Maduro reads typed Chávez letter at summit

SANTIAGO — Venezuela’s vice- president read a letter from Hugo Chávez at a summit in Chile yesterday, exhorting the region’s leaders to show unity while criticizing the US embargo on Cuba.

The typewritten speech, about a dozen pages long, said the assumption of Cuban President Raúl Castro as the rotating president of the CELAC group of Latin American and Caribbean leaders is a huge victory against US pressure to isolate Cuba.

“After 30 years of resisting this criminal imperial blockade, Latin America and the Caribbean is saying to the US, in one voice, that all your attempts to leave out Cuba are failing,” the letter said.

Venezuelan Vice-President Nicolas Maduro made no comments about the letter after reading it to other leaders. He has been the government’s top public figure while Chávez remains in Cuba after his fourth surgery for cancer. The letter was highly anticipated after Venezuelan officials said it would show that Chávez remains lucid and in charge.

Chilean President and summit host Sebastián Piñera has said several times that the gathered leaders are praying for Chávez’s recovery. In the letter, Chávez says he’ll be watching from Havana and “praying for the complete and excellent development of CELAC.”

The letter is classic Chávez, urging the leaders to work together on a broad range of issues, from energy policies to literacy. It defends Argentina’s position on the Malvinas, which are islands the country says were stolen from them by Britain 180 years ago.

“The fight continues,” the letter said. “There is more than one who is brave, from here to Patagonia.”

As Maduro finished reading, television images showed Chávez’s signature in red ink at the bottom of the letter.

AP