Autumn of the Patriarchs
A dictator’s death throes are always a form of theater, featuring ecstatic masses and would-be successors fighting for political survival and preservation of privileges. That is why Venezuelan officials stage-managed Hugo Chávez’s illness and eventual death, even suggesting near the end that he was still “walking and exercising.”
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MADRID – “How difficult it is to die!” Francisco Franco is reputed to have exclaimed on his deathbed. Death, it seems, is always particularly difficult for autocrats to manage, even when they succeed in dying of natural causes.