Venezuelans pay last respects to Chavez
2013-03-07 18:58
Caracas - A huge line of Venezuelans filed past the
remains of late president Hugo Chavez on Thursday, crying, making the sign of
the cross and giving military salutes as an era ended and uncertain elections
loomed in the oil-rich nation.
Chavez lay in state in a half-open casket in the Caracas
military academy, with a serene face, wearing olive green military fatigues, a
black tie and the iconic red beret that became a symbol of his 14-year
socialist revolution.
Thousands of people stood in line through the night
outside the academy to see the former paratrooper whose oil-funded socialism
earned him friends and foes at home and abroad.
"He's in there, but my comandate is immortal,"
said Saul Mantano, a 49-year-old salesman with a Chavez hat and a Venezuelan
flag who saw the half-open casket.
"I didn't want to see him dead, but it's a reality
now."
The country gave Chavez a rousing send-off through the
streets of Caracas on Wednesday, one day after he lost his battle with cancer
at the age of 58, with a sea of people in red shirts throwing flowers on his
coffin.
At the front of the procession was his chosen successor,
Vice President Nicolas Maduro, the interim leader who walked the seven-hour
march to the academy and is now on a path to elections in the next 30 days.
His mentor now lay in state in a half-opened casket in
the hall of the academy where he found his political calling, inspiring the
former colonel to lead a failed coup in 1992 before being elected in 1998.
"Maduro is already our president. It's what Chavez
wanted and we will vote for him when elections come," said a mourner,
Margarita Martinez.
Four guards and four tall candelabras flanked the coffin
after a ceremony late on Wednesday with his tearful mother, three daughters and
son, and a crowd of aides as well as the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia and
Uruguay, close allies.
The crowd applauded and then chanted "Chavez lives,
the struggle goes on!" before the doors opened to the public, which will
get to see him until a state funeral on Friday.
"His face was beautiful. We will remember him the
way he was, the way he lived," Yelitze Santaella, governor of Monagas
state, told AFP after seeing the body.
A blow to his supporters
Chavez's death on Tuesday was a blow to his supporters
and to the alliance of left-wing Latin American powers, and it has plunged his
Opec member nation into uncertainty.
Maduro, 50, has now taken the mantle of Chavismo, an
ideology that poured the nation's oil riches into social programmes, and will
likely face off in elections against opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who
lost to Chavez in the October election.
Under Chavez, Venezuela's oil wealth has underwritten the
Castro brothers' communist rule in Cuba, and he repeatedly courted
confrontation with Washington by cozying up to anti-Western governments in
Russia, Syria and Iran.
His death brought hundreds of thousands of supporters to
the streets of Caracas, throwing flowers on his casket and shouting, "I
love you Chavez," for the man whose revolution delighted the poor and
infuriated the wealthy.
But in a country divided by Chavez's populist style, not
everyone agreed on his legacy, with opposition supporters in better-off neighbourhoods
still angry.
"Hate and division was the only thing that he
spread," 28-year-old computer programmer Jose Mendoza told AFP in an
eastern Caracas opposition bastion.
"They want to make him a martyr. It made me
laugh."
Some of Chavez's closest Latin American allies have
already arrived here ahead of the state funeral, including Bolivian President
Evo Morales, Argentine President Cristina Kirchner and Uruguay's Jose Mujica.
Russia, China and Iran hailed Chavez - who had cultivated
close ties with foes of the West as a way of thumbing his nose at Washington -
as a great leader, with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad heading to the funeral.
Venezuela's closest ally, Cuba, declared its own
three-day mourning period and dubbed Chavez a "true son" of
revolutionary icon Fidel Castro.
Several other Latin American countries followed suit.
A senior US official said the United States - denounced
by Chavez as "the empire" - hopes to forge a "positive
relationship" with Venezuela once the upheaval of Chavez's death is over.
Maduro has picked up on Chavez's anti-US rhetoric,
expelling two US military attaches after earlier accusing Venezuela's enemies
of somehow causing the president's cancer.
