What is Maduro’s legacy going to be among leftists?
My feelings are that he was a pretty lousy socialist but his demise should be seen as a cautionary tale for why you shouldn’t allow dissent when you are so vulnerable to American invasion. Chavez’s biggest mistake is that he kept Venezuela a Federal presidential republic instead of a one-party-state like Cuba just so he could look “Democratic” to liberal countries which only allowed American to fund opposition parties.
He'll be remembered better than he really deserves because of America's actions.
Chavez's biggest mistakes lie in economic management, not in treatment of the opposition. Maduro has been harder on the opposition and the practical differences are marginal. America could just have easily kidnapped the head of a one-party state and Trump is openly unenthusiastic about appointing the Venezuelan opposition leadership to run the country. If the world superpower wants to fuck with you and you don't have another superpower behind you, you are ultimately fucked.
But economic mismanagement is an unforced error. Venezuela is sufficiently mismanaged that either a move to more central planning or a move to a more market-oriented economy would improve economic performance. This mismanagement isn't even a particularly sympathetic short term mistake like that of Allende (who, had he lived, would've probably lost re-election and gone down as a bungler but was elevated to a Martyr because of his tragic and unnecessary death.), Maduro has been in power for a long time. If he was going to improve things, he'd have done it by now. "US sanctions and sabotage!" can only get you so far. Cuba got it much worse than Venezuela and has a much better functioning economy. If he isn't going to improve things, then you can hardly imagine that all of the opposition comes from Langley.
But maybe we shouldn't be too harsh. Venezuela is a nation of mismanagement. The capitalist parties mismanaged things so badly that people elected Chavez, Chavez did okay at first and then got more rocky after the incompetently mismanaged 2002 coup attempt, then things have only been mismanaged further. This is compounded by being cursed with oil, a resource that ultimately destroyed even the United Kingdom, a resource that no-less than the Venezuelan co-founder of OPEC described thus:
>Ten years from now, twenty years from now, you will see, oil will bring us ruin… It is the devil's excrement
tl;dr A beginner tier player tried extra hard-mode and lost in a surprising enough way that people will remember him.
Selfish loser who was not up to the task and only added to the tally of socialism's failures, would still cheer if he bust out of prison and killed Trump with a deadly karate chop