Chavez murió

While walking the narrow streets of Havana Vieja with friends on Tuesday afternoon, one of the Cuban members of our crew stopped for a moment to check the TV inside a small store. There were a few people huddled around, all male, and I assumed there was a baseball game on or reports of a game, and asked “Quien juega?” (Who’s playing?). He turned to me quickly and said “Chavez murio.”

Chavez died. I felt like I had been hit in the stomach. The group kept walking. I looked around astonished that our pace hadn’t even slowed down. I felt like we should stop, felt like I needed to sit down. I looked around at their faces, “Am I the only one who’s shocked by this?” And my friend answered, “No, of course we are too, it’s just too soon to know all the ways it will affect us.”

I rushed home and found my host moms red-eyed. “Que cosa mas terrible.”  I certainly wouldn’t argue that Chavez always said the right thing. Or that he was an incredible diplomat. But Chavez was a champion for the poor of Venezuela and for unity in Latin America. He has made mistakes in the way he’s gone about certain things, but he has used the wealth of his country to improve the education system, provide free health care, and drastically cut unemployment. And he had a vision that went far beyond his own borders – enough so that upon hearing of his death I immediately thought of Nicaragua. And Ecuador, and Bolivia and Cuba. All of the countries that have so greatly benefited from ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas) – a trade agreement that focuses more on mutually beneficial agreements that will strengthen the unity of Latin American countries as opposed to focusing on profits.

I’m curious as to what news coverage has looked like at home. Here, it has generally dominated the news cycle since it happened. The country declared two days of ‘official mourning’ and today was declared a day of ‘national mourning.’ People I’ve spoken with only remember three times that ‘national mourning’ has ever been declared: the death of Che, an act of terrorism against Cuba that killed more than 70 people, and today.

It’s hard for us to understand what he means to so many here. Yesterday Raul Castro’s statement was released: “It is with deep and excruciating sorrow that our people and the revolutionary government have learned of President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias' decease. The Cuban people view him as one of their most outstanding sons.”

We wanted to pay homage with our Cuban host families and coworkers yesterday. We all piled into a bus and headed down to the Plaza de la Revolucion where a memorial site was set up and open from 8am to 8pm. The plaza was so full we formed a ‘line’ a few blocks away. After
about an hour, having hardly moved we realized it would take most of the day and decided to return to the MLK Center. My host mom was upset. “We have to do something, we can’t not honor him.” They quickly made a plan, each went to their homes and collected newspapers, flags, music, and pictures: they made their own memorial for Chavez. Their own tribute to an imperfect leader who realized that he could learn from the successes of the Cuban government and became a student, a son even, and implement socialist policies and programs already test-run by Cuba. A leader who took seriously his commitment to economically help a country that had been entirely abandoned by the other economic powers that be. A leader who dared to stand up and speak out boldly against the United States, regardless of the consequences.

And now people will wait. According to the Venezuelan constitution, in this situation there will need to be another election, in the next 30 days, I think. And people don’t know which side will win – the last elections were close. It’s evident that people here realize this election will have effects that reach far beyond Venezuelan borders – that it will affect everyday life here in Cuba. And that’s a frightening thing. There is a reason so many of my acquaintances here have been red-eyed the last few days. And still, I see people attempting to be hopeful.