Venezuela's fiery and controversial socialist president Hugo Chavez 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. Chavez had been battling cancer, recently seeking treatment at a clinic in Cuba.
Chavez was democratically elected in 1999, with huge support from the country's poor. Chavez was one of Latin America's most well-known and polarizing figures.
Chavez, whose public appearances diminished in recent months, received his first surgery and chemotherapy treatment for cancer in Cuba in 2011. He returned to Cuba, a guest of that country's ailing socialist leader Fidel Castro, for treatment and surgery in February 2012.
Despite his ailing health, Chavez was reelected last year. Chavez was born in 1954 in the town of Sabenta, Venezuela. In the 1980s he and a group of officers founded an underground socialist organization named for the 19th century South American revolutionary Simon Bolivar allying himself with some of America's enemies, including Castro and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad, much to the ire of the U.S.
Despite promises that he would clean the country of corruption, his administration was rife with corruption. He and his government were routinely criticized for human rights abuses, particularly restricting freedom of the press.
Chavez considered former Cuban leader Fidel Castro a mentor, and aligned his country with Iran and other nations opposed to the United States.
Cuba loses a benefactor in Chavez, whose provision of an oil lifeline at below-market prices could be at risk under a new government.
While Chavez admired Castro, he found most inspiration from Bolivar, even renaming the country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Chavez, a champion of the third world oft-times "imperialist" United States and its "colonial" allies in the region.
He accused the United States of trying to orchestrate his overthrow, and referred to President George W. Bush as the devil in front of the United Nations General Assembly.
U.S. filmmaker and long-time Hugo Chavez supporter Oliver Stone has hailed the late Venezuelan leader, saying, "I mourn a great hero to the majority of his people and those who struggle throughout the world for a place. "Hated by the entrenched classes, Hugo Chavez will live forever in history," he said in a statement released by his publicist, adding: "My friend, rest finally in a peace long earned."
Stone has regularly praised Chavez, whom he interviewed for a 2009 documentary South of the Border, chroncling different Latin American leaders.
Actor, director and activist Sean Penn, another Hollywood friend to Chavez, also paid tribute saying in a statement, "Venezuela and its revolution will endure under the proven leadership of Vice President (Nicolas) Maduro. Today the people of the United States lost a friend it never knew it had. And poor people around the world lost a champion. I lost a friend I was blessed to have.My thoughts are with the family of President Chavez and the people of Venezuela." The Oscar-winning actor developed a friendship with Chavez, visiting him in Venezuela on multiple occasions.
