63 and calls her “Cilita”. The two have been partners for more than three decades.
She has three children from a previous marriage.
Political career
Flores’s rise to fame came not solely through her position as Maduro’s partner. In fact, she built her own political standing before becoming Venezuela’s “first combatant”, the Chavismo term used instead of “first lady”.
She was re-elected in 2005, and in 2006, she succeeded Maduro to become the first woman to preside over Venezuela’s parliament.
In 2009, Flores became the second vice president of Chavez’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela, and in 2012, Chavez appointed her attorney general.
After the death of Chavez in 2013, Maduro succeeded him by winning an election against opposition candidate Henrique Capriles. In July 2013, Maduro and Flores married after more than two decades together.
