page_title: Juan Guaidó
section_title: Early life and education
hierarchical_section_title: Juan Guaidó / Early life and education
caption_attribution_description: Español: Mientras el presidente encargado de Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, presentaba su hoja de ruta, llamada "Plan país", para restaurar la democracia, su casa fue allanada por miembros de la Policía Nacional, FAES. English: Juan Guaidó with his wife and his daughter after announcing Plan País and his family home was surrounded by Special Forces officials.
context_page_description: Juan Gerardo Guaidó Márquez is a Venezuelan politician, a former member of the social-democratic Popular Will party, federal deputy to the National Assembly representing the state of Vargas. On 23 January 2019, Guaidó and the National Assembly declared he was acting President of Venezuela, starting the Venezuelan presidential crisis by challenging Nicolás Maduro's presidency.
  Guaidó's political career began when he emerged as a student leader in the 2007 Venezuelan protests. He then helped found the Popular Will party with Leopoldo López in 2009, and was elected to be an alternate deputy in the National Assembly one year later in 2010. In 2015, Guaidó was elected as a full-seat deputy. Following a protocol to annually rotate the position of President of the National Assembly among political parties, Popular Will nominated Guaidó for the position in 2019.
  Guaidó has been a key figure in the Venezuelan presidential crisis, which began when the National Assembly, which considered the 2018 Venezuelan presidential election illegitimate, refused to recognize the inauguration of Nicolas Maduro to a second presidential term on 10 January 2019.
context_section_description: Guaidó was born on 28 July 1983. Part of a large family and of "modest" origins, he was raised in a middle-class home in the outskirts of La Guaira; his parents are Wilmer and Norka. His father was an airline pilot and his mother, a teacher. One grandfather was a sergeant of the Venezuelan National Guard while another grandfather was a captain in the Venezuelan Navy. His parents divorced when he was at a young age, with his father emigrating to the Canary Islands and working as a taxi driver.
  Guaidó lived through the 1999 Vargas tragedy which killed some of his friends while also destroying his school and home, leaving him and his family homeless. The tragedy, according to his colleagues, influenced his political views after the then-new government of Hugo Chávez allegedly provided ineffective response to the disaster. He said, "I saw that if I wanted a better future for my country I had to roll up my sleeves and give my life to public service."
  He and his family stayed in a makeshift home in Caracas where he earned his high school diploma in 2000. Guaidó would continue to live in Caracas where he would earn his undergraduate degree in 2007 in industrial engineering from Andrés Bello Catholic University. He also participated in two postgraduate programs of public administration in Caracas: at the UCAB with the partnership of the George Washington University and at the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración.
  He is married to Fabiana Rosales, a journalist, and they have one daughter.
caption: Juan Guaidó with his wife and his daughter after he denounced the presence of FAES forces outside his family home
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