Expresiones de duelo ante la muerte del Presidente Hugo Chávez. Obituarios y Visitas al difunto

Abstract

The two latest years in the life of Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez Frias, were marked by suffering, as he trusted Cuban medical services, and ignored the cancer diagnosed in Venezuela. Discretion and secrecy marked that period, so much, that the day of death is an object of discussion. In Venezuela the president’s death was announced on May 5, 2013. Diverse expressions of sadness where manifested, in this paper two expressions of sorrow in different social groups where analized: obituaries, and visits to the president’s coffin at the Military Academy (in Caracas). Obituaries published from March 6 to12, 2013 in the two main newspapers with national circulation in the country: El Universal and El Nacional, were analyzed using Teun van Dijk (1997) critical analysis theory, doing a pragmatic discourse analysis of them. Two dimensions were included: 1. frequency, size and cost; and, 2. text content. A corpus of 612 obituaries was constructed, identifying within them, the characteristics of the messages sent by public and private institutions, who are the main users of the newspaper obituary gender, related to the occasion. Text structures and functions such as: basic courtesy and, farewell to the late president, also where detected and analized. The ambiance at the visits was subjected to observation, finding emotional links, interests and, political commitment with the late president and his project. The analysis shows two expresions of sorrow: That of stern and expensive obituaries, and that of the affectivity of those that had music and some food under the sun of a hot day.