President Hugo Chávez has died after a long battle with cancer, the government announced Tuesday, leaving behind a bitterly divided nation in the grip of a deepening political crisis that grew more acute as he languished for weeks, silent and out of sight in hospitals in Havana and Caracas.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
2:21 PM PT: Thanks for the Recs. Now the hard questions? What is next for Venezuela? Is there a successor? Will there be political violence? How will this affect oil and gas prices around the world and here in the US?
4:10 PM PT: Chavez was no liberal democrat (small d).
He may have sincerely cared for the poor and hated the corporate elite but he was a heavy handed authoritarian and that does not match up to a socially progressive liberal democrat.