Hugo Chavez Dies at 58

By admin March 6, 2013 06:43

For 14 years, he was the Western Hemisphere’s most polarizing head of state. Generous while heavy-handed, charming but cold-blooded, Hugo Chávez Frías was adored by Venezuela’s proletariat while loathed by free market capitalists, center-right political rivals and many in the United States, who viewed the boisterous leader as the second coming of Fidel Castro.

Chávez, 58, died Tuesday after succumbing to cancer, a disease which he had battled since 2011 and which kept him out of his country for much of the last two years. The enigmatic former leader of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela leaves behind both a legacy that transformed relations between Latin America and Western powers as well as a number of doubts about the direction his country – and Latin America as a whole – will go in a post-Chávez world.

“Throughout Latin America his influence was very profound,” said Larry Birns, the director of the Council of Hemispheric Affairs. “He had a vision and that vision was his version of socialism in the 21st century.”