More than 80% of those who have left Venezuela are living in Latin America and the Caribbean, in countries which often already struggle to provide health and education to their own nationals.

In 2017, it was also reported that Musk was backing a venture called Neuralink, which intends to create devices to be implanted in the human brain and help people merge with software.

Although the central bank had stopped releasing statistics, it was leaked that the bank had measured an 18.6 percent drop in Venezuela’s GDP for 2016, along with an inflation rate of 800 percent. After beginning the century with one of South America’s most-thriving economies, Venezuela saw its economy devolve into one of the continent’s worst-performing, with shortages of food and medicine growing increasingly acute.

Those talks initially bore fruit, with the cessation of street protests and the Maduro government’s release of a handful of jailed activists. By December, however, the talks had broken down, as Maduro dragged his feet on releasing dozens of other political prisoners and refused to allow the delivery of foreign humanitarian aid, which would have signaled official acknowledgement that the country was in crisis.

Venezuela has been in the grip of an economic crisis for years now with hyperinflation one of the main problems.

In April 2019, the US Department of State alleged that Venezuela, "led by Nicolas Maduro, has consistently violated the human rights and dignity of its citizens" and "driven a once prosperous nation into economic ruin with his authoritarian rule" and that "Maduro's thugs have engaged in extra-judicial killings and torture, taken political prisoners, and severely restricted freedom of speech, all in a brutal effort to retain power.

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On Monday afternoon, Mr. Bolsonaro also called the defense minister to the presidential offices, according to a military spokesman. The defense minister had questioned the security of Brazil’s election system this year, but after election officials made changes to some tests of the voting machines, military leaders suggested that they were comfortable with the system’s security.

“I will govern for 215 million Brazilians and not just for those who voted for me,” he said. “There are not two Brazils. We are one country, one people, one great nation.”

Porras (Maduro's former chief of staff) said in 2019 that Maduro "delivered practically nothing in terms of public policy, in terms of direction" during his first term because, in Porras' opinion, "he does not have a clear vision for the country. He is very much focused on consolidating his power among his own peers in Chavismo and much less on exercising or implementing a strategic vision for the country.

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There were the huge queues at polling stations, but only tiny amounts of people being let in at one time.

"I'm never hugely convinced that he knows what he wants to do tomorrow," says journalist Chris Stokel-Walker. "He very much leads by instinct."

Maduro became Venezuela’s interim president in March 2013 after the death of Hugo Chávez, whose homespun charm earned him the affection and votes of millions.