Maduro studies religion and meets clergy behind bars
By ANATOLY KURMANAEV, JONAH E. BROMWICH and TYLER PAGER
In less than a year since U.S. forces ousted and captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, his country has charted a head-spinning path, shifting from adversary to a protectorate of the United States.
Stuck in a New York City jail, Maduro himself has embarked on a journey of the spirit. Several people familiar with his circumstances and experiences in jail, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press, said the former president had been devoting his ample spare time to studying religious and philosophical texts.
Maduro, who has a long-standing interest in spirituality, has also met with prison chaplains, including a priest and a rabbi.
Maduro has said publicly that he has Jewish heritage. He has described himself as a descendant of a Sephardic Jewish community that immigrated from the Dutch Antilles to Venezuela sometime last century. But people close to Maduro said he had not expressed interest in Judaism until his capture.
When Maduro was president, the country experienced mass food shortages. He has been charged with ordering the torture of detainees, including American citizens, as he sought to hold on to power. His legal team declined to comment for this article.
He courted the votes of Venezuela’s rapidly growing constituency of evangelical Christians. A practicing Catholic, he developed a close relationship with a priest who professed his socialist ideology. Maduro; his wife, Cilia Flores; and his successor, Delcy Rodríguez, were also followers of a late Indian mystical guru, Sathya Sai Baba.
His interest in the divine appears to have only deepened during his confinement in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center. The jail holds about 1,300 inmates and for years has been plagued by problems including violence and staffing shortages.
He is housed in a unit that has been home to a number of high-profile prisoners, including Sean Combs, Sam Bankman-Fried and Luigi Mangione. Maduro spends most of his time reading, including the Bible and the Quran, the people familiar with Maduro’s circumstances in jail said. (The New Yorker previously reported about Maduro’s Bible-reading practice.)
Maduro, 63, is scheduled to go on trial next year on accusations of facilitating the trafficking of thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States, among other charges. His wife, Flores, 70, was charged in the same indictment.
After years of pressuring Maduro to leave power, President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. military to capture the Venezuelan leader in an operation on Jan. 3. Special Forces soldiers flew into Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, at night, took out Maduro’s guards and arrested the leader and his wife. She is also being held at the Brooklyn detention center, though unlike Maduro, she is being housed with the general population. Both have pleaded not guilty to the charges against them.
It is unclear if Maduro’s interest in Judaism is driven primarily by spiritual or intellectual interests.
But the connection between the Jewish religion and state and Latin American political elites is nothing new. Argentine President Javier Milei is an assiduous student of the Torah, and he visits Israel regularly. Several other right-wing Latin American leaders, including Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, have formed close political ties with Israel without commenting publicly on the state religion.
While in jail, Maduro has also lost a lot of weight, the people familiar with his time there said. In recent years, he was on a diet and, until his capture, adhered to the so-called Paleo diet, which seeks to recreate the Stone Age eating patterns.
But inadequate food quality in prison appears to have quickened his weight loss, two people familiar with his eating habits said. The former president has been notably thinner and complaining about food in recent months, they added.
The health of Flores, the former Venezuelan first lady, appears to be more precarious.
According to court documents, Flores, who had been recovering from a hysterectomy when captured in January, has been prescribed nitroglycerin for chest pains and has lost two teeth and more than 25 pounds.
She was held in solitary confinement for three months and, after she was moved to the general population, was harmed by the effects of pepper spray that was used to break up a fight between inmates.
Her legal team believes she may have had a minor heart attack in July. She sleeps three to four hours a day.
Flores disclosed the above information while applying for release, a motion that was denied by the judge presiding over the case at the time, Alvin K. Hellerstein. Hellerstein died at age 92 last month, and another judge, Analisa Torres, has taken over the case.
