The president’s administration donald trump announced a significant shift in travel policy between the United States and Venezuela by ordering the opening of Venezuelan commercial airspacea measure that paves the way for American citizens can travel to the South American country after years of restrictions. Trump reported that he had instructed the Secretary of Transportation and other administration officials to restore air connections and allow “American citizens will soon be able to go to Venezuela and will be safe,” underscoring what he described as a “new chapter” in bilateral relations following the recent blow to the administration of Nicolas Maduro.
About this, in the social network Carlos Maslaton shared the news published and disseminated by La Derecha Diario. However, the analyst added a disturbing memory about the last time he traveled to the Caribbean country. “I’m getting ready to return to Venezuela. I haven’t been since Chávez’s funeral in March 2013, when I verified that in the drawer inside the funeral chapel they had actually put a dark green rubber doll that pretended to be the President who died in Havana on 12/30/2012,” the lawyer highlighted in his personal account. What Maslatón wrote highlights three points that contradict the official version communicated by the Bolivarian government about the death of the Venezuelan leader: the date of death, the place where he died and that the body that was laid to rest was not that of Hugo Chavez.
President of Venezuela from 1999 to 2013, was officially announced by the Venezuelan State on March 5, 2013reporting from the Dr. Carlos Arvelo Military Hospital in Caracas that the Bolivarian leader had died due to complications derived from cancer that he had been facing since 2011. The news was confirmed on the national network by his vice president, Nicolas Madurovisibly moved, who explained that Chávez had died at 4:25 p.m. and that the country was entering a period of mourning for the loss of one of its most influential leaders in recent decades.
The body was publicly laid to rest at academies and military headquarters in Caracas before his state funeral, which included massive events and the participation of international dignitaries. However, despite this official version, months before his death, rumors and alternative versions began to circulate about the state of Hugo Chávez’s death. In December 2012, while he remained in Cuba receiving medical treatment, there was a prolonged official information silence that caused intense speculation in Venezuela and the international media about his true condition. In this context, some opposition sectors and independent journalists began to suggest that the leader could have died long before the officially announced date.
One of the most widespread versions came from Chávez’s former security chief, Leamsy Salazarwho after defecting from the Venezuelan government stated from the United States that the president would not have died on March 5, 2013, but rather on December 30, 2012 in Havana. The former officer assured that this information was shared with the then ambassador of Panama to the OAS, Guillermo Cochezgenerating controversy over the possibility that the official statement of death responded to political reasons, such as the need to support the figure of the acting president while internal succession strategies were defined.
In addition to the supposed earlier date of death, other conspiracy theories circulated that questioned the authenticity of the images and the body that was publicly veiled. In several debates on networks and political analysis articles, it was suggested that the photographs and records of Chávez in his last months could have been manipulated or did not completely correspond to moments after December 2012. Although these versions did not have conclusive evidence, they did reflect the deep climate of distrust among broad sectors of the population and opposition figures regarding the secrecy with which official information about his health was handled.
Despite these speculations and controversies, the official version of the Venezuelan state—supported by public documents of the Venezuelan State—remains that Hugo Chávez died on March 5, 2013 in Caracasand that that same day the solemn announcement of his death was made after a prolonged fight against cancer. Although there is no reliable evidence that contradicts the official line, rumors and alternative theories show the level of polarization that characterized the Caribbean country around the last days of one of its most controversial leaders.
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