Images: Hugo Chávez Frias, Capilla Ardiente Vigil, Plaza Bolívar, Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela

[Will Gentieu]

 

  

Yesterday in Caracas, the mortal remains of President Hugo Chávez Frias were carried,  in closed casket, down a main thoroughfare called Los Próceres, to the National Military Academy where he will lay in state until Friday.

 

 

  

A service was read (beautifully) and then family, visiting dignitaries (Cristina Kirtchener/Argentina, Evo Morales/Bolivia, Pepe Mujica/Uruguay)  and high officials took turns standing as "guards of honor" at the open casket or "capilla ardiente". Later the general public was given a chance to file by the plain wooden flag draped coffin, which will continue with, no doubt, thousands of citizens visiting the site.

 

 

 

The scene was broadcast via traditional media outlets but also on large screens in the Plazas Bolívar all over Venezuela, via the recently initiated national system of satellite digital TV. One of Chávez's final initiatives before his death to bring interactive television to the most remote areas of the country.

 

 

 

As I needed some of the everyday things one needs to continue on with 'the life'; I caught a "por puesto" [shared car, costs 4 bolivares] and went downtown to the Plaza Bolívar, here in Puerto La Cruz...

More images from yesterday, Wednesday, PLC, Anzoátegui, Venezuela ~

 

 

 

Family, no helmets, as usual...

 

 

Hurricane of Love ~ photo mural...

 

 

 

She loved her poster...

 

    

 

...as well as her "Comandante" ~ note: t-shirt Tupamaro [a sometimes armed radical left group]. Guardia Nacional got a little nervous when I tried a closer look.

 

  

 

Tizana [fruit punch] diez bolo... ten bolivares

 

 

 

Tents with seating and large flat screen digital TV for viewing the proceedings taking place in Caracas. You can just see the satellite dish to the right.

 

 

 

Just... love at first sight... I must say,

 

 

 

...can't you see why?

 

 

 

And along with Elvis... yes indeed... Chávez lives!

 

 

 

¡Viva Chávez!

...y en paz descanse.

 

 

all images and text©2013 by Will Gentieu

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Los Que Mueren Por La Vida

Los que mueren por la vida
no pueden llamarse muertos
y a partir de este momento
es prohibido llorarlos
que se callen los redobles
en todos los campanarios
vamos "cumpa" carajo,
que para amanecer no hace falta gallinas
sino cantar de gallos.
Ellos no serán banderas para abrazarnos ellas,
y el que no pueda alzar
que abandone la pelea
no es tiempo de recular, ni de vivir de leyendas.

Canta, canta, compañero que tu voz sea disparo
que con las manos del pueblo no habrá canto desarmado
canta, canta, compañero que no calle tu canción
que tiene latir de bombo
color de vino ancestral
viene tu cueca de lucha
cabalgando un viento austral
canta, canta, compañero, que no calle tu canción.
Canta, canta, compañero, que tu voz sea disparo....

 

[cancion de Alí Primera]

 

 

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I would like to include the following excerpt (for those who might be interested) of a post I made [I've since taken it down] dated April 8,2012 on another blog, Open Salon (Inverted Interrobang) ; titled "La Lucha por La Locha". It is somewhat long but if you care to read it, it will give a good sense of what it has been like to live in Venezuela in these most recent times. Thank You for reading!

 

[April 8, 2012]

  

Well here I am, after a larga jornada or long day, trying to think of what to say. I turn on the TV and almost immediately comes the strains of the national anthem. Then a red blue and yellow ribbon with stars swirls in with a flourish and a ghostly horse appears to gallop heroically from right to left across the screen. It is a cadena nacional . Suddenly we are inside Miraflores and there sits the president before an enormous oval table made of warm dark polished wood. To either side of him sit six figures all of whom constitute part of his inner circle and each of whom, over the past decade, have been shuffled endlessly from one ministerial position to another.

How to translate cadena nacional ? As with so much in Venezuela, one is tempted to make a parody at the same time that one is transfixed by the whole production. It is a taking over, without any prior notice, of all forms of the media, private and state run, at once and therefore a chain, linking everyone together for a while. At best it is informative with a minimum of intrusion. At its worst, invasive and all pervasive, chaining you to the propaganda of the moment with little choice but to wait it out or find something else to do.

Before cell phones and the internet became widely available in Venezuela and during the big early battles between the government and the opposition, the "cadena" was particularly provocative. Chávez became very adept at interrupting anything he considered bourgeois, even if the average working man and women might also be disturbed by the interruption. In the 8th inning of a hotly contested baseball game involving teams owned or considered to be opposition (Los Liones de Caracas, for example, owned by Cisneros). During soccer matches with Spanish League teams like Barcelona or Real Madrid. During Hollywood blockbuster type movies on Saturday or Sunday night, all could fall victim to the unforeseen lash of the chain or cadena . The appearance of the cadena nacional as implemented by Chávez really launched the DVD revolution here, and not long after, cable and direct TV. And finally, the internet. People have so assimilated it now, that the channel changes almost automatically. One never knows at the outset if it will last 15 minutes or six hours. Chávez speaking without a teleprompter for six or more hours, seriously. I shall stop now, but will say I myself, at times, have been held captive by these "cadenas", even moved, to hear someone holding the office of the presidency speaking so frankly, so plainly about things. But I have also seen the potential for abuse.

I have seen fisherman with family in tow shouting at the figure of Chávez on the TV screen on the street in front of a hamburger kiosk and indigent woman weeping quietly enthralled as Chávez sings some song or another, perhaps the national anthem. I shall stop now... but tonight he is in fine form. Red t-shirt with blue overshirt, the colors he wears when he wants to project neutrality. He is crisp, clear eyed, focused and centered. He's calm, not manic. He is doing his usual masterful job of mixing all the heightened and smoldering elements of revolutionary political life to the fore. In the early days a popular refrain arose that went "Chávez los tiene locos". A phrase that not only summed up the effect that he had on his opponents, who he seemed to be able to make keep chasing their own tails no matter what they dreamed up to do, or how dim and slow witted they hopelessly projected him to be, in their own minds. Chávez los tiene locos the weight and measure of that phrase is as true an expression as I could imagine, with its sparse and direct simplicity, of how the experience of experiencing this country, Venezuela, actually is. Here, one laughs even as one weeps; one shakes ones head in affirmation even as the fist shakes in agitation. Here the dead speak from the trees in the faces of white owls and brown buhos, and they are buried but not completely. OK..............

Chávez has been conducting a very orderly meeting. No conflict here on camera, not before the sacred lens. Between crisp expositions of projects, plans and accomplishments, running down the numbers and salubrious ministerial smiles, come brief but pithy excoriations of anyone and everyone in the opposition. Seasoned listeners can almost repeat the couplets verbatim. The words ¡oligarcas and vendepatrias!¡lacayos del imperio! are spit dryly and repeatedly from his lips. That said, the session seems very sober, not much joking or impromptu operatic singing as he is wont to do.

Throughout he has stated flatly, what has become a common refrain, that never again would the opposition come to occupy the palace of Miraflores, the residence of the president. This sets the stage for a short discourse on the April 2002 coup which will be having its 10th aniversary next week. The government will be playing and replaying it to the max of course, in this make or break election year. Chávez---who has had a difficult relationship with the establishment Catholic hierarchy in Venezuela, and used that to a certain advantage in the early days, when he was busy amplifying the indigenous and later, black, or if you prefer, afro caribbean aspects of his political image---has recently redoubled his faith in his Saviour Jesus Cristo . Cancer has him worried and I don't blame him at all, nor fault him. And so, with the painted gaze of Simón Bolívar himself looming over his shoulder, he sits facing the camera with a small but quite solid looking silver crucifix clutched in the palm of his left hand, and he recounts the story of a long night's vigil and uncertain early dawn, captive on the remote military island of La Orchila (just to the south and east of the archipelago of Los Roques). Of how he waited in solitary, clutching that same crucifix among fellow soldiers, now his captors, men (and women) he thought had all turned against him.

As dawn came he heard a sudden commotion, and the shiff and cock of someone preparing a rifle round. And then he heard a lone but firm voice speak out and make the declaration that if anyone took the life of this man, Hugo Chávez, they would have to shoot everyone else in Venezuela as well. Chávez is in his scene fully and completely. Knowing well he has everyone, cabinet ministers and television viewers alike enthralled. He is mixing and wielding the triple edged sword of Damocles: malignant cancer, benign impassioned faith and the ghostly specter of the perversely baptized black arts and treachery that always lie just beneath the surface of political life.

He concludes with the popular saying that was a direct result of the coup itself, "cada once tiene su trece" or "every eleven has its thirteen". Meaning that, even though Chávez was plucked from his presidency and spirited to a remote island, never to return, on the eleventh, still, just like the Phoenix, there he was again, brought back to power and life by the general populace on the thirteenth.

Perfectly Venezuelan. The head shakes in every direction, and one just has to sit down in perplexed wonder. Christ! He ends the show by reading a poem and politely blowing the world a kiss! Gotta love this guy, even if you hate him and he drives you crazy, and even if he doesn't and you totally agree with him.

I will continue to answer each of you, poco a poco .

"Por ahora..." (!)

Saludos a todos y todas ~

Inverted Interrobang (W.Gentieu) April 8, 2012 [Open Salon]

 

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[Will Gentieu]

Poet I am... not a journalist! Anyway, doing my best here... comments welcome.

[Will Gentieu]

Well, it-s Venezuela cranking up to full boogy tilt, like when I first came here 15 years + ago. President [in charge] Nicolás Maduro just announced a few minutes ago that the mortal remains of Chávez would be embalmed and placed for permanent viewing in a crystal casket,like (in his own words) Ho Chi Minh and Lenín... (!) in the "Museum of the Revolution" inside the Military Academy, Caracas.

Some within the government had been suggesting he be placed in the National Pantheon; in strict contravention with the constitution, which stipulates a waiting period of 25 years before that could happen.

Several polemical, provocative statements have already been made by officials, military and civil, within the government which certainly have given pause for thought about their intentions, after this period of mourning, homage, and funeral service has passed.

It must be said here, that all the members of the opposition, and their people in the street, which *cannot* be said to number less than half of the country, have behaved with absolute cordiality, and peace.