Where is the President of Venezuela?

Episode 18  |  For nearly three months, Venezuela's president had disappeared. 

After Hugo Chávez left for Cuba in December 2012, he missed his own inauguration and left the country trapped in a growing mystery over his health—and whether he was even still alive. In this episode, we follow the weeks of uncertainty in a country gripped by one growing question: Where is the President of Venezuela?

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Transcript

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On December 8th, 2012, at about 9:30 in the evening, Hugo Chavez appeared on Venezuelan television. Just two months earlier, he had won his fourth presidential election in 14 years. Chavez announced that his cancer had returned, that he would have to go back to Cuba for treatment. I need to. I must return to Havana tomorrow. And so here I have the letter requesting authorization from the National Assembly. He had to go back to Havana. Under the Constitution, the President requires authorization from the National Assembly to remain outside Venezuela for more than five consecutive days. Chavez signed the letter in front of the cameras and handed it to Cabello. He spoke with optimism, but then he began to talk like a man who didn't believe he'd be coming back. In any case, even though everything is well planned out for this new battle. There are still risks. And the last time that they would ever hear his voice. But remember, this was the final month of Chavez's existing presidential term. A month later, on January 10, 2013, a new six-year term was supposed to begin, and Chavez was supposed to be sworn in. The Venezuelan Constitution is unusually specific about this. Article 231 says that the president-elect takes office on January 10th before the National Assembly. If some unexpected circumstance prevents him from appearing before the Assembly, he can instead be sworn in before the Supreme Court. But January 10th arrived, and Chavez was nowhere to be seen. By then, he had been gone for a month. And suddenly, the question of where exactly Hugo Chavez was and what condition he was in had enormous constitutional consequences. Article 233 establishes what happens when there's a quote absolute absence of the president. Death, resignation, removal from office, or permanent physical or mental incapacity, among several other circumstances. And if that absolute absence occurs before a president-elect takes office, the Constitution says that a new presidential election must be held within 30 days. In the meantime, the president of the National Assembly would take control of the presidency, not Nicolas Maduro, Diosdado Cabello, who I should note is also part of Chavez's party. The opposition argued that Chavez could not begin a new presidential term without ever taking the oath of office, and that Maduro, whose position as vice president belonged to Chavez's outgoing government, could not simply continue governing indefinitely while the president-elect remained unseen in Cuba. Opposition leaders argued that Cabello should assume the presidency if Chavez's absence was formally declared. Now, in a country with independent institutions, this would have forced a genuine confrontation over what the Constitution required. But remember, this was still Chávez's Venezuela. On January 8th, the National Assembly controlled by Chavismo accepted that Chavez would not appear and approved the possibility of his being sworn in later. Then, on January 9th, one day before the new presidential term began, the Supreme Court issued its ruling. The inauguration could be postponed. Indefinitely. The court reasoned that because Chavez had been re-elected while already serving as president, that there was no interruption between one government and the next. There would be what it called, quote, administrative continuity. Chavez could remain president, Maduro could remain vice president, the ministers could remain ministers, and Chavez could take the oath sometime later, whenever his health allowed it. With one ruling, the Supreme Court had created a legal justification for an extraordinary situation. Venezuela now had a president beginning a new six-year term who had not taken the oath of office, had not been seen in public for a month, and was not even inside Venezuela. So on January 10th, instead of an inauguration, the government organized a massive rally in Caracas. Nicolas Maludo appeared alongside some of Chavez's closest international allies. But there was one person conspicuously absent from the celebration, Hugo Chavez. The president had missed his own inauguration. He had not been seen or heard from. And now, a month after he disappeared from public view, one question was becoming impossible to ignore. Where was the president of Venezuela? For nearly three months, that question grew louder. The president's absence was felt across the country. This was a man who had dominated Venezuelan television for 14 years. He appeared constantly on cadenas, hosted hundreds of episodes of Aló Presidente, called into television programs, and communicated directly with supporters on Twitter. And suddenly, there was nothing. The political juggernaut had vanished from public view. In the vacuum, rumors spread like wildfire. Anonymous reports citing unnamed insiders claimed that Chavez had never recovered from surgery, that he was in a coma, that he was unresponsive, that he had suffered catastrophic complications. Some even claimed that he was already dead. The comments came as rumors were already circulating that Chavez had fallen into a coma. But that only raised another question. If Chavez was conscious, if he really had the same strength as always, then why hadn't Venezuelans heard from him? The government insisted that Chavez remained in command. Officials claimed that he was giving instructions from Cuba. Documents even appeared bearing his signature, but Chavez himself never appeared. He didn't call into state television, he didn't record an audio message, he didn't release a video, he didn't even send a tweet. His Twitter account, followed by nearly four million people, had fallen silent. Then, on February 15th, more than two months after Chavez had left Venezuela, the government finally produced something. Photographs. They showed Chavez lying in a hospital bed in Havana alongside two of his daughters. He was smiling. And in his hands was a copy of Granma, Cuba's state newspaper, dated the previous day, a deliberate indication that the photographs were recent. Officials claimed that Chavez had a tracheal tube that impaired his ability to speak. But this didn't end the uncertainty. Rumor swirled that the photographs were faked. There was still no independent access to Chavez, and everything Venezuela knew about his condition continued to come from the government. For more than two months, an entire country had been asked to believe that its president was conscious, governing, issuing instructions, and recovering, while everything that Venezuelans knew about him came through somebody else. Three days after the photographs were released, Venezuela woke up to another surprise. Hugo Chávez was back. Or at least that's what the government said. Officials announced that Chavez had arrived in Venezuela at around 2.30 in the morning on February 18th, and had been taken directly to the military hospital in Caracas, where he would continue to receive treatment. How serious was his condition? Was he even capable of governing? No one knew. And in the years that followed, former insiders would make the story even stranger. In 2018, Luis Ortega Díaz, the woman who had been Venezuela's Attorney General during Chávez' illness, before eventually breaking with the Maduro government, described a bizarre phone call that she received from Diosdado Cabello on December 28, 2012. She was outside Venezuela when Cabello called her. His message was simple. Vente, que Chávez se murió. Come back, Chávez died. Ortega Díaz said that she immediately began arranging her return to Venezuela. Then Cabello called her back. He hadn't died after all, he told her. Years earlier, another former Chavez insider had made even more explosive allegations. Lemnsy Salazar, an officer who had served on Chavez's security detail before later working Diosdado Cabello, defected from Venezuela. He alleged that Chavez had actually died in Cuba on December 30th, 2012, two months before the government claimed that he was back in the country. Now, these allegations have never conclusively been proven, but honestly, I personally find it very likely that Chavez was already dead. If Chavez had died before January 10th, acknowledging his death would have triggered Article 233. On January 10th, Jordan Cabello, not Nicolas Maduro, would have assumed the presidency temporarily, and a new election would have been required within 30 days. Concealing Chavez's death would therefore have bought Maduro and the United Socialist Party something enormously valuable. Time. If that's what happened, it's an eerie scene to imagine. Hundreds of Chavistas sobbing in collective prayer, day after day, asking God to heal a man that, unbeknown to them, had been dead for weeks. And inside the military hospital, an entire floor is emptied, drenched in cold fluorescent light. No one is allowed in or out. Chavez is supposedly inside, receiving treatment, but there's no one there. Then, on March 5th, 2013, Venezuelans finally got their answer. Vice President Nicolás Maduro appeared on television. And just like that, the uncertainty was over. The news paralyzed the country. Venezuelans rushed to their phones to call family and friends. For 14 years, Chavez had been the dominant force in Venezuelan political life. And now, suddenly, he was gone. His death sent shock waves across Venezuela, stirring profound grief among his supporters and amongst many of his opponents a quiet optimism. But almost immediately, another question replaced the one the Venezuelans had been asking for months. What happens now? Who could possibly fill the vacuum left by Hugo Chavez? What would happen to the Bolivian Revolution? For 14 years, Chavez had built a political movement around himself. Now that movement would have to survive without him. And Venezuela was about to find out whether it could.