raul castro cannot stand the big lunkheaded Thug Of Caracas. Sure he likes his money, but Hugo Chavez's persona is a different matter. raul, after all, is a disciplined military man of sorts. He's also a Marxist ideologue, far more so than his evil bearded brother. While fidel is grandiose and theatrical, cold and calculating, raul is vulgar, uncultured, ill-read and likes toilet humor. But knows raul place and prefers not to open his mouth in public. He lingers in the shadows. He keeps secrets.
That's why the loudmouthed, money-flinging, big-ambitioned, sycophantic Hugo Chavez gives raul the creeps. The only thing they have in common is vulgarity. Chavez has no personal discipline, no desire to stay in the shadows, no Marxist ideological reading of events, no decent military record, nada. He's got pseudointellectual pretensions but he's always full of bullshit. And he's not modest. Cripes, the guy always shows up wearing fire-engine red!
On the surface, the two are friends of course. But you notice they've never been seen in public, particularly not in those big public embraces Hugo is so famous for and that even Vladimir Putin recoils from? At least not many of them. When castro first took sick last year, Chavez flew into Havana unannounced on a detour from some overseas trips and raul told castro's best friend to beat it, he wasn't gonna see fidel no matter how slurpy the two of them had been in the past. Tail between his legs, Chavez reboarded his plane and continued on to Caracas.
raul had his reasons. He knew Hugo couldn't keep a secret. The situation was in flux, from his point of view, and telling Chavez would be about the same thing as announcing it on a megaphone at an international press conference.
That may be what's gone down now.
Hugo Chavez parroted the denial of the castroites in claiming his Havana Tio was alive and well. But as soon as he did, he started babbling on about castro's legacy, not his physical presence. He spoke in general and symbolic terms, rather than factual ones. Does this sound like a man who really knows that castro is alive and well?

'For those who want him to die, they will get frustrated, because Fidel Castro will never die,' Chavez told a socialist rally in the capital Caracas. 'He will always live among the people that fight for a better destiny. He will always live in the people of Cuba, Venezuela and the Americas.'

I think the dictator of Caracas might have let the cat out of the bag. I hope raul is screaming about it.