VENEZUELA: Impressions Of Hugo Chavez.

SLATE/ Christopher Hitchens/OPINION/   Hitchens expounds on "What I learned about Hugo Chávez's mental health when I visited Venezuela with Sean Penn" during a trip in 2008, and the recent TV broadcast of Simon Bolivar's exhumation.

"Recent accounts of Hugo Chávez's politicized necrophilia may seem almost too lurid to believe, but I can testify from personal experience that they may well be an understatement. In the early hours of July 16—just at the midnight hour, to be precise—Venezuela's capo officiated at a grisly ceremony. This involved the exhumation of the mortal remains of Simón Bolívar, leader of Latin America's rebellion against Spain, who died in 1830."