President Nicolás Maduro leads Nuestra América's homage to Chávez

Caracas, March 5 (RHC)-- The President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros, headed the closing ceremony of the tributes dedicated to Commander Hugo Chávez on the tenth anniversary of his physical departure, held at the Teresa Carreño Theater, in Caracas. 

The session coincided with the conclusions of the World Meeting for the Validity of the Bolivarian Thought of the Revolutionary Leader in the XXI Century, attended by delegations from many countries.

Among the Latin American leaders present were the presidents of Nicaragua and Bolivia, Daniel Ortega and Luis Arce, and the former presidents of Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Honduras, Raul Castro, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa and Manuel Zelaya, respectively.

Also attending were the prime ministers of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Dominica, Ralph Gonsalves and Roosevelt Skerrit, respectively, as well as the vice president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, the vice president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, Diosdado Cabello, and other authorities.

President Nicolás Maduro highlighted that "if we have applied the Hugo Chávez formula for these ten years that we have lived, it has been the formula of connecting, mobilizing and activating the strength of the people in all situations".

He added that the socialist model contemplates always going by the side of the people. "With the people always, without the people never, to go with the joy, the hope, the criticism, the self-criticism of the people, activated, mobilized, to go with their joy, with their singing".

The former Ecuadorian President, Rafael Correa, pointed out that the physical departure of Chavez destroyed the soul, but not the hope he sowed with his enormous load of tenderness and solidarity. He assured that the Bolivarian leader lives and the best tribute to his dedication and generosity is to never give up. Venezuela is facing a brutal imperial aggression, but with Chavez's example, the people will win, he concluded.

The best tribute we can pay to Chávez is to be revolutionary and anti-imperialist. Not to betray the struggle of the peoples, to act with unity and never trust the enemies of humanity. The empire tried to eliminate his legacy, but immortalized him, expressed the former Bolivian President, Evo Morales.

He commented that Chávez and the Cuban leader Fidel Castro were the most generous and solidary men he knew. He remembers them discussing the conception of social programs to contribute to the development of the peoples. Among them, he mentioned the Miracle Mission to operate 100,000 people in Latin America for free. Evo then thought it was a utopia, but today the beneficiaries of this mission exceed 700,000.

The Prime Minister of Dominica, Roosevelt Skerrit, urged to always preserve the unity that Chavez transmitted as a value and principle to other fighters. He recalled that after his death, many predicted that Chavism and Latin American integration would come to an end, but ten years later we have proved them wrong, as the integration process is more alive than ever, he assured.

He also condemned the unjust and illegal unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela and made it clear that none of them will succeed in subduing its people and its only constitutional president.

The former President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, highlighted the validity of Chavez' legacy in the resistance of the peoples against the continental right wing. "For those who believed that due to the passing of Commander Chávez the people of Venezuela would be prey to imperialism, here we are in Venezuela with President Nicolás Maduro, remembering his liberating principle, his rational principle of equity", he said.

The Bolivian leader, Luis Arce, stated that "in the face of the advance of neoliberalism in Latin America, Hugo Chávez won the 1999 elections, transformed Venezuela and turned the people into warriors in the struggle against imperialism", which he considered a milestone in the struggle to build socialism in Latin America and the Caribbean.