“The First Fighter”: What Do We Know About the First Lady of Venezuela?
Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro was born on October 15, 1956, in the city of Tinacío, in central Venezuela, according to media outlets such as Al Jazeera and CNN, and grew up in the working-class neighborhoods of western Caracas. She graduated in law from the University of Santa María in Caracas, specializing in labor and criminal law.
Her first marriage was to Walter Ramón Gavidia Rodríguez, with whom she had three children; however, the marriage ended in divorce. There is no precise information about her children. Some reports indicate that they generally remain out of the political arena.
Flores married Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in July 2013 and has since been known as the First Lady and First Fighter of Venezuela.
Maduro announced on July 16, 2013, that he had legally and officially registered his marriage to his wife, Ms. Flores, after nearly 20 years of marriage, in a small family ceremony.
Maduro said on a live television program on that date: “I want to inform you that yesterday, July 15 – Flores and I legalized what existed between us through the laws of the republic and we got married, and our wedding sermon was read by Jorge Rodríguez, mayor of the Libertador region of Caracas.”
He added: “We were together and we were united with faith in God and for the sake of God and family, but we decided to legalize our previous union in accordance with the constitution of our country after having the official conditions that the mayor wanted.”
The Venezuelan president clarified: “We handed over our documents to the mayor, and after our documents were reviewed, we got married in a small family ceremony with our children and grandchildren.”
Stating that registering this marriage is in line with strengthening and solidifying the family in Venezuelan society and encouraging everyone to do so, Maduro added, “How good it is to start building a homeland from home.”
The Venezuelan president, who was 50 years old at the time, and Flores, who was 60, did not have any children together despite their 20-year marriage, but both had several children from previous marriages.
The Spanish news agency Efe wrote in the aforementioned report: By registering this marriage, Maduro has now fulfilled one of his election promises, since he had said during the election campaign that he would make his marriage official if he won the presidential election.
On that date, and in his speech after registering the marriage, Maduro had repeated several times that Flores was not the first lady of Venezuela, but the country’s “first woman fighter.” Efe recalled that Venezuela had not had a first lady for 10 years, since Chavez divorced his second wife, until that date (July 2013).