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（单词翻译）

Chavez's body to be preserved and displayed

Summary

8 March 2013

The body of President Hugo Chavez is to go on permanent display in a military museum in Venezuela, like many socialist¹ leaders before him.

Reporter:

Viv Marsh²

Report

No matter how baffling it may seem to outsiders, the allure³ of a dead socialist leader can't be underestimated. In Moscow, Beijing and Hanoi, the corpses⁴ of Lenin, Mao and Ho Chi Minh are displayed under subdued⁵ lighting⁶ for equally subdued lines of people to file past, paying silent respects. 

In North Korea, Kim Il-sung's public resting place was recently renovated⁷ to accommodate the embalmed⁸ remains⁹ of his son Kim Jong-il. 

In Beijing, visitors to Mao Zedong are encouraged to buy flowers for him, though they must leave them outside. 

Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam's revolutionary leader, wanted to be cremated¹⁰ but was preserved nonetheless. Outside his mausoleum Vietnamese queue in their hundreds for entry: schoolchildren, grizzled old men; women dressed in traditional ao dai. 

The pull of the embalming¹¹ fluid becomes still more puzzling when a country has politically moved on. Lenin has so far survived several attempts to evict¹² him from Red Square, though the Soviet¹³ Union is long gone. 

In China, Mao lingers at the heart of a capital which also plays host nowadays to Starbucks and McDonald's. But so far, China's politicians can still quote the sayings of Mao while pursuing policies widely at variance¹⁴ with his legacy¹⁵. 

It's a balancing act that critics of the embalming of Venezuela's president will now be anxiously watching.