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 
Really, can Venezuela become any more bizarre?????? If only there was a stuffed corpse the party would be complete.
LikeLike
Estupefacción is the very first word that comes to mind, followed closely by “que bolas”
LikeLike
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.
LikeLike
No human being deserves being object of cult, death or alive
LikeLike
Amen.
LikeLike
Reminds me of Christopher Hitchens about North Korea,
It looks like we have a second thanatocracy in the world.
LikeLike
We do: Hugo Chávez was declared Presidente Eterno del PSUV.
LikeLike
Pyonyang-sur-le-Guaire we ARE all North Koreans now
LikeLike
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.
LikeLike
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:
LikeLike
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…
LikeLike
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.
LikeLike
So, Venezuela is still a failed country.
LikeLike
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.
LikeLike
Opportunists, first and foremost. Like the dead guy himself.
LikeLike
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!!!!!
LikeLike
Change your birthday…
LikeLike
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!
LikeLike
The relevant question is: Which is better, a dead Chavez as president, or a living Maduro?
LikeLike
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.
LikeLike
“that may seem bizarre” … no, they *are* bizarre.
LikeLike