La Momia de Chávez (Chávez's Mummy)

From Miguel Sales Figueroa

(Childhood friend and neighbor of Tres Fotutos in Havana, ex-prisoner of conscience and plantado in Castro's gulag, now in exile in Paris.)

The decision to embalm Chavez's corpse and to exhibit it like some relic surpasses the Kitsch quotient previously reached by Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, and Kim Il Sung's clan.  But -- despite the trenches they've dug for themselves behind the mummy -- the Chavista lackeys will find out soon enough that the posthumous transmission of charisma is a very complex challenge in any country other than North Korea.  The interim president, Nicolás Maduro, seems convinced that Chávez, like the legendary Cid, will keep winning battles after his death.  Maybe he hasn't read Thomas Paine, who warned all the way back in 1776 that "the vanity and presumption of governing from beyond the grave is the most insolent and ridiculous of all tyrannies."