At some point, when Hugo Chavez's embalmed body is placed in a glass casket, he will join at least eight other world leaders. Their remains will be on display forever...or at least as long as their keepers can preserve them.
Among the photos... A woman reacts at the site of Chávez's remains at the Military Academy chapel in Caracas.
At the time, Venezuela's former vice president, Nicolás Maduro, announced that Chávez's body would be permanently displayed at the Revolutionary Museum so that his people would always see him. The idea may seem absurd, but it is not particularly novel.
The Russians, who perfected the practice, both Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, have long demonstrated this. Shortly after his death in 1924, Lenin's body was embalmed in a large mausoleum near the Kremlin, preserved by a temperature of 61 degrees and mild bleaching and soaking in glycerol and potassium acetate.
.. Among the photos is Lenin's body in 1991, the first time it has been photographed in 30 years.
Stalin's embalmed body was also buried next to Lenin for about 10 years, but was hastily restored under cover of darkness in the early 60s when the government tried to destroy the cult of his personality.
... Among the photos is the laying of Stalin in Moscow in 1953.
The Russians seem to have inspired the North Koreans to put on similar shows. In 1994, a Russian team helped protect the remains of North Korea's founding president, Kim Il-sung, the New York Times reported.
..among photos..Kim Il-sung in state in 1994
When Kim Jong Il died in late 2011, Russian scientists again went to Pyongyang for the embalming. The late leader is encased in a glass sarcophagus with a pink face in filtered lights.
Among the photos...an image of Kim Jong-il at the Memorial Palace taken on Korean television in 2011.
But Kim Jong Il and his father were by no means the first Asian leaders to receive the Chavez treatment. Vietnamese revolutionary Ho Chi Minh, who died in 1969, is displayed in a mausoleum in Hanoi modeled after Lenin. The leader died during the Vietnam War, so his embalmers had to work in a cave in the North Vietnamese jungle, the New York Times reported.
One scientist who worked on him told the Times: We tremble at those who do it. I feel a great responsibility in my hands. "
Socialist leader Mao Zedong has been buried in a mausoleum in Beijing's Tiananmen Square since May 1977. Mao's embalmers were forced to seek advice from Vietnam, the Russians – when the plan went slightly awry and Vietnam couldn't explain how to make an airtight coffin.
Among the photos, a photo from China's official news service in 1976 shows party and state leaders at a vigil by Mao Zedong.
The then exiled Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos died in 1989. His remains were embalmed until the government allowed them to be repatriated in 1993. Currently, the body is buried in a famous mausoleum in northwestern Philippines. His widow Imelda Marcos has allowed the government to bury him. The New York Times reports at the country's presidential cemetery. She posted body kissing photos in 2010.
Chávez is only the second Latin American leader to be permanently protected. Embalmers have drained water from the body cells of Eva Peron, wife of Argentine President Juan Peron, and replaced them with wax. It is an extraordinary technology. It turned her into a candle. Egyptologist Bob Brier told the Post's Monica Hess in 2012. Now a finger is also missing—when the junta overthrew Perón's husband and took over their home, they cut one off to see if the body was a fake.
Chavez's body will have better protection than that. AFP had reported that Marcos' embalmer has already offered his services and is urging Venezuelans to start the process before it becomes more difficult.
"I'll fix anyone from anywhere," he said.
Keeping North Korea's dead leaders fresh
This article dated March 06, 2019
Russian Science Keeping North Korea's Dead Leaders Fresh
The three leaders, Kim Jong Un's grandfather, father and Ho Chi Minh were initially guarded by a team of specialists at the "Lenin Lab" in Moscow, where Vladimir Lenin's remains were first embalmed and displayed in 1924.
The remains of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un are buried at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace in Pyongyang.
None of the communist legacies shared by Vietnam and North Korea, highlighted during Kim Jong-un's "friendly visit" in Hanoi, are more strange than the embalmed leaders displayed in their capitals and the secretive group of Russian technicians who keep aging bodies ageless.
After a brief summit with US President Donald Trump, Kim visited Ho Chi Minh City in the Vietnamese capital.
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