Chavez’s body carried back ‘home’ to military academy
9 March 2013 5:18 AM IST
Hugo Chavez has been carried back to the military academy where he started his army career, his flag-draped coffin lying in state in the echoing halls until Friday’s (8 March) funeral.
As a band played the hymn from his first battalion, a long ribbon of tearful mourners numbering in the hundreds of thousands bid farewell to the larger-than-life leader after a procession carried his casket through Caracas. With the entire government, including anointed successor Nicolas Maduro, caught up in the seven-hour procession, there were few answers to the most pressing question facing the country - the timing of a presidential election that must be called within a month.
Generations of Venezuelans, many dressed in the red of Chavez’s socialist party, filled the capital’s streets to remember the man who dominated their country for 14 years before succumbing to cancer on Tuesday afternoon.
Chavez’s coffin made its way through the crowds atop an open hearse on an eight-kilometer journey that wound through the city’s north and southeast, into many of the poorer neighborhoods where Chavez drew his political strength.
At the academy, Chavez’s family and close advisers, as well as the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay, attended a funeral Mass around the president’s glass-topped casket. The public then began filing past to peer at their longtime president, many of them coming closer to him than they had ever been while he was alive. Some placed their hand over their heart, others saluting or raising a fist in solidarity. The viewing lasted far into the night. Military officers and Cabinet members ringed the president’s coffin, stone-faced. Other mourners pumped their fists and held aloft his images.
‘I DON’T WANT TO DIE’ WERE HIS LAST WORDS
President Hugo Chavez died of a massive heart attack after great suffering and inaudibly mouthed his desire to live, the head of Venezuela’s presidential guard said on Wednesday.
‘He couldn’t speak but he said it with his lips ... ‘I don’t want to die. Please don’t let me die,’ because he loved his country, he sacrificed himself for his country,’ Gen. Jose Ornella told The Associated Press.
The general said he spent the last two years with Chavez, including his final moments, as Venezuela’s president of 14 years battled an unspecified cancer in the pelvic region.
Ornella spoke to the AP outside the military academy where Chavez’s body lay in state. He said Chavez’s cancer was very advanced when death came but gave no details.
Ornella did not respond when asked if the cancer had spread to Chavez’s lungs.
The government announced on the eve of Chavez’s death that he had suffered a severe new respiratory infection. It was the second such infection reported by officials after Chavez underwent his fourth cancer surgery in Cuba on 11 December.
Venezuelan authorities have not said what kind of cancer Chavez had or specified exactly where tumors were removed. During the first lung infection, near the end of December, doctors implanted a tracheal tube to ease Chavez’s breathing, but breathing insufficiency persisted and worsened, the government said. Ornella said that Chavez had ‘the best’ doctors from all over the world but that they never discussed the condition in front of him.
As a band played the hymn from his first battalion, a long ribbon of tearful mourners numbering in the hundreds of thousands bid farewell to the larger-than-life leader after a procession carried his casket through Caracas. With the entire government, including anointed successor Nicolas Maduro, caught up in the seven-hour procession, there were few answers to the most pressing question facing the country - the timing of a presidential election that must be called within a month.
Generations of Venezuelans, many dressed in the red of Chavez’s socialist party, filled the capital’s streets to remember the man who dominated their country for 14 years before succumbing to cancer on Tuesday afternoon.
Chavez’s coffin made its way through the crowds atop an open hearse on an eight-kilometer journey that wound through the city’s north and southeast, into many of the poorer neighborhoods where Chavez drew his political strength.
At the academy, Chavez’s family and close advisers, as well as the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay, attended a funeral Mass around the president’s glass-topped casket. The public then began filing past to peer at their longtime president, many of them coming closer to him than they had ever been while he was alive. Some placed their hand over their heart, others saluting or raising a fist in solidarity. The viewing lasted far into the night. Military officers and Cabinet members ringed the president’s coffin, stone-faced. Other mourners pumped their fists and held aloft his images.
‘I DON’T WANT TO DIE’ WERE HIS LAST WORDS
President Hugo Chavez died of a massive heart attack after great suffering and inaudibly mouthed his desire to live, the head of Venezuela’s presidential guard said on Wednesday.
‘He couldn’t speak but he said it with his lips ... ‘I don’t want to die. Please don’t let me die,’ because he loved his country, he sacrificed himself for his country,’ Gen. Jose Ornella told The Associated Press.
The general said he spent the last two years with Chavez, including his final moments, as Venezuela’s president of 14 years battled an unspecified cancer in the pelvic region.
Ornella spoke to the AP outside the military academy where Chavez’s body lay in state. He said Chavez’s cancer was very advanced when death came but gave no details.
Ornella did not respond when asked if the cancer had spread to Chavez’s lungs.
The government announced on the eve of Chavez’s death that he had suffered a severe new respiratory infection. It was the second such infection reported by officials after Chavez underwent his fourth cancer surgery in Cuba on 11 December.
Venezuelan authorities have not said what kind of cancer Chavez had or specified exactly where tumors were removed. During the first lung infection, near the end of December, doctors implanted a tracheal tube to ease Chavez’s breathing, but breathing insufficiency persisted and worsened, the government said. Ornella said that Chavez had ‘the best’ doctors from all over the world but that they never discussed the condition in front of him.
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