Venezuela: Chavez doing well after surgery

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez speaks during the ALBA summit opening ceremony at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, on Feb. 4, 2012. / Getty Images

Updated at 3:16 p.m. ET

CARACAS, Venezuela - Doctors successfully extracted a tumor from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's pelvic region and he was stable and recovering in Cuba on Tuesday with family at his side, his vice president announced.

"President Chavez is in good physical condition," Vice President Elias Jaua told the main chamber of the National Assembly, prompting a standing ovation and cries of "Onward, comandante!"

"A total extraction of the diagnosed pelvic lesion was performed, removing also the tissue surrounding the lesion," Jaua said, reading a statement from the office of the presidency. "There were no complications related to the local organs."

Jaua did not say when Chavez had the surgery, but said the socialist leader was stable and recovering adequately. The Venezuelan president has said the growth was likely cancerous, but there was no immediate word on whether it was malignant.

The precise nature of Chavez's cancer has not been divulged.

Dr. Sebastian Quintero, an oncologist in neighboring Colombia, said the announcement doesn't add anything to what little is publicly known about Chavez's cancer.

"They have not said anything different from what was already known: that he has a tumor in the area of the pelvis," Quintero said. "The pelvis is a large cavity with several organs inside, including the prostate, part of the liver, part of the colon, so it's difficult to determine in what part the tumor is based."

"We're left the same as before."

Jaua said studies of the removed tissue would be available "in the coming hours," but he did not say whether the results would be made public.

The president, who has not delegated authority during his absence, was in close contact with government officials, Jaua said.

Chavez, 57, announced last week that doctors in Cuba had found a new growth about one inch (two centimeters) in diameter in the same area where a baseball-size cancerous tumor was removed last summer.

He traveled to Cuba on Friday and said he would undergo tests over the weekend and have the operation early this week.

But until Tuesday there was no additional official word on Chavez's health, leaving the rumor mill free to churn unchallenged. Some reports speculated about a purportedly dire prognosis, but none could be confirmed or named their sources.

"I was worried because he's a human being and president of the country," said 37-year-old bookseller Cristina Gonzalez, adding that in recent days Chavez's health has been the talk of customers at her street side stand in central Caracas. "He has done much for the country. I hope he recovers."

She expressed gratitude to Chavez for social programs benefiting the poor, but said inevitably someone else will have to take on his mantle someday.

"Yes, there could be another person (as president) because nobody lives forever," Gonzalez said. "But right now, he's the one."

Chavez and his allies have said the president is still his party's only candidate for October elections.

"I don't know what to believe. One day he's cured, the next day he has to have surgery again," said Esther Manrique, a 24-year-old homemaker. "We'll have to wait. With time, the truth comes out. I think he's tricking us. Let's see if he is able to campaign or not; that will let us know how he really is."

Chavez's opponent in the vote, Henrique Capriles, has wished his rival a speedy and full recovery.

Venezuelan journalist Nelson Bocaranda, who is considered sympathetic to the anti-Chavez opposition and first broke the news last week that Chavez had again seen doctors in Cuba, said the president had been operated on Monday night.

There were no signs of stepped-up security Tuesday outside a Havana military hospital where many have speculated the surgery might take place, and patients came and went through the hospital doors as normal.

The parking lot outside the Cimeq facility was filled with vehicles sporting the green license plates of Cuba's Interior Ministry, but few diplomatic plates could be seen. Venezuelan Embassy vehicles all have black license plates beginning with the number 223, and none were present.

Cuba authorities often lay on extra police to protect important visitors, and even close off entire neighborhoods for high-level meetings. But traffic outside Cimeq was moving as normal on Tuesday.

The statement from the presidency thanked Venezuelans for their support as well as former and current Cuban presidents Fidel and Raul Castro, Chavez's doctors and the Cuban people.

[expatriate2]

Thanks to the U.S. Government smear campaign, the view of Hugo Chavez is reflected in the comments found here. Unfortunately, the propaganda machine did not permit U.S. citizens to learn that Chavez created free clinics for the poor and many Venezuelans went to a doctor for the first time in their lives. They didn't learn that there are lower priced markets for the poor or that free education is now given to the poor who before Chavez were not recognized as even existing. The barrios of the poor were listed on maps as unpopulated green areas. The poor did not have the most common civil right.
In 2002 the CIA was a principal player in the kidnapping of Hugo Chavez and the old Bush Family buddy, Pedro Carmona was put into power. It was then that 250,000 of Venezuela's poor marched down from the mountains and surrounded the presidential palace and demanded the return of their president. At midnight a helicopter returned Chavez and Carmona and his mafia boarded the chopper to go to Miami and into the arms of Jeb and his mafia.
The U.S. Government can continue its campaign of misinformation about Chavez all they want but Venezuelans will still fill their gas tanks for three dollars and have the civil rights increased and improved while yours are diminished and diluted.
In 2002, while Bush was telling another of his lies, "We have made it clear to all nations that if you harbor terrorists, you are just as guilty as the terrorists," Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada, former dictator of Bolivia responsible for countless deaths and tortures was living comfortably in a suburb of Washington, D.C. and the Bush Administration was fully aware of it.

[Fox_Rush_Parrot]

Thankyou for the history lesson. The fact still remains, Chavez is an enemy of the United States, self proclaimed.

[expatriate2]

And if Venezuelan agents had kidnapped your president, they would be your enemy, self proclaimed.

[Fox_Rush_Parrot]

I'm so sorry to hear that Chavez is doing well. Maybe next time!