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Chavez Remembered as Venezuelan Protesters Soldier On

A year after his death, Venezuelans paid tribute to former president Hugo Chavez. But his legacy is also under attack.
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President Nicolas Maduro ended his official remarks on the first anniversary of the death of his predecessor Hugo Chavez with a classic quote from the comandante himself: Chavez vive — Chavez lives.

That’s Chavista rhetoric at its best — the late president often spoke the same words, referring to himself in the third person, up to his passing from cancer at the age of 58 one year ago today.

Chavez’s last Tweet, a few weeks before his death, echoed with the same swaggering confidence with which he ruled the country for 14 years: “We will live and we will win,” Chavez wrote.

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In a way, Chavez did survive his own death, and Nicolas Maduro's administration, tasked since the beginning with the challenge of matching the unmatchable, went to great lengths to keep alive his spirit, and its own legitimacy with it.

Reruns of Chavez’s Hello President! — a popular if sometimes derided TV program the late leader hosted weekly — still air on national TV. Portraits of the late president watch over Venezuelans from walls and billboards across the country.

On Wednesday, the “eternal commander” — as Maduro has taken to calling Chavez — was remembered by large crowds of supporters at an official parade.

In the video below, Maduro and other dignitaries — including Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Cuba’s Raul Castro — pay tribute to Chavez.

Venezuelan and foreign politicians remember Chavez on the first anniversary of his death.

But not only is Chavez dead, but the Bolivarian revolution that marked his political vision and legacy has also come under attack in recent weeks. Student and opposition protesters have taken to the streets to voice their discontent with the country’s crime problems, endemic shortages, and political repression.

Many of them were never supporters of Chavez in the first place, but discontent has even begun to spread to some from the former leader’s ranks, though the numbers are hardly sufficient to threaten Maduro’s government.

On Wednesday, as the official commemorations wound down, opposition protesters moved towards Altamira Square — a regular hotspot in the daily confrontations between demonstrators and police.

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While some opposition leaders called for a day off from the protests, many refused and continued to set up the barricades that for days have snarled traffic in Caracas and other major cities.

“Disrespect for mourning is an excuse,” artist and educator Gala Garrido, who said she is equally critical of the opposition and of the government, told VICE News. “We are paralyzed in this country; Chavez’s death has become an excuse for everything.”

Some opposition protesters also took the opportunity to mourn not the late president but the 18 people killed during the recent unrest.

"We're not insulting Chavez, but when he died last year there was a week of mourning,” Silvana Lezama, a 20-year-old student, told Reuters while guarding a barricade in an upscale district of Caracas. “Now we have 18 people dead from protests.”

The video below reportedly shows a student protester being arrested on Wednesday in the Santa Rosa de Lima neighborhood of Caracas.

Footage reportedly shows a student protester being arrested on Wednesday.

Others called the anniversary celebration a “big show” reminiscent of the large demonstrations Chavez used to muster up in his support.

“He had an enormous influence on people’s hearts,” Garrido told VICE News. “He was a gigantic manipulator.”

To be fair, turnout at the opposition rallies that have become a daily staple for Venezuela since unrest started there a month ago are no match for the thousands of Chavistas that used to show up in support of the former leader, or for the enormous crowds that attended his funeral last year.

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But the latest protests have not gone away either, and demonstrators have adopted the slogan “el que persiste vence” — he who persists wins. This sentence was spoken by jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez in an attempt to keep the protests’ momentum growing that so far has been successful.

The government has put on a united front, for both today’s ceremonies and in response to the protests. But there are divisions among Chavistas themselves — both in the party and on the streets.

“When the head of the household is absent, as we say around here, things start to get out of control,” Pablo Nieves, a community leader in the poor and traditionally Chavista 23 de Enero neighborhood of Caracas, told the Associated Press. “If he were still with us, it would have never gotten to this.”

While some say Maduro is slowly growing into a difficult role to fill, there are little illusions, on either side of the political spectrum, that he is “no Chavez,” as many Venezuelans say.

“The problem in this country is that we love a leader,” said Garrido, who hoped the protests inspired Venezuelans to find an alternative to both the government and the opposition. “We always need this image of the leader-father that comes and tells us what to do.”

“And now there is no leader-father,” she added. “We need to understand that we can’t keep blindly believing that the state is going to fix everything.”