Ailing Chávez Returns to Caracas
Ailing Chávez Returns to Caracas
AS/COA's Eric Farnsworth comments on President Hugo Chávez's suprising return to Venezuela raising new questions about his health and future leadership.
CARACAS—Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez made a surprise return home Monday, after more than two months of seclusion in Cuba for cancer treatment.
But his arrival back in Caracas is unlikely to quell speculation that his delicate health could force him from office after 14 years in charge of the oil-rich South American nation.
Mr. Chávez was taken to the Dr. Carlos Arvelo Military Hospital in Caracas, where he will continue his anticancer regimen, according to a Twitter message from Venezuelan Science and Technology Minister Jorge Arreaza, who is also the president's son-in-law.
The 58-year-old president, who until Friday hadn't been seen while in Cuba, announced his return with a series of messages on Twitter. "We have arrived once again to the Venezuelan fatherland. Thank you my God! Thank you my beloved people! Here we will continue the treatment," he wrote in his first posts on the social media site since Nov. 1.
Hours after his return, supporters filled plazas across the country. In downtown Caracas, revelers clad in the color red of Mr. Chávez's Socialist party congregated in the Plaza Bolívar, cheering as fireworks exploded overhead and breaking out in chants praising Mr. Chávez….
"It was increasingly untenable that he claim the presidency and not even be in the country, so they had to find a way to get him back to Venezuela," said Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas and the Americas Society, a hemispheric group in New York. "But that's not to say he's better and will soon retake his position or in fact will ever resume his duties…."
