FORCED BY
CIRCUMSTANCES
Chávez tucked the Constitution, a handkerchief, and the crucifix from 2002 into his breast pocket. The weight pulled at the fabric of his tunic. At the base of the stairs, the scaffolding leaked under a sky that smelled of ozone and wet asphalt.
Rain seeped through his jacket and settled against the hard plate of his bulletproof vest.
The man inside was shrinking.
Twelve people trailed behind him. The group moved with a calculated slowness, adjusting its pace so he would not be left behind. If they walked normally, his weakness became visible. By slowing down, they kept the march intact.
Chávez’s face was stretched and swollen, his cheekbones rounded by heavy doses of cortisone. “Well, here we are,” he said. “Let’s go. I’m going to burn whatever is left.”
Darío Vivas, the man who had choreographed the party’s rallies for a decade, barked the cue into the microphones. Chávez broke into a trot: short, uneven jolts across the stage. Every step traveled through the pelvis where surgeons had cut out a tumor the year before.
When a bodyguard reached for his elbow, Chávez pushed him away with a flat palm.
He did not look back. To be held was to admit the collapse.
He reached the edge of the catwalk out of breath. He did not speak. He lifted his chin, closed his eyes, and let the rain fall over his face. For a few seconds, he stayed there without moving. Water ran over his eyelids and into the collar of his tunic, washing away the orange film of makeup.
It was October 4, 2012, three days before the vote. The campaign had lasted three months, a calendar shaped as much by treatment and pain as by electoral strategy. A year earlier, surgeons in Havana had cut into his pelvis to remove a tumor the size of a baseball. Since then, the illness had stopped being a medical report and had become a physical presence in every room he entered.
In the silence of his office at Miraflores, those close to him watched a repetitive, almost mechanical ritual. Chávez would sit behind his desk and rub his hands over his thighs, over and over, as if trying to push the pain back into the bone. He would stare at the ceiling, breathing heavily, his skin gray under the fluorescent lights.
His mind often returned to an object: a flag. It had been a gift from Génesis, a girl whose own cancer had moved faster than his. She had given him the cloth with a message that sounded like a pact: she was leaving, but she would remain in the fabric so he could keep going.
“That girl is gone now,” he muttered once, during a pause in the official schedule. He stared at the flag as if looking at a mirror. He called it his “flag of life.” It also reminded him that someone else had already lost the race he was trying to keep running.
In June 2012, the medical truth was in Havana. In Caracas, João Santana was running the show. The Brazilian strategist could not campaign with diagnosis, so he campaigned with affection. He called it “Heart of the People”: primary colors, songs about love, a country asked to hold the leader upright on every screen.
From his room, Chávez yelled into the phone at his information minister. He told them to pull the ads and follow the rules. He did not want to win with tricks. He demanded a fair fight, while the campaign built around him worked to keep weakness out of frame.
He spent ninety days on the road, covering thirty caravans and throwing two hundred thousand words at the crowds. He would later say he was boxing with his left hand while his leg was tied to a chair.
In Catia, the fiction finally gave way.
A black SUV with tinted glass pulled alongside the truck. Chávez blew one last kiss to the air and disappeared into the backseat, leaving his team in a sudden silence. Outside, the noise did not stop. The driver of the Tiuna kept waving at the crowd, his hand moving in a mechanical rhythm as he saluted the people on behalf of an empty seat.
INDIRA GUERRERO