General: Heart attack killed a suffering Chavez
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- President Hugo Chavez died of a massive heart attack after great suffering and inaudibly mouthed his desire to live, the head of Venezuela's presidential guard said late Wednesday.
"He couldn't speak but he said it with his lips ... `I don't want to die. Please don't let me die,' because he loved his country, he sacrificed himself for his country," Gen. Jose Ornella told The Associated Press.
The general said he spent the last two years with Chavez, including his final moments, as Venezuela's president of 14 years battled an unspecified cancer in the pelvic region.
Ornella spoke to the AP outside the military academy where Chavez's body lay in state. He said Chavez's cancer was very advanced when death came but gave no details.
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Chavez's body brought 'home' to military academy.
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Hugo Chavez has been carried back to the military academy where he started his army career, his flag-draped coffin lying in state in the echoing halls until Friday's funeral.
As a band played the hymn from his first battalion, a long ribbon of tearful mourners numbering in the hundreds of thousands bid farewell to the larger-than-life leader Wednesday after a procession carried his casket through Caracas.
With the entire government, including anointed successor Nicolas Maduro, caught up in the seven-hour procession, there were few answers to the most pressing question facing the country - the timing of a presidential election that must be called within a month.
Generations of Venezuelans, many dressed in the red of Chavez's socialist party, filled the capital's streets to remember the man who dominated their country for 14 years before succumbing to cancer Tuesday afternoon.
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He fought so hard, and I know he wanted to do so much more for the people who placed so much trust in him. I read in an earlier article a few months ago how much they missed him in their daily lives ... they considered him family. The inclusion of all, in so many grassroots organizations he included in government policy, no doubt fostered the huge trust and respect that went both ways. They will miss him badly, but I believe he has left them with the tools to carry on the dream.