Caracas, Venezuela-The people of the plains of Barinas say that since he was a little boy, even in school, Hugo Chávez was a good speaker. He used to sing, they say, and he also spoke at the Lyceum events, as if Providence was preparing him for greatness. This is how it was in his vital transit. He felt the need for dialogue, the one-on-one that moves and builds.
The loquacious little boy became a man of acute and accurate verb. He spoke to his people, to his soldiers, in the neighborhoods and universities, on international podiums, in the humble hills and in the remote native communities. He spoke to those who followed him, to those who hated him and to the forgetful, those who tried to drown the memories of the atrocious years of the Fourth Republic.
Those who look closely at Venezuela cannot imagine their Commander in silence. He knew that "a true leader has to be in the soul of his people". Up to there, where social rights were only longings or impossible, he arrived with his homemade word, Social Mission, Constitution, communal power.
To speak of Chávez, to think of him, is to turn to his works in the institutions of the State, in the populous hills of Caracas, in the geographies that seemed condemned to oblivion and without the right to a future. It is to believe in the fruitfulness of union: "I call on all those who go around promoting hatred, those who go around promoting social poison, those who go around always trying to deny all the good things that happen in Venezuela, I invite them to dialogue, debate and work together", he said.
That is why today Venezuelans stop to ask themselves: What would the Commander do in this or that circumstance? What would he say to those who offend the Revolution? What he started, how do we continue it?
Thus, the myth of the good orator ceased to be so and became a palpable reality for the humble. The leader who materialized his commitments, whose coherence between what he said and what he did made him a legend, had the destiny of those who teach the people to be free: eternity.
He rests there, among his people, in Our America. Chavez' voice is wherever the Homeland is spoken of, let us listen to him!
