President Nicolás Maduro leads the tribute of Our America to Chávez –

When evoking Chávez, the president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, underlined the confidence of the son of Barinas in the people, but not in the oligarchy or other spokesmen for imperialism, with whom the dialogue on freedom and sovereignty is equivalent to a sentence of death, he said.

Among other ideas, he stressed that Chávez was not a military coup leader, but a revolutionary who led a rebellion of revolutionary soldiers.

The interventions of the Latin American leaders closed with the words of the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Raúl Castro, who expressed that Chávez had the same impetus as the Cuban Revolution due to his deep conviction in victory. Despite the magnitude of the challenges, he always declared “Yes, we can” and put all his efforts to achieve the goals of the Revolution, he stressed.

He listed several moments when Chávez and Fidel planned together how to make their dreams come true. He said that the death of the Bolivarian leader caused deep pain in the Cuban people and days after his physical departure, Fidel wrote with vehemence and pain in one of his Reflections: “In the afternoon the best friend the Cuban people had died along its history”.

Raúl stated that Chávez and his fellow fighters have shaken the continent and impacted the contemporary history of Our America. He expressed: “We have been marked by Chávez. We have witnessed the aggressions and the economic war to overthrow the Bolivarian process, but we have also witnessed and we have witnessed with pride that the Venezuelan people have known how to defend their conquests and not disappoint Chávez”.

The Cuban revolutionary highlighted the leadership of President Nicolás Maduro to continue the work of Chávez and stated that the Cuban people have been and will always be together with the Venezuelan people. That will be our tribute to Chávez, he assured.

Before the intervention segment, the Argentine intellectual Atilio Borón read a statement from the Network of Intellectuals and Artists in Defense of Humanity. In the life of Chávez is the emancipatory agenda of all the peoples of our America, he declared. He infected us with rebellion, we will continue with Chávez in anti-imperialism and socialism, he remarked.