Venezuela's Maduro: I sleep in Chavez's mausoleum
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is known for his devotion to late leader Hugo Chavez and now he acknowledges that he sometimes sleeps in the mausoleum where his mentor’s remains are kept.
Maduro was Chavez’s vice president and named by him as his successor before he died. During the campaign for the April 14 election he narrowly won, Maduro caused a furor when he said Chavez came to him in the form of a little bird that flew around his head.
Venezuela’s president reopened the issue of his use of Chavez’s image on Thursday when, during an act at the former military museum where Chavez’s remains are kept, he said: ‘‘I sometimes come at night. At times, many times, I sleep here.’’
He said he sometimes comes with a retinue. ‘‘We enter at night and we stay to sleep. At night we reflect on things here.’’
http://www.boston.com/news/world/latin-america/2013/08/09/venezuela-maduro-sleep-chavez-mausoleum/3HEQXQRzShI6JAwygt9zaP/story.html
Nothing weird about that, eh?
= new reply since forum marked as read
...meditations at Chavez's tomb--IF this story is true. The bird story was not. It was a mistranslation deliberately designed to make Maduro look foolish. What he actually said was that he was meditating outdoors, just after Chavez died, a bird came down to him and he thought of Chavez. He DIDN'T say that Chavez had visited him in the form of a bird! It's a common experience of mourners. I've had it myself--visits by birds in particular after someone dies. Nature seems to be in sympathy with human mourners. Perhaps mourning puts us in a special meditative state in which Nature notices us and we are particularly sensitive and notice Nature. In any case, the bird story as Maduro nuttiness was foul play--vetted and debunked here at DU at the time.
Naturally, rightwingers--who promulgate stories against Leftist politicians--repeat that false tale as if the mistranslation had never been exposed.
So I gotta wonder about this one. Skepticism is called for. But, say it's true or even partly true (not a malicious translation). Maduro, and sometimes Maduro and associates, feel the need for quiet and inspiration, and find it at Chavez's tomb. Millions of Venezuelans would sympathize with this. Chavez was a great president, akin to our FDR. His death was quite obviously a profoundly sad event to most Venezuelans, as FDR's death was here. Chavez was Maduro's mentor and Maduro obviously feels deep attachment to his memory. And it cannot be easy following in Chavez's footsteps--especially with the U.S. government and its corpo-fascist rulers and all of rightwingdom seeing Chavez's death as an opportunity to destroy the Chavez revolution and return the poor to penury and powerlessness--and to stop this amazing revolution's spread throughout South America and into Central America. It is U.S. priority no. 1 in this hemisphere, to stop the socialist revolution that is occurring in Latin America and regain control of Latin American oil and other resources and domination of its economies for 1%-er looting.
These things must weigh heavily on Maduro and it is no wonder at all that he seeks inspiration at Chavez's tomb. The wonder is that rightwingers would demean this--call it crazy. Well, I guess it isn't a wonder. It's typical of the rightwing to sneer, to demean, to bully and to repeat agreed upon "talking points" (Chavez "the dictator," Maduro "the Lunatic"
. But who they are really ridiculing is the poor, whom Chavez raised to the status of citizens, and who became real citizens also by their own efforts and put Chavez in office and kept him there (as the poor did here, with FDR) to change society for the better. Both Chavez and Maduro were poor men, Maduro even less privileged than Chavez (who gained an education and promotion through the military, as a paratrooper). Maduro was a bus driver and union organizer. He is "of the street," "of the poor," in ways that even Chavez wasn't. He has never been a member of any elite--until his organizing skills and great intelligence earned him a place in the Chavez government, where he performed extremely well in various posts, including Foreign Minister. He is also, obviously, a more publicly spiritual man than Chavez was, and is not afraid to speak of his efforts to meditate, to pray, to seek inspiration for his very difficult job of leading the Chavez government without Chavez (an extraordinarily charismatic personality). The poor would identify with this. The well-off have their riches and U.S. support to comfort them. The poor have only the relatively short experience of the Bolivarian revolution, a decade or so of power, of decent wages, of health care and educational opportunity, all of it imperiled by Chavez's death.
The right, of course--including rightwing DUers--have no sympathy with the poor. They serve the corpo-fascist elite. They ridicule the prayers and the hopes of the poor. They ignore their impressive accomplishments in Venezuela and other countries. They are propagandists out to defeat Latin America's leftist political revolution and dump on Maduro with the relish of street bullies kicking someone who's down.
