Hugo Chávez
Death

Venezuela's hybrid regime, after Chávez's death, became more selectively accommodating on the inside and more explicitly repressive on the outside. This allowed the regime to survive, but not to thrive. Regime survival was purchased at the cost of policy immobilism. And policy immobilism has left Venezuela with the deepest economic crisis in Venezuela's history.

—Corales and Penfold, Dragon in the Tropics: The Legacy of Hugo Chávez

On 5 March 2013, Vice President Nicolás Maduro announced on state television that Chávez had died in a military hospital in Caracas at 16:25 VET (20:55 UTC). Maduro said Chávez died "after battling a tough illness for nearly two years". According to the head of Venezuela's presidential guard, Chávez died from a massive heart attack, and his cancer of the pelvic region was very advanced when he died. José Ornella said that near the end of his life Chávez "couldn't speak but he said it with his lips... ' No quiero morir, por favor no me dejen morir ' ('I don't want to die. Please don't let me die'), because he loved his country, he sacrificed himself for his country". Chávez is survived by four children and four grandchildren.

After defecting from Venezuela, former bodyguard for Chávez, Leamsy Salazar, stated that he died in December 2012, months before his death was officially announced. In July 2018, former Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz also said that Chávez had actually died in December 2012 and the announcement of his death was delayed for political reasons. In an interview cited by Venezuelan daily El Nacional, the former Chávez supporter said that the Venezuelan president died on 28 December, but his closest allies decided to delay the announcement and never submitted the death certificate to the Office of the Attorney General. The supposed delay in announcing Chávez's death raised concerns that laws signed in his name during that period were forged for political purposes.

His death triggered a constitutional requirement that a presidential election be called within 30 days. Maduro, Chavez's vice president, was elected president on 14 April 2013.
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