Hugo Chávez taught us all that one dedicated revolutionary can change the world.
Chávez was laid to rest after final farewell in Caracas yesterday at the end of the Venezuela's official 10 day mourning period. Late on Friday Venezuelan officials ruled out embalming Chávez and leaving his body on permanent public display in a similar fashion as Lenin. The museum now housing Chávez's body will open to the public on Saturday [today] and the government expects the mausoleum to become a "place of pilgrimage for the world's revolutionaries." Many Venezuelans would like Chávez s body to eventually be interred in the National Pantheon, reserved for national heroes such as the country’s founder, Simon Bolivar.
The United Nations General Assembly paid tribute to late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez during a special ceremony on Wednesday, hailing his commitment to social justice and advocacy for society’s most vulnerable groups. The United Nations Human Rights Council also held one minute’s silence for Chávez the day after his death at the request of the Cuban ambassador, Anayansi Rodriguez. She also read a declaration made by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) that expressed its “profound solidarity with the people and government of the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and particularly with the family and friends of comandante Chávez”.
The CELAC, which is made up of all countries of the Americas except the US and Canada, is one of Chavez's revolutionary international accomplishments and there are many. In 2010, Chávez played a major role in the creation of the CELAC, made up of hemispheric partners, excluding the United States and Canada [purposefully]. In 2005, Chávez helped scuttle the U.S. goal of a Free Trade Area of the Americas. Later he spearheaded the formation of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) in 2008. As a Latin American alternative to the U.S.-dominated Organization of American States, the 12-member Unasur proved its value by successfully mediating the Colombia-Ecuador conflict and the Bolivian separatist crisis in 2008.
There's an old saying that you can take the true measure of a person by their enemies. The list Chávez's enemies included every corporate capitalist, every imperialist, every ally of Zionism, every...well everyone that supports the tyranny of the rich. They hated Hugo because he gave us all hope that there might be a bright equitable future for mankind. He used Venezuela's oil revenues to lift the impoverished at home and abroad.
One of the propaganda tactics his enemies are now using to discredit him is there use of the corporate media whores to spread misinformation about Chávez. They attempt to slur Hugo's memory by saying that his popularity in Latin America, and beyond, was the result of him using oil revenues to subsidize Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador and others. It's imperialist bullshit. Chávez bartered oil with Cuba in exchange for the building, equipping and staffing of free medical clinics throughout Venezuela's previously un-served barrios. He bartered oil with Nicaragua in exchange for food that he sold at cost in co-op stores throughout those same barrios. He financed Bolivia and Ecuador's nationalizing [buying them out independently accessed values] at of the international corporate oligarchs, loans which those countries are now repaying with interest. Chávez bailed out Argentina and made money doing it, he financed Brazil's economic turn around which they are repaying in a combination of food and money. His accomplishments at home and abroad are to many to list here, but they, like him will live on in our memories and in our dreams of a fairer world for.our children and their children and their children...
Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans flocked to the streets of Venezuela's capital for a final farewell to Hugo Chávez. The leader's body was laid to rest at the Historic Military Museum on a hillside.
