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Miraflores Palace via Reuters
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez blows a kiss from the door of an airplane before departing to Cuba at Simon Bolivar airport in Caracas on Dec. 10. Chavez flew to Cuba for cancer surgery, vowing to return quickly, but has not been seen in public since.
MIAMI -- It’s been 40 days since anyone has publicly seen or heard from Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez.
Keith Rosenn, a law professor at the University of Miami with extensive experience in Latin American legal affairs, asks what is on so many minds: Did Chavez die at some point after flying to Cuba on Dec. 10?
“It’s possible Chavez could be dead for a substantial period of time before we know he’s dead and why he died,” Rosenn said. “He’s in Cuba after all.”
Chavez, in Havana suffering from an unspecified type of cancer, has been treated repeatedly by doctors on the communist island.
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The life of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez from his rise as a lieutenant colonel after his failed coup attempt in 1992.
The Venezuelan leader not only shares a special relationship with brothers Fidel and Raul Castro, but his socialist revolution is modeled in many ways after the Cuban system. Fidel ruled the country from the end of the Cuban revolution until he ceded power to Raul in 2006.
It’s highly unusual for Chavez to be gone from public view this long “for someone who craves attention,” Rosenn said.
Now 58, Chavez has seldom been out of the public eye since he assumed power in early 1999.
A former lieutenant colonel in the Venezuelan military, he grew up poor, only to wind up nationalizing and controlling his country’s vast treasure: oil.
Since assuming power, it’s estimated his country has pumped more than $1 trillion of oil onto the open market, while at the same time sharing his nation’s riches with like-minded leaders in Bolivia, Nicaragua, Peru and Cuba.
If Chavez is dead, his brand of socialism, so-called “Chavismo,” could live on “if the Chavistas who remain, remain united and are committed to his missions,” said Susan Kaufman Purcell, director of the Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami.
But the mood could shift, she said. Chavez’s power base lies among the poor, the very people who “were lied to” in the past about Chavez’s health, Purcell added.
“People were not prepared for this because Chavez suggested he was cured of cancer when he wasn’t,” she said.
Chavez handily won re-election in October 2012 but was a no-show at his Jan. 10 inauguration.
Despite his openly anti-American rhetoric, American officials will maintain a hands-off policy on Venezuela, predicted Aimee Arias, chair of political science at Florida Atlantic University.
“The U.S. and Venezuela have had a tense relationship, but the business relationship with oil has continued pretty much in place, and barring any sort of unconstitutional change or undemocratic situation after Chavez's death, I would assume that will continue,” she said.
If Chavez is indeed dead, Arias said Chavismo would have a hard time going forward without its founder.
“The movement is named after him, after all,” she said.
More Venezuela coverage from NBC News
Vice President Nicolas Maduro, a former bus driver, is currently in charge.
Some Chavez opponents, such as recent presidential candidate Henrique Carpriles Radonski, contend that Chavez missing his own swearing-in should trigger a new election within 30 days.
But Rosenn, a constitutional lawyer, interprets the document differently.
“Article 231 says that the elected candidate is to be sworn in as president on Jan. 10, but then the last sentence says if for any unforeseen reason he can not take the oath, then he will be sworn in before the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, but it doesn’t say when,” Rosenn said.
And therein lies wiggle room for Chavez’s backers.
Despite calls for calm from both Chavistas and the opposition, it’s the threat of destabilizing violence that concerns Venezuela watchers in the U.S. most.
After all, unrest in the fourth-largest oil exporter to the United States could have a big impact on Americans.
And with Venezuela’s economy already in disarray and oil exports down by 30 percent in the past 15 years, no matter who is in charge, times ahead in that country are likely to be tough.
“If he’s dead,” Purcell said, “Chavez leaves behind a country that is in pretty bad shape.”
Follow NBC News correspondent Kerry Sanders on Twitter.
Related stories:
Venezuela's ailing Chavez unable to attend swearing-in, officials say
NBC's Kerry Sanders answers questions about Chavez re-election in Venezuela's elections
Venezuela's Hugo Chavez wins 3rd term, vows to deepen socialist revolution
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The comment that Peru is one of the recipients of Venezuelan charity is totally wrong. He wanted to use the now President Humala, but he had to ignore him until just before the elections in Peru.
What does gas cost in Venezuela? I heard 15 cents a gallon.
18 cents a gallon according to the following link,
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2012/0229/World-s-cheapest-gas-Top-10-countries/Venezuela-0.18-per-gallon-0.05-per-liter
if it wasn't that cheap, nothing would go on in that country!
Cheap gas doesn't mean much in Venezuela. I'm sure it's nice not to have something else to worry about, but amongst crime, terrible pollution, and enormous bureaucratic corruption and incompetence, cheap gas is hardly a good trade-off.
Cheap gas, expensive food and shortages.
Another failed socialist regime soon to be emulated by our own country.Show me one socialist or communist country that hasn't run aground.Forget China because they are a closed society who has recently done well.It's a different story to do that well in the long run.Any country can show a 10% growth record when it base starts at zero.Let us see how high their growth rate is in 25 years and how much social unrest they are living with.Only democracies have led the world in achieving the highest stadards of living the world has ever seen.To my amazement,the less than literate ones, living here, want to see this type of government abolished.And replaced by what? A government where the incompetents, who are currently running around complaining,run everything.We will be Greece in 30 years if that happens.
We have Democrats and Republican and they both aren't going away anytime soon so get used to the Pendulum swing from left to right and right to left mas098, you can't have it one way forever, it goes back and forth.
If you haven't figured that out by now, you're gonna go nuts no matter how many posts you put up.
One day Obama will wave "goodbye" like his Friend Chavez when getting aboard a Drone.....
and we couldn't be happier..................
Weekend at Bernies?
Send code pink to see if he is still pink or at room temperature.If he is dead,it would not be the first time Castro used a dead body for his own purposes.Remember when Che was killed.Castro just propped him up in a chair with his cigar and made it look like he was still in command.Chavez is at room temp and has been for a couple of weeks.Just another way fro the Castro boys to keep getting free oil and to keep their bloated,ill managed port and harbor management contracts.Once it get out(he will have to be warmed),Cuba will continue to die that slow death she has been dieing for the last 60 years!
Heard he was last spotted at an all you can eat Buffet with Al Gore. News is the food chain now is declaring bankruptcy
This same story about President Chavez appears on the BBC web site and its written from a diametrically opposite perspective... The BBC story state that Hugo Chavez doctors have cured the infection he had and that Chavez is doing much better... Apparently this MSNBC story is slanted and bias just like you non rich, big house Republicans... President Chavez and Venezeula Citgo Oil Co. supply tens of thousands of poor and elderly Americans in the north-eastern states with heating oil and gas at half price every winter... Been doing it for 20 years...
And Al Capone use to run soup kitchens.
John,
Are you brain damaged? What has the BBC story got to do with Republicans?
Ha! John, you're funny! Stupid, but funny. Chavez was elected because he bought votes by taking care of the less productive and tearing down the successful. Sound familiar? He is a Socialist...that's what they do! It's certainly nothing to be proud of....
Chavez is probably shacked up at Sean Penn's house. A failure as president co-habitating with a failure as an actor.
He is either dead or hiding in the Whitehouse mentoring Obama!
An undisclosed source, who I cannot name, told me Chavez has passed away.
All you idiot sore loosers who have to make something political out of everything..... jeeez.
Well, Hugo is obviously dead as a hammer.
Chavez, just like Socialism, is probably on life support! I'm sure President Obama is heartbroken. He is really going to miss his two good friends.
From each according to their worth, to each according to their needs... Non rich Republicans are delusional... They are experiencing Stockholm Syndrome and are in serious need of long term, deep psychiatric therapy...
Non rich Republicans have made the rich and elite their priority, while the rich and elite have made non rich Republicans their option...
Ignorance is the temple of the presumptous... The first step to knowing wisdom is knowing your ignorance... The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance... Arrogance is ignorance matured...
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He's chillin' at Sean Penn's crib.
Venezuela has the oil but no doctors. Bush says he smells Sulfur.
I wonder did Chavez succumb to the Kremlin flu....
He was dying and with nothing to lose he chose to submit to a first time stem cell therapy to reverse his physical condition of age and disease to his youthful vitality. The problem may have been the effect on his brain... He may show in public, or not... at any rate he will be the face forward of a history making therapy combining stem cells and Vostok anti-oxidant derivitives at the Cuban hospital in Havana. This will stun the world and propel Chavez into the lime light as the savior of Venezuela. No comment will be forthcoming about the COST of this therapy... but you can believe it was VERY HIGH. Chavez could afford anything. He has his finger in the oil wells of his nation up to his hairy armpits.If this works with Chavez, then Castro is next in line for a bottle from the fountain of YOUTH!!!
I heard Chavez and Cheney were hanging out, figuring out how to spend the billions they raped from their respective countries. Bush was going to join them, but he can't figure out how to put on his pants.
He's with fatso Moore touring wonderful Cuban hospitals and telling the folks how lucky they are to have facilities where each patient brings his own sheets, pillows and needles. Nurses there make $50 per month USD... after this don't you wish you could go there for treatment?
Dead or alive! Can't we just bury this guy already! He deserves to be buried asap, he's earned it!
Wise Men learn more from fools than fools learn from wise Men...