Chavez died

For two weeks Venezuela and the world have been discussing the health of President Hugo Chavez. Former Ambassador of Panama to the Organization of American States Guillermo Cochez claimed that the Venezuelan president was disconnected from the life-support system back in December 2012. This statement, even though it was later officially denied, made the situation explode. Finally the inevitable happened – the charismatic leader not only of Venezuela but of all the left in Latin America, died.

As a rule, after the departure of authoritarian ruler, and they are gone only in two cases: either they are overthrown or due to natural biological reasons, there appears vacuum of power and everyone asks the same traditional question: what’s next?

Hugo Chavez will be remembered as an implacable opponent of the US policy. He minced no words against the US President George W. Bush and always supported Iran. He was friends with Cuba, declaring himself a follower of the Comandante Fidel Castro with whom he often met and corresponded. Venezuela supplies Cuba with oil at preferential prices, in return thousands of Cuban technicians, doctors, and teachers work in Venezuela.

Chavez supported both morally and financially the leftist regimes in Bolivia and Ecuador, which, according to him, along with Venezuela formed the “axis of good” in contrast to the “axis of evil” led by the United States.

In the situation of ideological and political confrontation with the US Chavez was quite pragmatic in foreign economic relations. In word, Washington was accused of all moral sins, but indeed more than 35 percent of Venezuela’s export, primarily oil, went to the US, which, in its turn, is the main supplier of imports: equipment, household appliances, and food, to Venezuela.

Chavez, as a true populist, supported the poor through direct bribery. Shortly before the elections appliances were sold at symbolic prices and food was freely distributed in poor districts. Does it remind you of anything of the Ukrainian reality? Interestingly, the appliances were all made in the US, seldom they came from Brazil or Chile. Despite grand promises of, in fact, a socialist government, they did not manage to overcome neither 27 percent inflation, nor the unemployment.