Lie to me again, your wickedness makes me happy…

Lie to me again, your wickedness makes me happy…
Posted on March 27, 2013

The vision of the demonstrations of mourning of the Venezuelans who just
five months ago voted for the president who now stars finally in his own
and absurdly long death, arouses both respect and compassion. Respect,
for every genuine expression of regret deserves it, beyond our
individual ideologies. Compassion, because the crowds of mourners who
parade before our eyes in Caracas are behaving like a deceived lover,
who although faced with evidence of infidelity insist on denying it.

As announced on Friday, March 1 in his Twitter account, the Venezuelan
opposition leader Henrique Capriles has revealed that Nicolas Maduro and
other Cabinet members lied about the state of health of the president.
The irreversibly serious state of the President's health and his
impending death remained hidden in the rigged reports and medical
details, murky and full of inconsistencies, designed to maintain
political control at all costs and despite the inevitable extinction of
the caudillo.

On the other hand, the prolonged absence and invisibility of the
President was so scandalous that many sectors of the opposition demanded
a proof of life, a factor which had a decisive influence on the public
declaration of his death. It was curious that with the growing
demonstrations of the opposition and the justice of their demand how
suddenly it came about. In just a few days they adjusted the planned
program with the extreme seriousness of "the emergence of a new
respiratory program" followed almost immediately by the death of Chavez.

Most likely, as has happened in history with the death of other
caudillos, we will never know the exact date that the Venezuelan
president died. In fact, the serenity of his daughters during the wake
suggests a knowledge well before the event, far beyond what they
expected as a logical outcome.

But there are other great lies in this saga. Chavez lied maliciously
when he declared himself cured by a miracle, after two operations for
the same illness, to be eligible for re-election and to take on the
electoral campaign that would place him once more in the presidency of
Venezuela. He lied with all his energy and at the cost of his own life,
to remain in power, proof of enormous irresponsibility, because in the
end the voters, without knowing it, voted overwhelmingly for a
prospective corpse. If, as some argue, the late caudillo followed
directions from Havana, the acceptance of such interference would only
prove a major deception to his people.

Overnight the king has been left naked and it is obvious that "the
right, the oligarchy, the empire and Chavez's enemies" were telling the
truth. However, tens of thousands of Venezuelans mourn his death. Many
times before in history other peoples have mourned their dictators and
then quickly forgotten them. The people are fickle, because they need to
survive all the passing conflicts. At the end of the day, a good share
of the Venezuelan people lie "perhaps in good faith," when they say they
will defend with their lives Chavez-style socialism, a paradigm of 21st
century justice.

And so the embalmed corpse of Hugo Chavez, which will have a permanent
place in the new Palace of the Revolution will be, along with a twisted
and sick perception of worship, a way to keep him among the living, even
if it's all little lies.

For my part, as I've watched so many tearful faces cross my TV screen
lately, so many slogans and testimonials of loyalty to Chavez, I could
not but recall that old bolero that played on the Victrolas so many
years ago in the bars my Old Havana: "Who cares, life is a lie … lie to
me again, your wickedness makes me happy."

8 March 2013

http://translatingcuba.com/lie-to-me-again-your-wickedness-makes-me-happy/