Hugo Chavez has brother at the ready

As president Hugo Chavez quietly spent time in Cuba after undergoing emergency surgery there before returning home this week, no government figure occupied the political void created by his absence more assertively than his older brother, Adan Chavez, a physicist whose radical thinking has often been to the left of the president’s.

He serves a role similar to that of Raul Castro, who took over as Cuba’s president after illness removed Fidel Castro from the political scene in 2006. And like Raul Castro, while Adan Chavez may lack his brother’s charisma, he remains a loyalist who has assisted his brother throughout the consolidation of power.

Public updates
A former Venezuelan ambassador to Cuba and long a member of Hugo Chavez’s inner circle of advisers, Adan Chavez had taken on the role of providing public updates on his brother’s convalescence, shuttling between Caracas and Havana. Adan Chavez, 58, now governor of Barinas, a state of cattle ranches in western Venezuela that is a bastion of the Chavez family, has also led efforts to reassure and energise the president’s supporters as rumours swirl about his condition.

“It would be unforgivable to limit ourselves to only electoral or other methods of struggle,” said Adan Chavez, a former university professor involved in political activity long before his brother, who is less than two years his junior, formed a nationalist cell of young army officers in the late 1970s. The prominence of Adan Chavez reflects his brother’s dominance of Venezuelan politics since he was first elected president in 1998.

Over the years, Hugo Chavez has consistently winnowed other top advisers and potential rivals who rose from his own political movement. Some who remain, like Vice President Elias Jaua, a former director of land expropriations, exhibit total loyalty.

No one in the government, including Adan Chavez, has displayed the president’s visceral ability to connect with poor Venezuelans. That may not have mattered too much in Cuba, where the Communist Party holds unrivaled authority over the political system.

Adan Chavez did not respond to interview requests. But biographers of Hugo Chavez attribute the president’s political evolution, if not his bruising political style, in part to Adan’s influence and ties in the 1970s with guerrilla leaders like Douglas Bravo, who advocated using Venezuela’s petroleum reserves as a tool for radical change.

Now, Bravo, who is 79 and a critic of what he describes as Venezuela’s new dependence on countries like China and Russia, said Adan Chavez was clearly ‘in the line of succession.’ Referring to Adan’s statement about using arms to defend his brother’s revolution, Bravo noted that neither the vice president nor any other prominent pro-Chavez political leader had said anything so provocative.

Adan Chavez has occupied several important posts in his brother’s 12-year presidency, including that of education minister. He notably shaped relations with Cuba, Venezuela’s top ally, which hosted his brother in a medical facility, away from the Venezuelan media’s prying eyes.

Meanwhile, the dearth of information about Hugo Chavez has focused attention on a range of scenarios, including possible successors. Some in the opposition looking ahead at presidential elections next year have suggested that Hugo Chavez may be in better health than many people assume, as he prepares a return to Venezuela to campaign again for re-election.

Other critics are concerned with the possibility that the government could delay elections and are viewing Adan Chavez’s prominence with a mixture of captivation and dread. Jonathan Jacubowicz, a Venezuelan filmmaker, said differences existed between the Chavez brothers, notably that Hugo Chavez had worked hard to portray himself as a democratic leader.

“That made him somewhat conceal his radical agenda, successfully fooling some of the smartest people on the planet,” said Jacubowicz.