Cilia Flores | |
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Cilia Flores in 2013
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First Lady of Venezuela | |
Assumed office 19 April 2013 |
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Preceded by | Marisabel Rodríguez de Chávez |
4th President of the National Assembly | |
In office 15 August 2006 – 5 January 2011 |
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President | Hugo Chávez |
Preceded by | Nicolás Maduro |
Succeeded by | Fernando Soto Rojas |
Attorney General of Venezuela | |
In office 25 January 2012 – 11 March 2013 |
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President |
Hugo Chávez Nicolás Maduro |
Preceded by | Carlos Escarrá |
Succeeded by | Manuel Enrique Galindo |
Personal details | |
Born |
Cilia Flores 15 October 1953 Tinaquillo, Cojedes |
Political party | United Socialist Party of Venezuela |
Spouse(s) |
Walter Gavidia Rodríguez Nicolás Maduro (2013-present) |
Children | Walter Gavidia Flores |
Profession | lawyer |
Religion | Catholic |
Cilia Flores (born in Tinaquillo, Cojedes, on 15 October 1953) is a Venezuelan lawyer and politician. She is married to the president of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro, making her the current First Lady of that country. Since 2015, she is also a deputy in the National Assembly of Venezuela (of which she was president from 2006 to 2011) for her home state of Cojedes.
Flores is married to President Nicolás Maduro, and replaced Maduro as President of the National Assembly in August 2006, when he resigned to become Minister of Foreign Affairs, with Flores becoming the first woman to serve as President of the National Assembly. The two had been in a romantic relationship since the 1990s when Flores was Hugo Chávez's lawyer following the 1992 Venezuelan coup d'état attempts and were married in July 2013 months after Maduro became president.
Her husband Maduro has one son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, whom he appointed to senior government posts: Chief of the presidency's Special Inspectors Body, head of the National Film School, and a seat in the National Assembly, while Flores has an adopted son, Efraín Campos, who is her nephew from her deceased sister.
As the lead attorney for Chávez's defense team, she was instrumental in securing Chávez's release from prison in 1994 after his unsuccessful coup in 1992.
While serving as chair of the Political Command of the Bolivarian Revolution, Flores was part of the Tactical Command for the Revolution, an organization that ran the majority of Hugo Chávez's political machine. On 7 April, days before the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt, Flores along with Guillermo García Ponce and Freddy Bernal shared plans of using the Bolivarian Circles as a paramilitary force to end opposition marches and defend Chávez in Miraflores Palace by organizing them into brigades.