So Chávez snuck back into the country at 2:30 in the morning with no previous announcement, no cameras around and only a 3 a.m. tweet to announce the whole thing so…nothing at all strange about that, right!?
The Book
In praise of Blogging the Revolution
“Caracas Chronicles has been an indispensable source of lucidity and perspective in these turbulent times in Venezuela. Toro and Nagel have been right on target, without pretending to be ludicrously impartial; they have been able to rise above polarization, trying hard to make sense of an often implausible reality. Blogging the Revolution shows them at their best. If you are not already a fan, you will become one.”
- Francisco J. Monaldi, RFK Visiting Professor at Harvard Kennedy School and Director, Center on Energy at IESA in Caracas.Recent Comments
billl bass on A great Boris Muñoz piece in T… extorres on 50 Shades of Boy Are We S… extorres on 50 Shades of Boy Are We S… The Cat on A great Boris Muñoz piece in T… pitiyanqui on 50 Shades of Boy Are We S… pitiyanqui on 50 Shades of Boy Are We S… pitiyanqui on A great Boris Muñoz piece in T… Justin Delacour on A great Boris Muñoz piece in T… billl bass on A great Boris Muñoz piece in T… Justin Delacour on A great Boris Muñoz piece in T… Popular Now
-
Quico, Kimi keeping you up at night? I’m flying to Caracas today and while I was waiting to board the first of my flights, I found out. I sneak into the Admirals Club to post something about this, and you’ve beat me to it! Kudos.
Yup, I’m in the Admiral’s Club that is Kimi’s first Day Care-derived cold…
Welcome to the beautiful world of day care-derived colds, otitis, bronquiolitis y demases. Notwithstanding, it’s been a great experience for our daughter
The good news is that when they get to be teenagers they have been properly inmunized by all sort of germs…
Good thing he beat you to it, because I doubt that the title to your post would have been as cryptically cool as an Abbey Road McCartney song reference.
Great Odin’s Raven!
By the hammer of Thor!
Saint Damien’s beard!
Sweet grandmother’s spatula!
Hot pot of coffee!
Uncle Jonathan’s corn-cob pipe!
Was this Hugo’s choice ? Or was it the choice of the Castros ?
I don’t think it would have been good to have Hugo die while in care under Cuban management, from the Cuban point of view.
There might have been a very negative backlash towards Cuba from the Venezuelan people.
Time to say good bye?
Gerry.
Must…keep…believing…
That he’s not a dead man lying on his back? Keep believing, yoyo.
So, what’s the best evidence you’ve got that he won’t live at least a few more years?
Don’t bother responding unless you have something good.
Es cierto que bicho malo no muere, but… four surgeries in less than two years, and no clear diagnosis – or prognosis – made by ANY physician are not a good sign.
Chavez is still unable to be a president. And he won’t be able to be president probably for at least a few month.
Only a fool would be believe that a guy that cannot speak can rule a country…
A dismal life grasps
for the belief that all is
as he is informed.
70 days after an operation we have not hear or seen him, he has a violent, recurrent cancer, which does not respond. You really think he can last six months? Dream on, fanatic.
I’m with yoyo. Claims that Chavez is in critical condition are entirely speculative and without foundation. On the understanding that he is perfectly fine, I have converted all my personal savings into bolivars fuertes on the theory that chavismo will emerge as the new 21st century paradigm, with Chavez at the helm, albeit communicating sporadically and via Twitter.
You’re ready for #PreguntasDeChávez
JOHNNY MOLOTOV@JOHNNYMOLOTOV
#PreguntasDeChavez Donde dejé la llave del palacio de Miraflores? Coño se me quedó en la mesita de noche en la habitacion del Cimeq.
Either he had a very aggressive form of cancer and he will die sooner or later or he never did and the rest was a big MESSIANIC show… (My mom’s theory all this time).
…and actually he had a very great time in Cuba there, in any beach resort, drinking rum under a palm tree for weeks, undisturbed.
Getting very angry when they tried to make him sign any document…
Sadly, I wouldn’t be surprised if this end up being the truth… He’d always cared only for himself, not the country…
Now that you cannot speculateanymore about whether Chavez is dead or not you had better eat that huge helping of crow on your plate.
Whether or not he has been sent back by the Castros or by Barack Obama is completely irrelevant and will never be known. I think Obama wanted Chavez to come back here since his lackeys are being treated too harshly and radically by Maduro and Cabello. Just idle speculation on my part which is just as much BS as what you have written.
Please provide a link where Quico or I say that Chavez is dead.
Obama no doubt would be thrilled to hear he has lackeys in Venezuela.
But the speculations of his health are still in question… or you probably don’t mind he rule from his dead bed like the King he thinks he is… not even the Pope!
Que pasó arturo? no y que la revolución iba a impulsar el verdadero crecimiento económico socialista, endógeno y sostenible? Al final sí tuvieron que devaluar, no? Jajajaja. . . Tremenda severidad la de Maduro y Cabello con la burguesía, no? Jajajaja
It was the choice of these two:
http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/553091_10151621188268761_329358841_n.jpg&imgrefurl=http://worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/weekend-at-hugo-039-s-039-morbid-humor-as-ailing-chavez-misses-inauguration/chavez-maduro-cabello-cancer-cuba/c1s10605/&h=960&w=584&sz=135&tbnid=uYWRTjOG5gf8SM:&tbnh=94&tbnw=57&zoom=1&usg=__GicLskmGhZL9sg0QSk3UA4SP4XQ=&docid=R3E59xkoxuigRM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6n0iUYjkAeOO2wXXjoHQAw&ved=0CEkQ9QEwAw&dur=491
https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/553091_10151621188268761_329358841_n.jpg
OMG! Thank You, Virtok! LMFAO!!!!
And he rose back from the dead and it’s not even Easter yet.
Rojo Rojito
ChavezBienvenidoALaPatria
Cort
He won’t be raisin’ nohow, not in this world. Sorry
And, all of a sudden, the Bolivar is “strong”, homicide rate is at its lowest, Cirque du Soleil’s applicants have disappeared from intersections, private schools and hospitals are going broke because people are migrating en masse to the public systems, and amas de casa are having a hard time at the supermarkets because they take too long to
find whatever brand of the stuff they wantchoose among so many brands.Right? RIGHT?
Yes – and the PJ crooks will not go to jail – right. RIGHT!
Sweetheart, (and I mean this in the most condescending way possible). You have no moral authority whatsoEVER to talk about corruption. At all. Period.
That’s nice and all, but Chavez’s return will not solve ANY of our current problems…
The dollar CADIVI is still at Bs.6,30 and in the black market it is up to three times that. Inflation keeps on rising and scarcity is around 20%. As a professor, I have been waiting for a salary increase for 3-4 years and it’s very unlikely that I will get one any time soon.
How can you expect a slary increase when the autonoumous universities are hotneds of conspirators and liars? If you are reallly autonoumous then Rectors such as Garcia Arocha should pay us much more but sje preferred to build a centro comercial oppositite Plaza Venezuela.
First, it’s the president – not the rector – the person in charge of salary raises. It’s a state owned university, not a private one. Second, the “centro comercial” you mentioned was expropriated by Chavez a couple of years ago. Another dirty trick to strip away income from the UCV:
As for the UCV being a hotbed of conspirators and whatnot. What are you a afraid of? Cuadernos y lápices no tumban gobiernos! Because the only weapons I have seen so far in the campus belong to chavista groups like Alexis Vive and M-28. Those are the only conspirators and nutjobs you should be concerned about…
ironic. . . do you remember when politicos of the cuarta referred to leftists groups in the UCV as a hotbed for conspirators? now those conspirators hold power and they also see opposition as conspirators
Rise? He is still on his death bed.
Interesting reply from Cort, comparing him to God. He probably is an ancient alien too.
¡Excesivamente normal!
Looking as doomed as ever he did before coming to Venezuela. IF he did come to Venezuela at all. In any event, they won’t be showing him live. The prognosis hasn’t changed a bit.
And let me ask this question once again. We know the man is dying, so sorry for him (NOT! he chose to be where he is now, dying in public view). How come a Nation that was supposedly a Democracy and a Republic ended up hanging on the (information hidden by all possible means) health of a deathly ill person?
So he basically made the decision to die in Venezuela. Good for him, I guess.
So we have to believe he is back? Show me the pictures.
https://mobile.twitter.com/jackeelizabe/status/303462263602413568/photos here you go Pablo!
This just reaffirms and give credibility to all these rumors that were spinning around the social networks during the whole weekend; the Castro brothers don’t want to send him back in a cardboard box as they did with the General Comptroller Clodosvaldo Russian.
I just found out! how? I got into the crowded elevator of my office building and CNN was on inside the elevator with the news of Chavez return. Everybody was laughing about Chavez returning, mocking the whole circus, the mystery, the nonsense…
I can tell you that this is not the first, and sadly wont be the last time, that I feel ashamed to be Venezuelan, very ashamed. Not because I thought the guy was dead or that I thought that he was not going to return. I thought that this was going to happen. Its the whole circus. We are the laughingstock of the region, probably the whole world.
Motherfucking Chavez and all the Chavistas sons of bitches, what a shame!
nice rant man
I regret to say that you are the laughingstock of the region. It further frustrates me greatly that the Castro brothers are treating you like a toothless prostitute. It is very sad. I don’t know what you are going to do. Castro hasn’t survived this long being a nice guy. I look forward to a region without chavez or Castro. Good luck.
Well, don’t tell me chavismo can’t do a good show. That was the reason for the pictures, the tweets… Jaua and Cabello waiting for “orders”… Now he will be sweared in and probably 1 -the show goes for weeks or a couple of months or 2- he resign (yes, I don’t know better than that…). I’m only sure he will die in less than 6 months (I’m giving me a good error margin…). As a “real hero” he comes to die in the patria, don’t put that credit on the Castros… or the students, he “will die” for dying in Venezuela…
I agree, but let’s twisted a little bit and say he wasn’t as sick as they made the world believe… and what do you get? Chavez, the super hero!
The one thing I’m having trouble making sense of is: if you are Maduro, and you know Chabé is coming back, why do you devalue before he does so? Why not wait until papa bear is back in the cave before you getting everyone mad at you? Anyone else make any sense of that?
With all respect, your trouble is that you are trying to make sense of this. It is the Theater of the Absurd, where people like Cort Greene, supra, see victory in a President who sneaks back into his country like a thief in the middle of the night after having been AWOL for 2 months. Logic, my friend, has nothing to do with it.
1/10 for critical thinking.
If they wanted to bring him in secret in the middle of the day, they easily could have. But we know the intention wasn’t secrecy, because they tweeted it almost immediately!
Evidently, we’re talking about new standards for transparency:
1. Don’t announce beforehand the president’s arrival in his country, after more than a 2 month absence, unlike what always happened before, following a brief absence.
2. Don’t videotape the arrival, as were all previous presidential arrivals.
3. Don’t arrive on ramp 4, as did all previous presidential arrivals.
4. Simply issue a tweet on completion of the arrival (if it even occurred — no need for proof; the believers will buy anything).
5. Send out a nurse to doublespeak and dispute any concept of weakness and ill health. (Yeah, you got it: Believers will buy anything.)
The majority of the country doesn’t care about the details.
You just always have to have something to complain about.
that’s one way to rationalize your lack of critical thinking.
#PSFshavenorespectforVenezuelans
Yoyo-So much for critical thinking…no seas tan balurdo
OhOh YoYo…looks like the Spaniards are on to something
http://www.lapatilla.com/site/2013/02/18/abc-los-medicos-ven-ya-inutil-seguir-tratando-a-chavez/
Exactly yoyo, who cares about details, right? Accept the mystery! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8xpfhcwpDA
Yoyo, that is just your money quote! “The majority of the country doesn’t care about the details.” – And exactly THIS is your problem, in this country, with THIS majority.
If you guys would care about the “details”, you had a different country. But since you don’t care about details, you don’t even have any notion that the kind of policy Chavez sells you as “socialism of 21rst century” is just a bad reprise of a system that failed already for 74 years in Russia, and around 40 years in the whole eastern europe. Obviously, none of you great “pundits” are familiar in any way with how and why they failed there, and had to fail, in fundamental aspects. Not the slightest expertise about that is in just even only one of your Chavista heads. Therefore, it is so quite simple to irritate and mislead you unknowing Chavistas by telling you stories of capitalistic aggression that destroyed the socialism there, and all this kind of bullshit. For you it’s easy to swallow and believe, since you Chavista guys are obviously completely out of any idea about all this history. No analysis, no expertise in any of your minds. BUT you dare to overtake this approach of a system for your societey, although it failed already in many countries, and although people there chased it away finally!!! Can you believe that? No, Yoyo, you can’t, you know nothing, but I tell you, unfortunately it was like that, and we were millions, throughout eastern europe, who chased them, and got rid of these dictator fat cats!!! You dare to overtake this approach of a system for society and economy, without analysing why it had failed. (This would have been your natural obligation at least, if you thought you could do it better than they had tried already and failed totally). But no analysis. Just because the last dinosaurus of this past time, Fidel, made it to let Chavez become his follower.
And what does Chavez know, what has he understood about the complete failure of socialism in the 20th century? Obviously not much, otherwise he wouldn’t have ever found orientation exactly in Fidels ideas.
Marx once picked up a line by Hegel who had said that all great facts and events of world history always happen twice. And he noted, it was forgotten to add: Once as a tragedy, and once as a farce.
The chapter tragedy was closed in 1989. The chapter farce opened, it seems, in 1999.
Why does that happen? Simply because and as long “the majority of the country doesn’t care about the details.”
Excellent commentary, observer. Chavistosos need to get acquaintance with these days, first, that the devil is in the details and the other one that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Even Cantinflas knew about the importance of details.
The way I see it (perhaps and thinking out there, way out there…) is that the Cubans who are masters of communist propaganda tactics, tried to über victimize him so he will rise of the dead in time of easter…. so making this sick time and opportunity to say that God saved him. Hope they come with another super hero doll to mark the festivities. Jesus and him, hand to hand. See the usual idiots already ranting about it. Wicked but not surprising.
It does make sense. Now everybody will talk about Chavez’s return and forget devaluation. At least the hardcore chavistas will have something to celebrate. Por ahora.
Bacause Chavez came back to die. Nothing more, nothing less.
Whaaaa? But Dubraska Mora (Depto de emergencia-adulto — Hopital Militar) said that she saw him walking, walking I tell you, in the corridors of el Hospital Militar, without tubes.
Hit it, Dubraska:
“Nuestro presidente llegó caminando, fuerte, valeroso, voluntoso ….. No llegó ni en camilla, no llegó en silla de rueda, no llegó entubado, no llegó con ningún proceso invasivo. Nuestro presidente está fuerte para seguir comandando como solo lo (trips up) ha sabido hacer él. Pueblo confíe que tenemos presidente para rato. Y vino a poner las alpargatas, porque aquí hay mucha gente que va a bailar joropo. Y del bueno…”
http://www.lapatilla.com/site/2013/02/18/trabajadora-del-hospital-militar-asegura-que-chavez-llego-caminando-video/
While the PSFs on these boards enter a state of delirium, I’d ask, what’s a strong, walking patient doing, entering the emergency area of a Hospital?
Discounting Maduro’s memorably semi-homoerotic “bruises” speech this may well be the quote of the week.
He walks so strong into Adult Emerge of the Military Hospital, less than 3 days after the public is shown “current” photos of him in bed, showing obvious inability to sit up and stretched facial signs, reading Granma with two of his daughters flanking his sides.
Cómo mienten los chavistas! Pobre del pueblo creyente!
This are great news for the country!!!
He can be sworn in, update his cabinet, and start working again.
I am very happy because we won’t have to crucify Maduro for someone else faults.
I am expecting then an eight hour cadena (at least) in which he’ll tell us how was his holidays in Cuba, sing, tell stories of Fidel, and if he’s got some time, a small explanation of the devaluation, and how is that is a socialist measure “to protect the peoples’ dollars”.
I’m also expecting him to explain to his cohorts that a rise on the price of the gasoline is unavoidable, and that some more bits are coming to fix our strong economy.
No more speculative spins with our bonds, nor with our gold.
A bit of insulting wouldn’t be that bad either
A trabajar Sr Presidente
Yes! I look forward to hearing the sweet sound of harangues and insults. Or will the chavistas create and blend audio clips from Chávez’ past speeches? Certainly, there is audio precendent from a past ‘juramentación’.
Looking forward to his fourth (I lost the count) term. Will see where is he is going to get money from to keep on the electronic party we’ve been living in since 2002.
I don’t know if he has cancer or not, I’m really fed up with this circus. All I know if that this country is hecho m***da and that he won another term. A trabajar entonces no? If there will be or will be not a debacle he has to be in control. Doubts about who is the responsible are not accepted…
Audio clips they do!
they are just around town in trucks with speakers calling for people to concentrate in squares to celebrate another victory (!)…
Maybe facts and logic are not relevant because we are not relevant. It might have something to do with manipulating the emotional strings attached to his adoring worshipers.
Abraham Lincoln You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time. The question here is can Chavismo fool “enough” people all the time!
“Be vewy vewy quiet, I’m bwingng the Pwesident…”
Will he remain silent? Will he be seen? what will he say? Will he order a radicalisation in his last breath?
At least, we will have to come to grips with the fact that he’s here. I hope there are no more evasions.
Dear Aporrea for escuálidos, how do I prepare crow? I live in Vancouver
and we are surrounded by blackbirds. I urgently need to eat crow.
Any hints on how I can catch one, and cook it? Yours truly, Expat
I suspect you will have an easier time locating crow than your non-expat countrymen will have finding chicken. (Or oil, harina pan, toilet paper, sugar, etc.)
Now its only a race to see which pulse stops first: the economy’s or the president’s.
Not true. The crow is an intelligent bird and hard to catch. I may have
to settle for roadkill, or the occasional dead skunk. Self Flagellation
is not an option, my fingers are arthritic …
The crows probably will catch you and eat you first, expat.
feathers flyin’ eh? :-)
Good one!!! — Sorry Feathers.
lol
Guys. It is in the country’s best interest that Chavez lives longer. Because otherwise Chavistas will never blame him for the disaster he has created. I desire death to nobody, but in any case, now is not a good moment for the country to have Chavez pass away.
Agreed, I am relieved he’s back for awhile. The already apparent economic crisis in Venezuela needs to be hung like an albatross around his neck.
Say what Paal?!?! Do you really think that Chavistas will blame Chavez? Really? dont think so Pal
Many people believe that women were created with a man’s rib so go figure. If a person is a true Chavista today, after 14 years of disaster, that person is a true believer, pure and simple.
The hardcore chavistas might not, but the people in the middle, at least two of the supposedly eight mill who voted for Chavez might. If nothing else, the history book will tell of crisis happening during and not after the Chavez “presidency”.
The opposition would loose an election now, even against Maduro.
Paal,
“If nothing else, the history books will tell of crisis happening during and not after the Chavez “presidency”.”
Chavistas will always shift blame away from themselves. Even if the Chavistas have total control over everything, they will blame others. History has been exceedingly kind to the Castros and Che. Chavez will likely get the same Teflon treatment and have nothing stick to him.
Question: Has someone actually SEEN him? I’m not talking about the ministers that a month ago said Chavez was running, doing Yoga or Parkour. I mean does any network or civilian actually seen the president?
Because it all seems to me (as some other people address) an act of Faith. It’s like christ resurrection all over again.
We are being Punk’d again, ppl.
Mi pana a ese bicho no lo ha visto naiden…
ni una cadenita compa… quisieron lanzar un video en diciembre, pero Villegas lo veto por que las imagenes serian dantescas para sus seguidores…
Really that’s a good question, cuz if nobody had really seen him, is like he is not really there.
I bet this measure was to tune out all the noise and the protest that were happening across the country, with the students chained to the embassy in Cuba, Capriles demanding to rollover the devaluation, the scarcity, the inflation etc etc.
Moving Chavez (Corpse, double you name it) to Venezuela was a necessity for them in order to survive politically.
Quico, I caught the last part of your interview on “The World” (NPR). Funny thing is that I actually recognized your voice! I was able to listen to most of it – good job.
http://www.panfletonegro.com/v/2013/02/15/filtradas-cartas-amor-a-chavez/
I’m gonna need a lot of six packs to erase that from my memory… Oh the humanity!
Jajajajajaja que vaina tan buena!!!!!
We are doomed…
What has been seen can’t be unseen. OH GOD WHY.
Come on guys, Chávez is doing fine, he will now multiply the bread into arepas, turn the Guaire into wine, and all Bolívar bilsl into dollars. After that, he will be elected Pope, die and resucitate and turn PSF´s brains into gold.
“…and turn PSF´s brains into gold.”
That fits the traditional alchemist’s narrative: they are already made out of lead.
photo/1
OUCH!
Yikes. A natural for pirate bay’s [a torrent tracker] masthead
Reports of extensive work being done in the part of the Hospital Militar were Chavez is now located have been circulating for some time now, a sign that the regime has always planned for the return of the Supremo to Venezuela under conditions which require a lot of medical treatment . So the regime is following a plan which has Chavez out of Cuba and brought in to serve as the focurs of a pseudomystical cult riling up his delusionally derranged folowers to ever melodramatic acts of devotion . People who have no capacity for critical thought but a gargantuan appetite for histrionic passsions will be given the time of their lives so that as to distract them from the harsh realities of utterly disastrous economic policies . The script is prepared by those all time experts at radionovelas that are the Cubans now at the service of their regimes financial needs.
I have heard reports indicating that the presidential guard is not present either at the military hospital or Fuerte Tiuna.. If correct, maybe the comandante travelled with the luggage …
The imigration rules in Cuba are not that easy Lo expulsaron!!!