VENEZUELA
Hugo Chávez's state secret: Mortality
By Yoani Sanchez
www.desdecuba.com/generationy
Hugo Chávez's announcement that Cuban doctors had found and removed a
cancerous tumor, coming after weeks of speculation about the Venezuelan
president's absence from public life, touches a particular chord for Cubans.
For decades, the health of the Cuban president was information cloaked
in secrecy. It was the least transparent topic in our national life,
until reality forced disclosure about the physical state of our ruler.
On July 31, 2006, a proclamation announcing the sudden illness of Fidel
Castro was read. I remember that night, when my phone seemed on the
verge of exploding because all my friends called to confirm that we had
heard the news.
The next day, the streets of Havana were surprisingly empty. Those who
were out tended to speak in whispers and avoided looking each other in
the eye. Many of us, who had been born and grown up under the rule of
one man, were in shock. Some were filled with sadness; others — the
great majority, I must confess — with relief.
Then came the many months when we were administered doses of medical
news in tablespoon-size updates. Sometimes foreign visitors would
announce they had seen the commander in chief. A Non-Aligned Nations
summit held in Havana that September named, in absentia, the
olive-green-clad convalescent as its leader. To us, however, he never
appeared. Speculation grew and grew about whether he continued to
breathe or had gone to swell the pantheon of historical figures.
But the official media maintained its silence, interspersed with some
triumphalist phrases about his recovery. Few dared to say aloud that the
health of our ruler couldn't be treated as a state secret. Even fewer
called for his resignation on the grounds that he was unfit to carry out
his duties.
Nearly three years inched by like this before the patient himself
confessed, in one of his "Reflections" published in the newspaper
Granma, that he had been on the brink of death. Thus, we discovered that
those who had had access to him and who reportedly said such things as,
"He's walking in the countryside and through villages," "He looks like
he will live to be 120" or "His state of health is enviable," had been
lying to us.
Only then did we know how we had been cheated, the victims of a
political trick to keep us under his paralyzing influence.
Accustomed as we are to reading medical reports upside down and lacking
confidence in benign diagnoses, the convalescence of Hugo Chávez had not
gone unnoticed in our country. As with Fidel Castro, Cuban media sought
to allay concerns about Chávez. Until only recently, details of his
condition had not been made public. The secrecy surrounding the surgery
performed on Venezuela's president reinforced our feeling that
information was being concealed. As was the case five summers ago, the
official reports play at distraction and understatement. The lack of
clarity suggests we are reliving those paranoid days when a curtain of
silence was drawn around an old man, and we didn't know whether he was
still breathing, able or unable to continue to command "his troops."
Chávez's illness has other implications for us. The man's fragility has
been exposed from under his familiar red jacket. The degree of economic
dependence binding Havana's Revolution Square to the Miraflores Palace
in Caracas suddenly seems more perishable than it did just a few weeks ago.
Now, long-term forecasts have to be reformulated: How many had dared to
consider that the other Commander would not be eternal, either? Over the
past few weeks, panic has gripped fat-necked bureaucrats, officials who
control the subsidies that come from Venezuela and entrepreneurs who
resell a portion of the hundred thousand barrels of oil sent to us by
what we like to call our "new Kremlin." They are all holding their
breath, hoping that, as soon as possible, he will be signing agreements,
speaking to the cameras, governing by force of presidential decrees.
To quell the speculation about Chávez's presence in our country, the
official media recently published a brief note mentioning an intestinal
abscess. There was no word of the cancer Chávez disclosed last week. But
the official message only stoked the questioning. There was something
morbid in the insatiable nature of the gossip. It is not the fault of
our outgoing and garrulous nature but, rather, a reaction to silences
maintained for too long. When a subject is taboo, there is nothing more
attractive to whisper about.
For 50 years they made us believe we were ruled by someone who knew no
illness, no pain, no fatigue. Once the bubble of the "invulnerable"
commander in chief burst before our eyes, reports about the health of
those governing us were seized on with skepticism. Now, Chávez is also
the object of this incredulity, a target for our rumors. Thus, we have
come to know that in the span of history he — like Fidel Castro — is
mortal, ephemeral and transient.
Yoani Sánchez is a writer in Cuba and winner of the 2010 World Press
Freedom Hero award. She is the author of Havana Real: One Woman Fights
to Tell the Truth About Cuba Today.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/07/10/v-fullstory/2305856/hugo-chavezs-state-secret-mortality.html
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