The most complex part of the inheritance left by Hugo Chávez are the relations between Venezuela and Cuba. The existing ones were built on the strange emotional, political and ideological subordination of the Bolivarian leader to Fidel Castro and do not respond to the interests or preferences of the Venezuelans.
President Hugo Chávez’s Cuban doctors have already told him that he will most likely not be alive by October’s elections. It’s not a certainty but a statistical estimate. People his age who are affected by the aggressive cancer that afflicts him, complicated by the generalized metastasis that has spread, usually have only a few months to live. It is only a macabre average.
Today, amorality is a Latin American trait. Those who in the past justly criticized the United States for embracing dictators during the Cold War and denying abroad the principles and values it upheld inside its borders are doing just that.
Hundreds of millions of people watched the pope in Cuba, heard his utterings and observed what happened. Naturally, each one of those witnesses perceived the visit differently. What’s interesting now is to find out what the perception was among the pope and his Vatican entourage.
In 1998, John Paul II went to Cuba. At the time, practically a generation ago, Fidel Castro ruled and the situation, as always, was very critical. John Paul II was the first pope ever to visit the island, and the whole of society welcomed him with a mixture of illusion and fear.
The Cuban government takes it for granted that Hugo Chávez will die soon. A diplomat posted to Cuba told me so, reciting some well-known verses by Martí: “The palace is in mourning and on the throne the King weeps; / the King’s son has died, / the King has lost his son.”
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