What is an appropriate gift to bring to a birthday party in which the honoree is dead?
Why, tons of fireworks, a cake, live music, national TV, and the resurrection of Sabado Sensacional, apparently. Leave your sense of shame, and your pitch, at the door.
Caracas Chronicles is 100% reader-supported. Support independent Venezuelan journalism by making a donation.
Really, can Venezuela become any more bizarre?????? If only there was a stuffed corpse the party would be complete.
Estupefacción is the very first word that comes to mind, followed closely by “que bolas”
Lo primero que pensé al saber de esto fué “qué montón de lambucios lamec***s”
Lo segundo fué que ya vamos a ser como norcorea.
No human being deserves being object of cult, death or alive
Amen.
Reminds me of Christopher Hitchens about North Korea,
It looks like we have a second thanatocracy in the world.
We do: Hugo Chávez was declared Presidente Eterno del PSUV.
Pyonyang-sur-le-Guaire we ARE all North Koreans now
You gotta love the lack of…outrage…surprise…anger…shock…people feel towards these things in benesuela. You know whats shocking? Nothing except the imbecile.
Well, Venezuelans celebrate the 24 of July because a guy they keep calling “Libertador” was born on that day.
I am sure most educated people living in Venezuela in 1830-1842 would have found that completely silly and most people didn’t care and just wanted to be left in peace.
Is this caudillo worse? Definitely, but the pattern started there.
I think Mr Lovera really expressed what Germán Carrera Damas didn’t dare to write:
Well, hold on a minute. It’s one thing to commemorate Bolívar’s birthday, quite another … to have a party for him with cake and everything! Aside from that, Chávez is no Bolívar…
Back in 1842 it was not customary to hold birthday parties and have a cake for anyone.
Chávez is definitely no Bolívar.
You know we disagree on the greatness of Bolívar. Even so, I simply can’t understand why
Venezuelans might consider any one dead personality needs a yearly birthday celebration
to a point where that becomes a HOLIDAY and there HAS to be ofrendas florales and all that crap
in every school etc of the national territory. I remember how many times we had to go through the motions because of that at school when I was a child…it was plain stupid and no one else does that.
Have a speech, a coin, whatever to celebrate the 80th, the 100th, the 200th birthday of Mandela, Papapa, XXX? Fine. Have a national holiday? That is sick and shows how bad the personality cult is.
So, Venezuela is still a failed country.
You know what’s creepy? The presence of his daughter there. I mean, don’t they have any sense of what’s appropriate? If my parents were to die, I wouldn’t want to participate in a spectacle such as this. “Happy birthday dear dead guy…” ugh.
Opportunists, first and foremost. Like the dead guy himself.
Dammit! 28 July is MY birthday! Is this going to happen every year for the rest of my life! I have had to put up with 15+ years of this shit!!!!!
Change your birthday…
Circo.
It pays wel to have collaborators get in with some money on fireworks and cake overprices, and for some followers to partake in parties and tomadera on public funds.
It also helps to piss off the majority of Venezuelans who see no need for it all!
Its a win/win/win move to keep the myth up and the critical mindset low.
At the end of the day, all they need is submissive poor and weak populace which is easier to appease and control.
Welcome to 1984!
The relevant question is: Which is better, a dead Chavez as president, or a living Maduro?
There is visibly a great mass of people for whom Chávez’s death still tightens up a sensible fiber. That manifests itself in ways that may seem bizarre. What mocking those feelings brings you or this blog, I am afraid I don’t see.
“that may seem bizarre” … no, they *are* bizarre.