Venezuela's Chavez Lives on as Cartoon
The late Hugo Chavez lives on -- as a cartoon character, that is.
Months after the Venezuelan leader's death, Barrio TV depicts him high up in the clouds with the likes of independence hero Simon Bolivar and leftist revolutionary Che Guevara -- when Uncle Sam unexpectedly pops up.
"The devil is in the house, it smells of sulfur," the leftist Chavez says, reprising remarks he made about then U.S. president George W. Bush in a speech at the United Nations in 2006.
Sporting a white beard and a stars and stripes suit, Uncle Sam soon gets the boot from a satellite and is seen crashing back to Earth -- Venezuela to be exact -- along with a little dog that licks his face.
"You are a donkey, Mr Danger. Yankee empire, go home!" a red-shirted Chavez says, again in reference to an insult to Bush he made on his weekly television show "Allo Presidente."
The final scene shows Chavez's successor, President Nicolas Maduro, riding by triumphantly in a bus while honking the horn. Maduro was a bus driver at one point, before holding several senior positions during Chavez's 14-year rule.
The cartoon is the second installment of a series that began in April. The first -- also broadcast on state television VTV -- showed Chavez welcomed to heaven by Bolivar and other deceased Latin American figures.
In March, broadcaster Vive, founded by Chavez in 2003, unveiled a similar video.
The garrulous Chavez succumbed to cancer on March 5 at the age of 58, plunging a deeply polarized country into mourning.
Over the course of his lengthy presidency, he was omnipresent in Venezuelan life, with his image was splashed across slums, buildings and even the capital's international airport.
Critics accused him of leading a personality cult and of being a power-hungry despot who failed to curb runaway crime and diversify an economy overly dependent on oil exports.
Inspired by Cuba's Fidel Castro, Chavez adopted the mantle of a socialist firebrand, railing against the "imperialist" United States while befriending controversial leaders in Iran and Syria.
Source: Agence France Presse
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