Hugo Chavez continues to influence the world, his final act being to make a personal, elbow to elbow recommendation to Jesus on a new pope. As spoken by Nicolas Maduro, the acting Venezuelan President, “We know that our commander ascended to those heights and is face to face with Christ. Something must have influenced [Jesus] to call for a South American pope.” Of course, Maduro is also opening an investigation into his death because, “we have the intuition that our commander Chávez was poisoned by dark forces that wanted him out of the way.” The Venezuelans believe foreign agencies, particularly the United States, are responsible for giving him cancer. Such a belief probably propagated because Chavez himself alluded to exactly that in a speech to his soldiers, “would it be strange if they had developed the technology to induce cancer and nobody knew about it?”

This article was edited after publication by the author on 15 Mar 2013. View changes.