DORAL, Florida (AP) — Cheering Venezuelans in the U.S. waved their country’s flag and anxiously voiced hope that change would come to their homeland after the death Tuesday of long-ruling populist President Hugo Chavez.
“He’s gone!’’ dozens in a largely anti-Chavez community chanted after word spread of the death of the 58-year-old leftist. Many said they were rejoicing after nearly a decade and a half of socialist rule heavily concentrated in the hands of Chavez.
“We are not celebrating death,’’ Ana San Jorge, 37, said amid a jubilant crowd in the Miami suburb of Doral. “We are celebrating the opening of a new door, of hope and change.’’
Wearing caps and T-shirts in Venezuela’s colors of yellow, blue and red, many expressed cautious optimism and concern after the announcement of the death.
“Although we might all be united here celebrating today, we don’t know what the future holds,’’ said Francisco Gamez, 18, at El Arepazo, a popular Venezuelan restaurant in Doral.
In Caracas, Venezuela’s foreign minister announced late Tuesday that Vice President Nicolas Maduro would be interim president and run as the governing party candidate in elections to be called within 30 days. It wasn’t immediately clear when presidential elections would be held.
Chavez, though cancer-stricken in recent years, had led the oil-rich Latin American nation for years while espousing a fiery brand of socialism and bickering with a succession of U.S. governments over what he called Washington’s hegemony in the region.
Many in Florida’s large Venezuelan community and other such pockets around the U.S. are stridently anti-Chavez and had fled their home country in response to the policies instituted by his government.
One of them is Marcel Mata, a 28-year-old opponent of Chavez, who now lives in New Orleans. He moved to the U.S. from Caracas, Venezuela, during a turbulent period in 2002 and said the prospects of an election were dizzying for opposition forces long unable to defeat the seemingly larger-than-life Chavez.
After 14 years of Chavez, Mata said: “It’s hard to believe. There seemed to be no end in sight and now there’s a sense of hope.’’