HUGO R. CHAVEZ, THE MORNING
AFTER
A
|
lthough regarded
as an epicenter for Cuban politics and
subsequently their Latin American
counterparts, the forty-old Cuban rendezvous, Versailles Café was not as usual attended on this morning of 6 March by the crowd of hot times, when
something was boiling in the Caribbean island.
Few peoples were talking about the passing of the Castroist ally, the Venezuelan
Hugo Rafael Chavez. Pronounced dead at the age of 58, a few days
after undergoing surgery in Cuba, Hugo R. Chavez passed away at the eve of
being sworn in for a new 6-year term. Having fought death unsuccessfully,
Chavez seemed to have not survived his anti-imperialism battle to which he has dedicated
his life.
“That’s the
passing of a human being” mourned an
Italian woman , Claudia Sevenini, living in los Angeles. Roberto Sanchez, a 30-year-old lawyer from
Miami, thinks the wind of change is bowling, and anyone has to wait before any
commitment. Inside Versailles which starts to gather clients and acquainted
people coming for news, there is a kind of eerie silence as if something would soon
show up. A 72-year old Cuban whispers that
it is better to wait, but outside, an old engineer apparently from Batista’s
time carries a pancarte reading: murio Chavez.. le toca a Raoulito. Santiago
Portal involved in environment policy, is angry even after the Venezuelan
leader’ passing who was plotting with Iran
terrorist action against America, M. Portal concludes.
But,
overseas, the death of Chavez triggered emotion and anger. In Santo Domingo,
told Pouchy Mathieu Durandis, a Haitian student, Dominicans were crying. The same
went somewhere in LA where Chavez was as well loved and disliked. Chavez had emerged in the late 90s as a leader coming from darkness , like Alejandro Toledo in Peru, Evo Morales from Bolivia and Lula from Brazil. Most of these leaders were lured by socialism going
as far as mixing romantic ideals and politics. Unfortunately since Zapata times, this dreamy
anti-Americanism had vanished not without permeating the ambiguous relationship between America and
Latin countries south to the Rio Grande.
Such uncertainties
still persist even when the Hispanic vote were so instrumental in the victory of Barrack Obama
for a second term in last November. The late Chavez is gone now, gone probably with
the wind as in the novel of Margaret Mitchel despite a better life for the marginalized
and needy for which a dying Chavez affirms to have scarified his life.
His legacy of anti-imperialism remains however
mixed with the Venezuelan’s quality of life having been improved at the third-fastest pace in the world, according to a UN index.
