Venezuela Commemorates Hugo Chávez’s Death With Parade, Oliver Stone Documentary Broadcast

The government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has planned a series of celebrations to commemorate the one-year anniversary of late president Hugo Chávez’s death last March 5 from cancer. The Associated Press reported that a military parade for the one-time lieutenant colonel and paratrooper was set to take place in the capital of Caracas on Wednesday morning, in addition to a remembrance ceremony at the late president’s mausoleum and the airing of Oliver Stone’s new documentary “My Friend Hugo” on the state television channel TeleSur.

Upon his death last March, shrines to Chávez began to spring up in neighborhoods where his support was most ardent. Since being elected in April, his handpicked successor Maduro has often sought to stoke that nearly-religious admiration, from brandishing photos snapped by construction workers who claimed Chávez’s image miraculously appeared to insisting that the late mandatory had appeared to him in the form of a small bird. The anniversary comes as opposition protestors, including some Chavistas, have taken to the streets in protest of deteriorating economic conditions, spiking crime rates, and violence against other opposition demonstrators.

El Universal writes that the 50-minute documentary features interviews with family members, friends (including Stone himself), intellectuals and lawmakers close to Chávez. In an interview with TeleSur, Stone said his producer had originally suggested Stone – who in 2009 had interviewed the Venezuelan leader along with a handful of other leftist Latin American heads of state for “South of the Border” – return to Venezuela with his crew to make the film after Chávez succumbed to cancer. Stone declined to comment on the current state of the country, which in February and early March have seen a wave of protests against the government of Chávez’s successor. “All I can talk to you about is, I miss Chávez. I miss his spirit, his presence.”