Chávez's coffin being transferred to the Cuartel de la Montaña amid crowds that filled the main avenues of Caracas on March 15, 2013. File photo.
By Eligio Rojas – Mar 5, 2023
A broken voice from then Vice President Nicolás Maduro announced to the world on March 5, 2013 that the current president, Hugo Chávez (Sabaneta 1954-Caracas 2013), had died at 4:25 pm that afternoon. With both hands resting on a wooden podium, dressed in a white guayabera, Maduro explained that he had been meeting with the Council of Ministers when they arrived at the Carlos Arvelo military hospital to receive “the most tragic and harsh news that we can convey to our people.”
The figure of Maduro was observed on television screens across Venezuela, with the then Foreign Minister Elías Jaua and Minister of Science Jorge Arreaza to his right. On Maduro’s left stood his wife, Cilia Flores, and Minister Ernesto Villegas. In the background were Jorge Rodríguez, Carmen Meléndez, Jacinto Pérez Arcay, and other key figures.
That brief address on radio and television ended with Maduro pronouncing with a raised fist, “Honor and glory to Hugo Chávez!” a gesture and phrase that others echoed.
Hours before Chávez’s death, Venezuela had announced the expulsion of two US air attachés; the plenary session of the Communist Party of China was taking place, and the conclave of cardinals meeting in the Vatican had not yet decided who would be the successor of the resigning Pope Benedict XVI.
At the time of his death, Chávez had just passed two weeks back from Cuba where he was treated for cancer. The president himself spoke for the first time about his disease on June 30, 2011, through a letter that he read to the cameras. Using medical terms, he recounted in detail how suspicions of cancer had first appeared and recounted his first treatments, including two operations on June 10 and 20 of that year.
In that public appearance, the discourse was not about infrastructure works, security plans, or oil production projections, but about “cytochemical, cytological, microbiological, and pathological anatomy tests that confirmed the existence of an abscessed tumor with the presence of cancer cells.”
That news wiped from newspapers and television stations the media coverage that had been, at the time, reporting on the acts of violence transpiring in the Rodeo prison (Miranda) where two gang members (El Yoifre and El Oriente) had kidnapped the prison population of 800 inmates.
Within hours of Chávez’s death, the BBC in London published a report entitled “Murió Chávez y el cielo se puso rojo,” translating to “Chávez died and the sky turned red,” a phrase picked up from Iraima Moscoso, a follower of the departed who had been interviewed in the Plaza Bolívar in Caracas. The world’s newspapers were not indifferent to the death of the Venezuelan president. “The disease defeats Chávez,” headlined El País (Spain), “Cancer kills Hugo Chávez at the age of 58,” wrote O Globo (Brazil), copying The Washington Post and distancing itself from the “Hasta siempre, comandante,” (“Until Forever, Commander”) published by Gramma, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba .
Venezuelan newspapers opened their headlines with the death of the president. “Hugo Chávez (1954-2013) titled El Nacional;” “New era without Chávez begins,” wrote El Universal, while Últimas Noticias printed “The people cry for Chávez,” a headline accompanied with a photo from the last electoral campaign of the late president capturing him with his eyes closed and wet from the rain.
The 21 months that Chávez suffered gave him a chance to compete in the 2012 presidential elections, where he won his third term on October 7 against opposition candidate Henrique Capriles.
Final hours
One day before the death of the then head of state, the Minister for Communication, Ernesto Villegas, read a statement reporting “a worsening of respiratory functioning” and “a new and severe infection.”
On Tuesday, March 5, there were two speeches by then Vice President Maduro, the first being around 2:00 pm when he reported the expulsion of a United States military attaché accused of promoting a military uprising. Maduro described in that moment President Chávez’s status as “the most difficult hours of the president’s illness.” The second address occurred around 5:00 pm with the announcement of his death.
Red tide
On Wednesday, March 6 of that year, 2013, the remains of the deceased president, called “Commander of the Revolution” by many, were transferred from the Carlos Arvelo military hospital in San Juan parish, Caracas to the Military Academy in Fort Tiuna. That seven-hour, 13-kilometer journey was packed with people who crowded the four avenues where the funeral procession passed.
In San Martín, las Fuerzas Armadas, La Victoria, and parts of the Roosevelt, Chávez’s followers waved flags and displayed posters published during his three presidential campaigns. This massive march was led by Maduro together with the attorney general, Cilia Flores, the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, and others.
Around three in the afternoon, the procession arrived at the Military Academy, where the 10-day funeral began, ending on March 15 when Chávez was taken to the the Cuartel de La Montaña (Mountain Barracks) in the 23 de Enero parish, in the presence of 55 heads of state and government.
The queues of men, women, and young people who lined up to see Chávez for the last time began around Plaza Las Tres Gracias. Urban cleaning workers would sweep the site while murmuring, “patria / patria / patria querida,” the chorus of the tanquista‘s hymn that Chávez sang on the night of December 8, 2013, where he announced his political testament that entrusted his followers to elect Nicolás Maduro as president.
Presidents Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), Mahmud Ahmadinejad (Iran), and Aleksander Lukashenko (Belarus) paraded among many others through the hall of the Military Academy, where the coffin with the remains of Chávez dressed in military uniform and a red beret was placed. Popular singers, athletes, artists, and businessmen queued separately in the interior spaces of the Academy.
State public television station Venezolana de Televisión periodically broadcasted the crowd of people that ran along Paseo Los Próceres to spend fractions of a second in front of Chávez. The cameras also panned to Elena de Chávez continuously weeping for her dead son.
On Friday, March 8, the second day of the funerals, Maduro went to the Federal Legislative Palace where the head of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, swore him in as interim president. In that special session, the new head of state reported that he was designating the Minister of Science, Jorge Arreaza, for the executive vice-presidency of the Republic. Within hours, the National Electoral Council announced that presidential elections would take place on April 14.
On Wednesday, March 13, the seventh day of the wake, the world heard the news that Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio would be the new pope of the Catholic Church, presented to humanity under the name of Francis.
That day, tears of the weeping people had already watered the seeds sown for Commander Chávez in the depths of their hearts, set to grow on indefinitely. It has been ten years of remembrance and love for he who returned the sense of homeland to an entire country.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/KZ
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