Fidel Castro Center pays tribute to Hugo Chavez

 HAVANA, Cuba, Jul 23 (ACN) The Fidel Castro Center pays tribute today to Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias, eternal Commander of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela and considered Cuba's best friend, on the 70th anniversary of his birth next Sunday.

The institution will evoke, in La Plata Hall, the role and impact of the actions of Chavez Frias, (Sabaneta, Barinas State, July 28, 1954-Caracas, March 5, 2013), experts of the sector informed exclusively to the Cuban News Agency.

Particularly on his socialist and integrationist ideas and thoughts, inherited from the ideology of Simon Bolivar and Francisco de Miranda, which made him the undisputed leader of the Bolivarian Revolution.

Chavez was the second of six children born to Hugo de los Reyes Chavez and Elena Frias, both elementary school teachers, and grew up in humility in a small town on the Venezuelan plains.

From a young age he became a baseball fan, became an altar boy and had inclinations for painting, music, creative writing and theater.

In 1982 (year of the bicentennial of the birth of El Libertador) he created the Bolivarian Army 200 (EB-200) and in 1989 the EB-200 became the MBR-200.

He became the 52nd president of his country, with a degree in Military Arts and Sciences, and founder of the political party Movimiento V Republica (1997-2006), and of the United Socialist Party since 2007.

A broad popular feeling in favor of significant changes in the direction of the State's affairs was evidenced on December 6, 1998, when 56.24% of the voters elected him Constitutional President of the then Republic of Venezuela.

Analysts estimate that this fact constituted one of the most transcendental achievements in the contemporary political history of that South American nation, where with the elections of July 30, 2000, Chavez Frias materialized the constituent political project and was relegitimized again with 59.5% of the votes, and also in the successive electoral processes until 2012.