Hugo Chavez died of massive heart attack: top general

In photo released by Miraflores Press Office, Hugo Chavez' mother, Elena Frias, third from left, and brothers stand on Wednesday, March 6, 2013 next to flag-draped coffin containing body of Venezuela's late president, on display during his wake at military academy where his body will lie in state until his funeral Friday. / AP

CARACAS, Venezuela President Hugo Chavez died of a massive heart attack after great suffering and inaudibly mouthed his desire to live, the head of Venezuela's presidential guard said late Wednesday.

"He couldn't speak but he said it with his lips ... 'I don't want to die. Please don't let me die,' because he loved his country, he sacrificed himself for his country," Gen. Jose Ornella told The Associated Press.

The general said he spent the last two years with Chavez, including his final moments, as Venezuela's president of 14 years battled an unspecified cancer in the pelvic region.

Ornella spoke to the AP outside the military academy where Chavez's body lay in state. He said Chavez's cancer was very advanced when death came but gave no details.

Ornella did not respond when asked if the cancer had spread to Chavez's lungs.

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The government announced on the eve of Chavez's death that he had suffered a severe new respiratory infection. It was the second such infection reported by officials after Chavez underwent his fourth cancer surgery in Cuba on Dec. 11.

Venezuelan authorities have not said what kind of cancer Chavez had or specified exactly where tumors were removed.

During the first lung infection, near the end of December, doctors implanted a tracheal tube to ease Chavez's breathing, but breathing insufficiency persisted and worsened, the government said.

Ornella said Chavez had "the best" doctors from all over the world but that they never discussed the president's condition in front of him.

The general said he didn't know precisely what kind of cancer afflicted Chavez, but added: "He suffered a lot."

He said Chavez knew when he spoke to Venezuelans on Dec. 8, three days before his final surgery in Cuba, that "there was very little hope he would make it out of that operation."

It was Chavez's fourth cancer surgery and previous interventions had been followed by chemotherapy and radiation.

Ornella echoed the concern of Vice President Nicolas Maduro that some sort of foul play was involved in Chavez's cancer.

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"I think it will be 50 years before they declassify a document (that) I think (will show) the hand of the enemy is involved," he said.

The general didn't identify who he was talking about, but Maduro suggested possible U.S. involvement on Tuesday. The U.S. State Department called the allegation absurd.

Maduro, Chavez's self-anointed successor, said Chavez died Tuesday afternoon in a Caracas military hospital.

The government said Chavez, 58, had been there since returning from Cuba on Feb. 18.

Chavez was carried back Wednesday to the military academy where he started his army career, his flag-draped coffin lying in state in the echoing halls until Friday's funeral.

As a band played the hymn from his first battalion, a long ribbon of tearful mourners numbering in the hundreds of thousands bid farewell to the larger-than-life leader after a procession carried his casket through Caracas.

With the entire government, including Maduro, caught up in the seven-hour procession, there were few answers to the most pressing question facing the country -- the timing of a presidential election that must be called within a month.

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Hugo Chavez: 1954-2013

Generations of Venezuelans, many dressed in the red of Chavez's socialist party, filled the capital's streets to remember the man who dominated their country for 14 years before succumbing to cancer Tuesday afternoon.

Chavez's coffin made its way through the crowds atop an open hearse on a five-mile journey that wound through the city's north and southeast, into many of the poorer neighborhoods where Chavez drew his political strength.

At the academy, Chavez's family and close advisers, as well as the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay, attended a funeral Mass around the president's glass-topped casket. The public then began filing past to peer at their longtime president, many of them coming closer to him than they had ever been while he was alive. Some placed their hand over their heart, others saluting or raising a fist in solidarity. The viewing lasted far into the night.

Set against the outpouring of grief was near-total official silence on where Venezuela is heading next, including when the election will take place. Even the exact time and place of Chavez's funeral Friday has not been announced, nor has it been revealed where he will be laid to rest.

Opponents already have been stepping up criticism of the government's questionable moves after Chavez's death, including naming Maduro, the vice president, as interim president in apparent violation of the constitution, and the military's eagerness to choose political sides.

For a day, at least, Chavez's heartbroken supporters immersed themselves in emotion and sad farewells.

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[netjunkie1]

I bet it was a CIA weapon that killed him.

[Aussie_convict]

We must confront the privileged elite who have destroyed a large part of the world.
Hugo Chavez

I hereby accuse the North American empire of being the biggest menace to our planet.
Hugo Chavez

Convinced as I am and as I am from my government that the world needs a new moral architecture over all I believe that this should be the first topic to debate in our world of today, ethics, moral.
Hugo Chavez

We're not perfect, but we do have democracy.
Hugo Chavez

[littleredtop]

He knew that he was dieing and still had selfish thoughts only of himself. A truly great man would have made a philosophic statement of encouragement to his followers and loved ones asking them to carry on the initiative which he began. A normal man would have passed on his feelings of love to those who he cherished. A weasel would think only of himself.

[DharmaBeachBum]

Good riddance, Hugo Chavez. As a proud American, I took great offense to your standing at the UN podium and stating that there was an odor there because the US president had preceded you. Your day has come, little man.
Hmm. I smell a dead rat.

[littleredtop]

He referred to President Bush as Satan and the smell as that of sulfur coming from the fire and brimstone of hell. Now the idiot is experiencing hell first hand. "And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever."

[cleric77]

"Do let me die" that sounds like a cry of fear and despair to me. If he truly believed in Christ Jesus, he would welcome death as the gateway to heaven. We can't look into his heart, but we can judge the evil deeds he committed during his earthly life.
I don't think he passed through the heavenly gates to Paradise to be with all of God's saints.

[GOODBYE-AMERICA--]

Obama will be doing the same when his time comes but it will be too late.
These evil Communists and socialists can't even die like men after the sinful lives they have lead.
Good leaders and people welcome death when it comes.
Atheists die the same uneasy and tormented way.

[foo8259]

Polonium-210 can cause cancer of the bladder and lungs and it's very hard to detect.

[mandiegracetaylor]

Venezuela will suffer a massive brain drain - higher education and the price of time and money will seem counterproductive -the economy will become based on agriculture - they will not produce the engineers and infrastrusture needed to access the oil and sell it in a way that profits everyone. The government will try to pass out crackers and cheese to everyone - the government will run out of crackers and cheese - the people who have substituted God and the Church with dictators will always be in want - will always be in need - but because they are suffering from a deep personal void - they will always rally themselves to the cause to have a reason besides fear itself to endorse the latest military backed dictator. They will canonize Chavez - only because he made them feel like it was "The Poor and Me against the Great Evil W. and the U.S." One day, that just won't be enough motivation to keep going.

Venezuela's people will wake up one day and see allies like Cuba and Iran are only as good as Venezuela's oil - nothing else - they will feel used and discarded. Iran secretly thinks of that country as nothing more than undeserving heretics and that Allah will one day avenge them and give that oil to more deserving people - themselves.

God has done what he could - he separated Chavez from Venezuela to give them a chance to think for themselves - and in one pristine moment, vote yet again for someone not parading themselves just one notch between Jesus Christ and the Mother Mary. They have been sequestered and brainwashed for so long - they will probably vote for whoever praises and worships Chavez the most.

Out there in eternity - Chavez will have to explain to Jesus Christ why when he was on earth - he convinced his country that he mattered more than Jesus Christ. Pray for this country.

[MamaCarBa]

"Venezuela's people will one day wake up"---that's the whole problem, Mandie, the Venezuelan people who were educated were never asleep. It was the poor and continues to be the poor that follow the socialist agenda. They are both too ignorant--and were too disfranchised to know better.

I grew up in Venezuela and in the 70s, life was incredible there--for half the population. The other half lived in the shadows without any type of social safety net. Therein lies the problem, things swing too much in one direction and someone like Chavez came into power promising roses to people that did not have running water. He changed the constitution, declared war on the middle and upper classes, and drove them out en masse. I don't have a single relative left in Venezuela--they all left. Why stay when we had other options? I now have relatives all over the world except for in the place where we all came from...Caracas.

I don't know what will happen but I hope Henrique Capriles Rodonsky gets a chance. He appears to have the interests of ALL the Venezuelan people, not just the poor, not just the rich.

[netjunkie1]

MamaCarBa

You think half the people of any nation is ok to be in poverty with no hope?
Do you know what they would do here if it even goes up 2%??
The only people that hate Chavez in Venezuela are those that have tradiionally been stealing the wealth out of their ground.

[lloydbest1]

"President Hugo Chavez died of a massive heart attack after great suffering and inaudibly mouthed his desire to live, the head of Venezuela's presidential guard said late Wednesday."

Gosh, I wonder who engineered that one?

[yodipota]

Let this be a lesson to the following Atheists, Socialists, liberals and Democrats. Remember you cannot take your free phones with you. You have to check in here before you leave.

[navysubman]

YODIPOTA, you poor superstitious fool. You go on living your rightious, abstemtious life. I, a proud atheist, am living a wonderful life at your expense. Your tax money pays for my luxury life in an earthly paradise. Unlike the illusory paradise you hope to occupy after death. There is no god, heaven or hell. There is only this life. If you wish to waste it following false gods, you have my sympathy. You also have no brain.

[netjunkie1]

Yodipota,

It is unreasonable to continue seeking a false god, the Big Bang is been prove fact now.
No religion on the planet can disprove what science has proven only last year.
As for politics, the fact is not socialism, or your form of politics is correct on the issues of our planet.
Only when the planet moves on to a resource driven economy will peace be for all to have.
As it is today, our nation, is in fact a fascist driven representative republic. Democracy died with JFK.
We have in fact a military-industrial complex run for wall st.
Our own CIA is in fact working for Wall St., it has been doing so since WW2, and before that the Texans were invading central america to liberate it.
The Pentagon Papers explains our secret involvement in Asia.
Reagan, Bush both should have been impeached for Nicaragua and Iran.

[USSAmerikan]

Swingmanic: I guess you did not follow the news over the last decade or so... Chavez outlawed every news outlet that dared challenge his supremacy. He closed 32 privately owned radio stations and passed a law against "media crimes". A news report that would be considered negative in the eyes of Chavez was usually followed by a carefully executed "mob" attack on the media outlet that dared express the Venezuelan version of our first amendment and if the mob did not do enough damage, he would sue the station for libel and get awarded tens of millions of dollars in damages by his own "chavista" judges, effectively bankrupting the station. His thugs killed and maimed at will. I had the misfortune of being in Caracas on business the day of the "Democracy March" in 2002 and caught the last flight out before the fecal matter hit the ventilator, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans protesting Chavez in the streets and getting fired upon by Chavez' thugs... Research, then speak my friend.