Chavez had been fighting cancer, recently seeking treatment at a clinic in Cuba.
Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s fiery and controversial socialist president who came to power on wave of popular sentiment and befriended some of the world’s most notorious dictators, has died at the age of 58, Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro said today.
A self-described champion of the poor who first tried to overturn Venezuela’s powerful elites in a failed 1992 coup, Chavez was democratically elected in 1999, with huge support from the country’s poor.
During his time in office, he became one of Latin America’s most well-known and polarizing figures. A constant thorn in the side of the United States, he commanded headlines in newspapers around the world. A populist who suppressed free speech, he remained immensely popular among his country’s poor.
From the time he won election in 1999, Chavez held onto power through tightly controlling the media and through a series of populist elections and referenda, including one that allowed him to seek a limitless number of terms.
A friend of Diego Maradona also allowed some pikes: “Even in football, Europeans drown, he had said, and I’m sure my opponents support these teams or the United States,” he said after a difficult start selections from these countries to Cup world Cup 2010.
He does not like the USA, the late president, however, is a fan of baseball.
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And he had offered to host the World Series (Championship finals of USA Baseball) in Caracas in 2012 due to the strong presence of Venezuelan players (9 in both teams).
“I think we need to organize the next World Series in Venezuela, because they [the Venezuelan players] are everywhere (…) What would the League baseball if Venezuelans did not exist? The public is bored, “explained the anti-Yankee on TV a few days after his re-election to the presidency of Venezuela.
Chavez respected the sport because for him, “there is sport and sport.” He enjoyed-with-irony Baseball, Hugo Chavez, however, blasted the golf, and because “Only a philistine can play golf is a bourgeois sport.”
Pushing his aversion to golf decide expropriation of golf clubs Maracay (near Caracas) and Caraballeda, to make ecological parks for children.
During his era, Venezuela holds the Copa America in 2007, the Vinotinto (selection Venezuelan football) led by Juan Arango (Mönchengladbach) and Giancarlo Maldonado (Atlante, Mexico), had reached the quarterfinals, a first in its history.
The last Vinotinto usually good area, few failed to qualify for the 2010 World Cup.
Olympic sport found for the second time in its history the gold metal. A gold medal won by the sword Rubén Limardo men to the 2012 London Olympics.