Chavez's Face "Appears" in Subway Tunnel

The deceased former president Hugo Chavez seems to appear everywhere in Venezuela, especially if you ask current president Nicolas Maduro.

Maduro, who took over the oil rich nation after Chavez’s death, first said Chavez had appeared to him in the form of a bird during the presidential elections in April.

On Wednesday he surprised his followers on national TV, by claiming that the face of Hugo Chavez had “inexplicably,” appeared on the walls of a Caracas subway tunnel, and showed a picture of it on state TV.

“Look at that gaze, it is the gaze of the fatherland,” Maduro continued.

The lionization of Hugo Chavez is nothing new to Venezuelan state run media. As we reported in January, Venezuelan media attempted to keep Chavez present in people’s minds, while he was sick with cancer and absent from the country, by incessantly broadcasting ads that praised the “eternal leader.”

But now that miraculous appearances of his image are celebrated on TV, Chavez is reaching the same status as the Virgin Mary, whose “appearance” on teacups, hospital tiles and the like, often adds some spice to Latin American news services.

These appearances are no joke to the Venezuelan government though. And they seem to be taken as an opportunity to politicize the local population.

As Maduro said on Wednesday: “Chavez is everywhere, Chavez is all of us, Chavez is a girl, a boy, a construction worker.”

Venezuelan is having municipal elections on December 8th, a day the government calls “the day of love and loyalty to Hugo Chavez.”

Happy early Chavez day, y’all.

Manuel Rueda is a correspondent for Fusion, covering Mexico and South America. He travels from donkey festivals, to salsa clubs to steamy places with cartel activity.