Hugo Chavez body to be embalmed for perpetual display

CARACAS, Venezuela—Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and now Hugo Chavez. The late leader’s supporters have put him on a pedestal long provided for the world’s great leftist revolutionaries by saying they will embalm his body for perpetual display.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s acting head of state, said on Thursday that Chavez’s body would be forever displayed inside a glass tomb at a military museum not far from the presidential palace from which the socialist firebrand ruled for 14 years.

“We have decided to prepare the body of our ‘comandante president,’ to embalm it so that it remains open for all time for the people. Just like Ho Chi Minh. Just like Lenin. Just like Mao Zedong,” Maduro said.

Other socialist or communist leaders given similar treatments after dying are Russian dictator Josef Stalin, though his body was later removed, and North Korea’s father-and-son leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. But it was the famous display of Soviet founder Lenin in Moscow’s Red Square in 1924 that inspired the custom among leftist leaders.

Maduro said Chavez’s body would be held in a “crystal urn” at the Museum of the Revolution, a stone’s throw from Miraflores presidential palace, but that first the body would lie in state for “at least” seven days at the museum.

5 continents

Leaders from five continents have arrived for the funeral to remember a man who captivated the attention of millions and polarized his nation.

The ceremony will mark a dramatic exit for a president who quarreled publicly with presidents and kings and ordered troops via live television to defend his country’s borders. It promises to also give his successors a prime opportunity to rally public support for continuing his political legacy.

The funeral also reflected a leader who tightly controlled all aspects of his government. Officials said it would begin at 11 a.m. local time, but didn’t specify where it would take place or what would actually happen.

For nearly two years, and even after his death, Chavez’s government has been similarly tight-lipped  with information about Chavez’s cancer, not indicating what it was.

Global evil

More than 30 heads of government, including Cuban President Raul Castro and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, were scheduled to attend.

US Rep. Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat, and former Rep. William Delahunt, a Democrat from Massachusetts, represented the United States, which Chavez often portrayed as a great global evil even as he sent the country billions of dollars in oil each year.

Before midnight on Thursday, National Assembly president Diosdado Cabello added yet more complications to the day’s schedule, appearing on national television to announce that Maduro would also be sworn in on Friday.

That drew criticism from former Supreme Court Judge Blanca Rosa Marmo, who said the government would be violating Venezuela’s Constitution, which specifies that the speaker of the National Assembly should assume the interim presidency if a president can’t be sworn in.

Political myth-making

The government has designated Maduro, Chavez’s hand-picked successor, as the official Socialist Party candidate in a special election that the Constitution requires be held within 30 days.

The funeral, for one, would likely be an important bid at continuing the Chavez legacy in what promises to become an extravagant exercise in political myth-making.

The government already launched that effort, organizing a six-mile-long funeral cortege on Wednesday that drew hundreds of thousands of mourners.  Chavez’s supporters compared him to Jesus Christ, and accused his critics of subversion.

Not everyone shared in the adoration of Chavez in death.

“Seriously? It’s not a joke?” asked street food vendor Juan Ferreira, 51, on hearing that the late president’s body would be put on permanent display. “Well, they can do what they like with Chavez’s body. What is important is that they leave us in peace and give us the tranquility to work, that they stop making all us Venezuelans fight.”

Sobbing humanity

A sea of sobbing humanity jammed the main military academy to see Chavez’s body, some waiting 10 hours under the twinkling stars and the searing Caribbean sun to file past his coffin.

Even as his supporters attempted to immortalize the dead president, a country exhausted from round-the-clock mourning began to look toward the future.

Some worried openly whether the nation’s anointed leaders are up to the task of filling his shoes.

Clear favorite

At the military academy, Chavez lay in a glass-covered coffin wearing the olive-green military uniform and red beret of his paratrooper days and looking gaunt and pale, his lips pressed together.

Asked when an election would be held, Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said only  the Constitution would be followed.

While Maduro is the clear favorite over likely opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, the nation is polarized between Chavez supporters and critics who hold him responsible for soaring inflation, a growing national debt and a jump in violent crime.

Sustaining power structure

Ana Teresa Sifontes, a 71-year-old housewife, said Chavez did some good things for the nation’s poor. But she said he had mismanaged the economy and showed more interest in regional grandstanding than governing.

Oscar Valles, a political analyst, said the perpetual display of Chavez’s body was about keeping his power structure alive, long after his death at age 58.

“Nicolas Maduro and his government is building an aura that makes it very difficult, I would say, that in the future, the opposition tries to promote an alternative to the government,” Valles said.