BOGOTA -- It has been two months since Venezuelans have seen or heard their ailing president. But the administration insists that the cancer-stricken comandante is firmly in control of Latin America’s fourth-largest economy, even if he is incommunicado in a Cuban hospital.

On Friday — hours before the nation was headed into a four-day holiday for carnival — the government announced it was devaluing the currency by 46.5 percent to 6.3 bolivares to the dollar. The move was needed but is likely to be unpopular as it will jack up prices in a country heavily reliant on imports. It’s also unclear how much of a difference it will make: Dollars are so scarce in Venezuela that most people are forced to turn to the black market, where greenbacks fetch three to four times the official rate.

The devaluation comes almost two months after President Hugo Chávez, 58, traveled to Havana for a fourth round of cancer surgery. The administration says he is on the mend, but doubts persist. Since he climbed the steps to the presidential aircraft Dec. 10, the usually garrulous leader has been silent. The only proof of life is an occasional signature that the administration puts on display.

On Friday, Vice President Nicolás Maduro said he had met with Chávez in Cuba and that the leader wanted to send the nation a message: “That we need to make a great effort to keep up the economic growth.”

Chávez’s absence seems to have emboldened his allies. In the past week, Maduro and National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello have gone on the attack, accusing their political foes of plotting their assassination, conspiring with foreign powers, and corruption.

“These unprecedented attacks are the product of the institutional crisis: It has been more than 60 days since we’ve known anything about the president of the republic,” Gustavo Marcano, the national coordinator of the opposition party First Justice, told The Miami Herald. “They’re trying to divide the opposition.”

Marcano has been at the eye of the storm. At a raucous congressional session Tuesday, Cabello displayed oversized checks and payroll statements he said were proof that Marcano and his First Justice colleague Richard Mardo are corrupt.

“This is nothing personal,” Cabello said. “This is an accusation against a mafia organization, a cartel that has used politics to do business.”

Mardo and Marcano say the accusations are trumped up and that their real target is Miranda Gov. Henrique Capriles, one of the founders of First Justice, who ran against Chávez in October.

If the president were to step down or die, it would trigger new elections within 30 days, and many see Capriles, 40, as the most likely challenger to take on a Chávez successor.

“We all know that they’re not after Mardo or Marcano,” Capriles said this week. “They’re coming after me.”

New elections would be a challenge for an opposition that has fared poorly in recent national and local races. But the administration is facing obstacles, too, including soaring inflation, food shortages and a terrifying crime rate. Friday’s devaluation is likely to add to the sense of economic malaise.

Chávez has managed to overcome those problems — and win an additional six-year term — largely due to his connection with the masses and charisma, said Herbert Koeneke, a political science professor at Caracas’ Simon Bolivar University. But Maduro doesn’t have those charms and seems to be ramping up the rhetoric to compensate, he said.