With this note,
Clarín
begins a weekly series of four articles on the men and women of power in Venezuela.
Today: Nicolás Maduro's wife.
Ludmila Vinogradoff
03/06/2021 8:00
Clarín.com
World
Updated 03/06/2021 8:00 AM
Cilia Flores
is the first lady of Venezuela but in fact she does not seem like it.
There are no traces of her taking care of childhood, pregnant women or social works as traditionally the wives of Presidents and Heads of State usually do.
She only takes care of her own family.
The “first combatant”, as her husband Nicolás Maduro calls her (whose reelection to the Presidency on January 10, 2019 was rejected as fraudulent by the opposition and a large part of the international community), has enriched her large family, whom A legion of
loyal and unconditional
relatives, officials and figureheads
joined in
.
They have all been placed in different key positions in the public administration as the country sinks into ruin and misery.
Between 2006 and 2011, when Flores was president of the National Assembly, some
47 of
his
relatives were
counted
on the parliament's payroll.
Cilia managed to bring her partner before the civil registry in July 2013. Photo: AFP
Her matriarchal sense led her to install a private fortress with 14 houses for her three sons Walter, Yosval and Yosser Gavidia Flores and their descendants, relatives and bodyguards.
Tacarigua de Cumbres de Curumo street, a middle-class urbanization southeast of Caracas and adjacent to Fort Tiuna, where he has the presidential residence,
was closed
to provide greater security and privacy, according to the investigation by the digital portal Armando.Info.
The houses would have cost
between $ 800,000 and $ 1.5 million
each.
His intimate and family circle, marked by a secret pact of silence and loyalty, has multiplied by five times and has spread both inside and outside of Venezuela, taking care of the wealth that he has managed to accumulate throughout the 22 years that the chavismo-madurismo in power.
Nobody dares to give an estimate of
the magnitude of her personal fortune
but everyone assumes that it must be colossal, given the court of family members that surround her and the 800,000 million dollars that have been squandered during the Chavista era, according to Transparencia Venezuela.
The most powerful
The first lady Cilia Flores and Diosdado Cabello carry a huge painting of Hugo Chávez on the premises of the National Assembly.
Photo: AP
Cilia Adela Gavidia Flores was
born 64 years ago into a humble family in the Cojedes state (center of the country) and grew up in the populous neighborhood of Catia in Caracas.
Today she is the
most powerful and greedy
woman
in
the country, the one who moves the strings of political and economic power in the shadows, the one who puts and removes officials in key positions, the one who participates in the Councils of Ministers and in the sessions parliamentarians without having to appear on its board of directors because it is "
the hand that rocks the cradle of corruption,
"
the researcher Alejandro Rebolledo
told
Clarín
.
She likes jewelry, handbags, signature dresses and low heels to dance salsa more comfortably with her burly husband in public events, whom she met when visiting former coup leader Hugo Chávez in Yare prison in the 90s , whom he helped get out of prison as a lawyer.
He also likes to visit the Caribbean islands, Panama, the Dominican Republic and their tax havens where part of his immense fortune is well protected.
Her favorite nephew, Carlos Erick Malpica Flores, appointed by Cilia in 2014 as Treasurer of the nation, director of the Fondem and deputy minister of Finance, regrets having taken his portrait in a nightclub on the Caribbean island of
Saint Barth,
bathed in Moet Chandon pink champagne.
Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores in a meeting with young people in Caracas.
Photo: Reuters
But the images did not interrupt his "public function."
His aunt continued to place him in the best businesses of the ruinous Venezuelan economy such as the Fospuca garbage collection, denounced by Armando.Info.
Another case of nepotism is that of the president of the Venezuelan Institute of Social Security (IVSS),
Magaly Gutierrez Viña
, who was Cilia's daughter-in-law.
She has already divorced her son but a grandson of the presidential couple of Fort Tiuna remained, to whom the first combatant takes care that her future is assured with the social security of all Venezuelans.
In an interview with the journalist Milagros Socorro, the Venezuelan politician Carlos Tablante denounced that an IVSS contractor, businessman Edward Velásquez, was kidnapped at the institution's doors after having received
between 1 and 3 million dollars in cash
for providing equipment. doctors to the institution.
“In fact, a few days before his kidnapping he had signed a contract with Social Security, chaired by Magaly Gutiérrez Viña, daughter-in-law of Cilia Flores, a very common anomaly within that structure of nepotism and corruption that has been degrading the Venezuelan public administration until it is replaced by a kleptocracy, ”says Tablante.
Marriage with Maduro
Nicolás Maduro and his wife in 2018, during an event in Caracas.
Photo: AP
After 10 years of relationships and to formalize the presidential union before the indecisive Maduro, Cilia managed to bring her partner before the civil registry in July 2013, just three months after being sworn in as President of the Republic.
They were married by Jorge Rodríguez, then mayor of Caracas and current president of the Chavista National Assembly.
In public, Cilia visibly shows that she dominates Nicolás because she directs his narrative although she shares many things with him.
She is the one who leads the Madurista policy and the one who manages the resources to keep the family in power, says researcher Alejandro Rebolledo.
Witchcraft and esotericism
Among the strange aspects that unite the presidential couple of Fuerte Tiuna is
witchcraft and esotericism
, which gives a certain evil air to the relationship.
Both are devotees of the Indian Sai Baba sect, the Cuban babalaos, and the Venezuelan paleros (those who dig bones in cemeteries), says journalist David Placer in his books "Los brujos de Chávez" and "El dictatador y their demons ”, referring to Maduro and his queen consort.
Another crime that cost her the United States to sanction her and damage her image at the international level was the case of
the "narco-nephews."
In November 2015, his nephews and stepsons of Maduro: Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas and Efraín Campo Flores were jailed and convicted by the US justice for trafficking
more than 800 kilos of drugs
to that country.
From her trench in Parliament, in her fourth debut as a deputy for 22 years, Cilia is now preparing to reform
34 laws
to strengthen the Maduro regime, control and squeeze the institutions of all Venezuela and
liquidate any dissent
and opposition that challenge her. .
Caracas, special
ap