Adiós Presidente

If you go back far enough as a reader of these blogs, you know about Aló Presidente, the beautiful Spaniel mix dog with long black curly fur Nora and I rescued from the streets of Vedado.  Four of us were walking from Nora's apartment to our Hotel Presidente, when we encountered this friendly little guy, not yet fully grown.  He started following us and wouldn't stop.  In the distance of a few city blocks we decided to rescue him.  The complete story is available in a blog titled, Aló Presidente, from August 20, 2010.

We named him Aló Presidente for the Hotel Presidente, in the shadow of which we took the decision to rescue him.  Also, Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's President and benefactor of Cuba, had a weekly Saturday radio show he called Aló Presidente during which he assailed Cuban ears with his views on politics and everything else under the sun.

I'm happy to say Aló, whom I think of as my dog, is living out a happy life as the only male (fixed, that is) in a harem of several females in the Aniplant Headquarters on Principe Street in Central Havana.  Hugo Chávez, who died a few days ago, was not so lucky.

Chávez was a military man who wanted to be like the many Latin American strongmen in all ways but one.  He was a leftist while most of the old Latin strongmen were hard rightists.  Frankly, as a leader, he didn't do Venezuela much good.  Coming to power after failing in a coup and finally winning an election, he mismanaged Venezuela's vast oil resources for his own political purposes more than for the welfare of Venezuela's needy people.  But politically he succeeded, and today most Latin strongmen are leftists, like he was.

Hugo was a friend and admirer of Fidel Castro, Cuba's guiding light of the last 54 years.  In spite of this, Chávez never called his political system Communism, but he surely pushed it in that direction.  He saw the Cuban economic crisis after the fall of the Soviet Union, and he made large regular gifts of oil to help his friends, Fidel and Raul.  Many Cubans now worry if with his passing, Cuba will suffer.

A couple of years ago, when he was diagnosed with cancer, Chávez opted to seek his medical care in Cuba.  He knew Cuba's medical establishment was the pride of the island nation.  In fact, to reciprocate for the gifts of oil, Cuba sent 20,000 doctors into the Venezuelan countryside to improve the health of the Bolivarian campesinos.

As often happens with cancer patients, Chávez underwent surgeries and infections and long recuperations, during many trips to Cuba—all at the hands of Cuba's finest doctors.  If curing him were possible, he'd be alive today as nothing was spared in his medical treatment.  Throughout all this he kept his position as President, even winning reelection in the past few months while he lay in his Cuban hospital bed.

My little Aló Presidente passed through the era of all these events oblivious to the entire drama of Cuban-Venezuelan relations.  Instead, he played with Bella, a long haired, light brown beauty of a Daschund mix rescued by British flight attendant, Angela, who every few months brings the headquarters dogs new treats and toys,

Sometimes, a dog's life is better than the ones we can arrange for ourselves.

Les Inglis