|
|
Venezuela called off public New Year’s Eve festivities yesterday and social media sizzled with worry after the government said cancer-stricken President Hugo Chavez had taken a turn for the worse.
The streets of Caracas were quiet as frontpage headlines relayed that Chavez had developed “new complications” from a respiratory infection after undergoing his fourth cancer-related surgery on December 11 in Havana.
His vice-president and political heir, Nicolas Maduro, broke the news from Havana on Sunday, saying the condition of the Venezuelan leader was delicate and that he faced an uphill battle.
For many Venezuelans, a holiday season without their ubiquitous comandante just wasn’t the same.
“I do not know what will happen to Chavez, but we have never had a Christmas like this. Only God knows what will happen with him and with us,” said 70-year-old retiree Miguel Enrique as he prepared to attend Mass.
Authorities canceled a New Year’s eve concert in a downtown plaza and Information Minister Ernesto Villegas urged “families in Caracas and Venezuela in general to ring in the New Year at home, praying and expressing hope for the health” of Chavez.
On Twitter, which is extremely popular here, hashtags translating into expressions such as “Chavez will live and conquer” and “I love Chavez” were all the rage.
A person who signed as NeriColmenares described the loquacious former paratrooper in practically messianic terms.
“Chavez will live and will conquer because he is a man who turned into a nation, into spirit, into struggle. He has the power to confront all the torments of life,” this person wrote.
But Chavez is also deeply polarising, even though he has ruled for nearly 14 years, and his detractors spoke out too.
“I do not want Chavez to die. We would look really bad as a country if a disease had to do our job of removing him from power,” one Enrique Vasquez wrote.
In his televised announcement on Sunday from Havana, Maduro spoke alongside one of Chavez’s daughters, Rosa Virginia.
Hours later Villegas, the information minister, went on TV to deny rumours circulating on social media that Chavez had in fact already died: “Do you think the daughter could have sat there, so peacefully, during that appearance if that were the case?”