VENEZUELA / MIAMI: No Will...Kills Goodwill...In Ex-Prez. Carlos Andrés Pérez Burial Battle.

WSJ/ A. CAMPO-FLORES

WSJ:     "When he was president of Venezuela, Carlos Andrés Pérez (above) kept the two families he fathered—one with his wife, the other with a mistress—in separate spheres. Both sides say they maintained a tense silence—never visiting, speaking to, or even acknowledging each other.
     Then Mr. Pérez died at the age of 88 last December, and decades of simmering resentment spewed forth. 
    Now the families are clashing in a courtroom battle here over where to lay him to rest.
    The wife, Blanca Rodríguez de Pérez, wants to inter him in Venezuela, which he led during two terms, from 1974 to 1979 and from 1989 to 1993."
AND:    "The mistress, Cecilia Matos, prefers Miami, where she lived with Mr. Pérez for most of the last decade, until he passed away.
     She claims Mr. Pérez said he never wanted to be buried in Venezuela as long as his nemesis, President Hugo Chávez, was in charge."
    Thus began a long drawn-out battle...over where he would be buried.

VENEZUELA: Former President Carlos Andres Perez Dead At 88; Staunch Hugo Chavez Foe.

GUARDIAN/ Long detailed Obituary /
PHIL GUNSON/

  Former president Carlos Andrés Pérez, known as "CAP", is dead at 88.
   Andres Perez survived corruption scandals at the end of his own first presidency (1974-79) and remained politically active after the impeachment that cut short his second term of office (1989-93).
   However, "...the rise to power of his nemesis, Chávez, brought the abolition not only of the upper chamber but of the entire political system founded in 1958. Pérez was reduced to sniping from the political wilderness. From his self-imposed exile in New York, Miami and Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, he sent regular signals that he was conspiring against what he called the Chávez "dictatorship", while simultaneously denying any aspiration to return to party politics. He would set foot in Venezuela, he said, "when the time was right", regardless of any legal or physical risk he might face. That time, however, never came."