He has described his childhood as difficult, affected by his parents' divorce, bullying at school and his own difficulty picking up on social cues because of Asperger's Syndrome.

Now, a few politicians who are ruling party allies and a former television reporter have expressed intentions to face off against Maduro. Non-e have the party structure, voter support or financial resources needed to run a competitive campaign.

The coastal mountain system, in effect two parallel ranges—the Coastal Range and the Interior Range—contains Venezuela’s greatest concentration of population, although it covers only a tiny fraction of the national territory.

Those talks initially bore fruit, with the cessation of street protests and the Maduro government’s release of a handful of jailed activists. By December, however, the talks had broken down, as Maduro dragged his feet on releasing dozens of other political prisoners and refused to allow the delivery of foreign humanitarian aid, which would have signaled official acknowledgement that the country was in crisis.

He has claimed that the rise of artificial intelligence, combined with a declining birth rate, could result in "not enough people" being in the world.

Sarahí settled in neighbouring Colombia and is now helping integrate Venezuelan migrants who have followed in her footsteps.

The only member of Mr. Bolsonaro’s family to address the results on Monday gave a less clear statement.

Originally scheduled for December 2016 but postponed by the election commission, gubernatorial elections were held in Venezuela’s 23 states in mid-October 2017. Preelection preference polling had indicated that the opposition was poised to gain control of a majority of the states for the first time in some two decades.

Maduro's birthplace and nationality have been questioned several times,[187][188] with some placing doubt that he could hold the office of the presidency, given that Article 227 of the Venezuelan constitution states that "To be chosen as president of the Republic it is required to be Venezuelan by birth, not having another nationality, being over thirty years old, of a secular state and not being in any state or being in another firm position and fulfilling the other requirements in this Constitution.

The government’s announcement that Mr. Maduro had beaten his opponent, Edmundo González, by seven percentage points instantly created a grim scenario for a country that only recently has started emerging from one of the largest economic collapses in modern history.

Mr. Trump railed against the “deep state,” while Mr. Bolsonaro accused some of the judges who oversee Brazil’s Supreme Court and the country’s electoral court of trying to rig the election.

By the end of Mr. Bolsonaro’s term, it was clear that his attacks had had an effect: Much of Brazil’s electorate seemed to have lost faith in the integrity of the nation’s elections.

In the press, he's been dubbed both a mad genius and Twitter's biggest troll - known as much for his lofty ambitions as his petty fights, not to mention the more serious lawsuits he and his companies have faced vlogdolisboa from regulators, investors and others over issues such as racial discrimination and the trustworthiness of his claims.

[196] The researcher, historian and former deputy Walter Márquez declared months after the presidential elections that Maduro's mother was born in Colombia and not in Rubio, Táchira. Márquez has also declared that Maduro "was born in Bogotá, according to the verbal testimonies of people who knew him as a child in Colombia and the documentary research we did" and what "there are more than 10 witnesses that corroborate this information, five of them live in Bogotá".[197]