Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez expressed confidence on Thursday that he would make a full recovery after having a malign cancerous tumor removed and vowed to focus on battling the disease.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported Chavez appears to be suffering from colon cancer, citing two sources with close knowledge of his condition.
A week after his condition was announced, after a weeks-long stay in Cuba, Venezuelan officials have yet to confirm the type of cancer the leftist leader has, or whether he was undergoing chemotherapy to treat it.
At a brief visit to a Venezuelan military academy, the 56-year-old leader told cadets: “I’m in one of those situations where I’ve been ambushed by life.”
The former paratrooper said he was “always a healthy cadet. I do not recall ever going to the infirmary.”
However, he also said in the past months “I had pain that I ignored” because military training led him to “put the fatherland first.”
At a Cabinet meeting broadcast on the official VTV station, he hit out at “rumors” of disunity and confirmed several posts, including Elias Jaua as his first vice president.
During nearly a month in Cuba, he underwent surgery to have a cancerous tumor removed, but the Venezuelan public was kept in the dark about his cancer for weeks after the June 20 operation.
Chavez returned unexpectedly Monday to Caracas — on the eve of bicentennial independence celebrations — rallying a crowd with trademark gusto, but speaking only for 30 minutes, a short address by his standards.
“I had an embedded malign tumor and I continue to fight against it,” Chavez said on Thursday, explaining that doctors had ordered him to limit his public appearances.
Venezuelan politics have become so highly personalized that Chavez’s health is essential for the survival of his leftist Bolivarian Revolution.
Chavez’s policies “without Chavez is not Chavismo, because Chavez is Chavismo,” said Federico Welsch, a political science professor at the Simon Bolivar University in Caracas.
“We are seeing supporters gathering around their leader, but behind the scenes no doubt knives are being sharpened,” he said.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
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