The crowd urged him on. “Swear in! Swear in!” they chanted. And then he did. Juan Guaidó, the gangly 35-year-old politician—unknown to most Venezuelans a month ago—raised his right hand and declared himself acting president of the republic. Tens of thousands of people, gathered in Caracas on January 23rd as part of a national demonstration against the disastrous regime of Nicolás Maduro, now deemed a usurper, let out a raucous cheer.
By the end of the afternoon, the man Mr Maduro and his cronies have tried to dismiss as a “little boy” had been recognised internationally as the legitimate leader of a country with some of the world’s largest oil reserves. President Donald Trump was the first to endorse him; Canada and all the major economies in South America followed.
Mr Guaidó’s rise to prominence has been spectacular. On January 5th he was chosen as head of Venezuela’s national assembly as part of a power-sharing agreement between the main opposition parties. He seemed almost the accidental president, selected largely owing to the lack of other options. Of the two more obvious candidates in his party, Voluntad Popular, one is under house arrest and the other has taken refuge in the Chilean embassy. The assembly has been defunct since 2016. After the opposition won a majority in the chamber in the previous year Mr Maduro neutered it, replacing it with a pseudo-parliament that obeys his orders.
But Mr Guaidó has skilfully used his position as a newcomer with apparently few enemies to suspend the internecine disputes within the opposition and revitalise the hopes of all those who want to see the end of Mr Maduro’s rule. His emergence comes at a time when Venezuela’s neighbours, including the United States, are urgently looking for a solution to the country’s crisis. Mr Maduro’s incompetence has pauperised Venezuelans, forcing around a tenth of the population to emigrate. Last year, he held rigged elections and awarded himself a further six-year term, which began on January 10th. The Venezuelan constitution says that, if the president’s job is vacant, as the opposition claims, then the national assembly’s head should take over.
