By Gonzalo Zegarra
(CNN) — Captured along with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro early Saturday was his wife and top adviser, Cilia Flores, who was dragged from their bedroom along with her husband by US troops. The couple were quickly spirited out of the country to stand trial on US drug-trafficking charges.
“Cilita,” as Maduro calls her, served as first lady for more than a decade — although in the official jargon of the socialist movement known as Chavismo she is referred to as “first combatant.” She has been Maduro’s partner for more than 30 years, during which time she built her own political capital and was considered one of the most powerful women in Venezuela.
Cilia Flores, born in 1956 in the town of Tinaquillo in central Venezuela, grew up in working-class neighborhoods in western Caracas. She met Maduro, who frequently emphasizes his humble origins, during the early days of the Chavista movement. A lawyer specializing in labor and criminal law, she provided legal assistance to Hugo Chávez, the movement’s namesake, and other military officers who were captured after attempting to overthrow then-President Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992. Maduro, for his part, also campaigned for Chávez’s release and was on the then-lieutenant colonel’s security team.
“During that struggle for Chávez’s release, we were involved in street activities. I always remember a meeting in Catia, and when a young man asked to speak, he spoke, and I just stared at him. I said, ‘How intelligent,’” Flores recalled in November 2023, on the first episode of Maduro’s podcast.
Since then, they have remained inseparable, but Flores forged her own political path. She was elected to her first term as a member of the National Assembly in 2000, the year after Chávez was elected president. She won a seat again in 2005, and a year later she became the first woman to preside over parliament, succeeding Maduro, who became Chávez’s foreign minister.
During her tenure, she banned journalists from entering the legislative chamber. She was also criticized for hiring dozens of relatives as employees in Congress. In an interview with the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, she responded that the complaint was never formally filed and that it was a smear campaign, but she confirmed the hirings: “Yes, my family members were hired based on their own merits; I am proud of them and I will defend their work whenever necessary.”
A staunch Chávez loyalist
Between 2009 and 2011, she also served as the second vice president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, then led by Chávez, who in 2012 appointed Flores attorney general.
Alongside Maduro, who was already vice president, she visited Chávez in Cuba, where he was treated for cancer during the final months of life. Her Twitter profile, when she created in 2015, read “Daughter of Chávez,” although she changed it a few years later to “Chavista.”
Flores and Maduro, who met after Chávez surrendered following his 1992 failed coup attempt, married in July 2013, after two decades together and shortly after Maduro’s victory in the presidential election against then-opposition candidate Henrique Capriles.
“She has a significant political background. When she became first lady, she took a back seat. But for many, she is the power behind the throne or a top adviser,” Carmen Arteaga, a doctor