Venezuela’s Chavez remembered with pomp and protests

By Andrew Cawthorne and Girish Gupta CARACAS (Reuters) – Followers of Venezuela’s late socialist leader Hugo Chavez took to the streets on Wednesday to mark the anniversary of his death, a sad but welcome distraction for his successor who has faced a month of violent protests. A year after Chavez succumbed to cancer, his self-proclaimed ‘son,’ President Nicolas Maduro, faces the biggest challenge to his rule from an explosion of anti-government demonstrations that have led to clashes with security forces and 18 deaths. There’s not a single day I don’t remember Hugo,” Chavez’s cousin, Guillermo Frias, 60, said from Los Rastrojos village in rural Barinas state, where the pair used to play baseball as kids. “He changed Venezuela forever, and we cannot go back.