Mourners escort Chavez's coffin
LUIS CAMACHO / AFP / Getty ImagesMourners escort Chavez's coffin
Twitter
Google+
LinkedIn
Email
Comments
More
Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: The secrecy surrounding the death of Hugo Chavez has left a vacuum that is speedily being filled with wild rumours and speculation.
The Venezuelan president had not been seen in public this year since his return from Havana, where he was being treated for cancer. Indeed, some suspect he died in Cuba and his body was quickly flown back to Caracas.
Their paranoia has been given additional fuel by Nicolas Maduro, his vice-president and expected successor. Speaking immediately after Chavez’s death was announced, he pointed the finger at the opposition and that favourite whipping boy, the United States, reports Jonathan Watts for The Guardian.
As well as expelling a U.S. airforce attaché accused of trying to foment a military plot, [Maduro] accused imperial enemies – a term usually associated with the U.S. – of poisoning Chavez. “We have no doubt that commander Chavez was attacked with this illness,†Maduro said, echoing a charge first made by the former president himself. “The old enemies of our fatherland looked for a way to harm his health.â€
He said he would launch an investigation, but the U.S. has denied the poisoning and plotting accusations.
The claims were “absurd,†responded a State Department spokesman.
It wouldn’t be the first time the Venezuelan government has claimed a foreign plot could be behind the leader’s cancer, CNN noted.
Chavez made the assertion himself in 2011, saying at a military event in Caracas that he wondered whether the United States could be infecting Latin American leaders with the illness.
However, given the Central Intelligence Agency’s zany plans to assassinate Cuba’s Fidel Castro with poisoned cigars and exploding seashells when he was scuba diving, perhaps the Venezuelan was right to be paranoid.
Donna Bowater at The Daily Telegraph picks up on the possibility Chavez died in Cuba.
[A]ccording to claims reported by Spanish newspaper ABC, the 58-year-old was forced to return to Cuba for emergency treatment on Friday after his condition worsened.
Unnamed and unsupported sources within the president’s medical team reportedly leaked information to the newspaper to suggest Chavez was secretly moved back to a hospital in Cuba where he eventually died [Tuesday] morning.
It was claimed he left Venezuela after a new tumour was detected and medical resources were insufficient to treat him …
Many observers believed he died some days, or even weeks, ago while post-Chavez plans were put into place.
In Moscow, Gennady Zyuganov, leader of Russia’s Communist party, is among those who believe Chavez’s death was the result of unspecified external forces, according to the Russian newspaper Ria Novosti.
“How did it happen that six leaders of Latin American countries which had criticized U.S. policies and tried to create an influential alliance in order to be independent and sovereign states, fell ill simultaneously with the same disease?†Zyuganov said in comments carried by Russian state television.
“In my view, this was far from a coincidence,†said Zyuganov, the head of Russia’s second-largest political party. He urged an investigation under “international control†into Chavez’s death.
Among the other leftwing Latin America leaders diagnosed with cancer are Brazil’s current president, Dilma Rousseff, Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo, and the former Brazilian leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Leaping into the blame game, Joel Hirst at Fox News Latino has a novel twist: he points the finger at Chavez’s Cuban doctors.
[T]he velocity at which the strongman … deteriorated is due in no small part to the incompetence of the Cuban doctors at Cimeq, the hospital of choice for the communist party leaders.
According to Dr. Jose Marquina, who has become well known for having the only information on the Venezuelan president’s condition that has proved over time to be accurate, the Cuban doctors are at least partially at fault for the Venezuelan leader’s imminent demise. He has said that the Cubans misdiagnosed the cancer, treating Chavez with chemotherapy and other treatments designed for the wrong type of cancer. This made the disease resistant and impossible to treat, while causing other complications which affected not only Chavez’s life expectancy but also the quality of what life remained.
Of course, Chavez’s death is a disaster for Communist Cuba, which has been propped up by the 115,000 barrels of oil a day it receives from Caracas. Venezuela also pays for tens of thousands of Cuban doctors and sports trainers who are deployed all over Latin America. In all, it’s a subvention worth an estimated $5-billion.
It remains to be seen whether the subsidies will continue.
compiled by Araminta Wordsworth
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
:
