What will Chávez do without Castro?

Carlos Alberto Montaner

Hugo Chávez has just declared that Fidel Castro is his father. He says that Castro phones him constantly and tells him what to do. Chávez obeys him solicitously, like a good son who admires the wisdom of his progenitor. ''The Devil knows more not because he's the Devil but because he's old,'' the Venezuelan president has said through laughter.

Chávez laughs a lot, sings and makes many people laugh. Castro laughs less, because his dentures are ill-fitting and slippery, and he never sings because he sings badly and has an intense fear of ridicule. But he does send letters and ''little notes'' to his disciple to enlighten him. Chávez receives those lessons and suggestions with great expectation and talks about them in his weekly reality show, Hello, President!

Recently, Castro explained to Chávez how to build a new international financial system. While Cuba is an irreparably ruined country (and that's a fact), Castro insists that he knows a lot about international finance. Could be. As Forbes magazine keeps reporting, his fortune abroad is among the world's largest. In Cuba, that money is called ''the Comandante's accounts,'' and everyone on the island was hoping that he would use it to palliate the recent catastrophe caused by the two hurricanes.

But Castro didn't think it was a good idea to repatriate his money for enterprises as lacking in glory as rebuilding the 500,000 houses that were damaged. That's a vulgarity of ``petty history.''

At this stage in Castro's life, he should consider himself blessed because Chávez declared himself his disciple, beloved son and apostle of collectivist socialism, in an era when those archaic beliefs have been discarded. Castro's personal tragedy is that nobody in Cuba pays any attention to him anymore. In Cuba, for the past many years, people -- even those closest to him -- have paid him homage and pretended to obey him, but they don't take him seriously. They applaud him, because they have no other choice, but with profound indifference. No devotion will withstand half a century of interminable speeches divorced from the reality of a country that is falling apart because of the stubborn stupidity of its ''Maximum Leader,'' as the older people still call him.

In turn, Chávez is a chronic orphan looking for a paternal figure to whom he can cling, a person who desperately needs an ideological guide who will organize his chaotic mind.

Twenty years ago, he declared himself the son of Norberto Ceresole, an Argentine fascist who had scrambled Peronism with Islam and preached the virtues of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's Green Book. Chávez was very happy with Ceresole, until the day he repudiated him and adopted Castro as his father.

The way Chávez forges political alliances is odd. He takes those relationships to a familial plane that expands like the universe. Besides his ''brethren'' Evo Morales, Rafael Correa and Daniel Ortega, he is beginning to talk about ''my brother'' Vladimir Putin of Russia and ''my brother'' Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's petty tyrant, who is intent on wiping Israel off the map.

It is not clear whether, by designating these characters as ''brethren,'' Chávez has placed them under Castro's prolific paternity, or if they are his brothers on his mother's side, or sired by Simón Bolívar, another figure whose DNA the Venezuelan president has resolutely appropriated.

What will happen to Chávez when Castro dies and the little notes and delirious ideas stop flowing? Will the Venezuelan feel totally neglected and will he fall into a state of deep melancholy, or will he set out to adopt another paternal figure who will compensate his profound insecurity? I don't know.

Latin America does not lend itself to political analysis. Over there, the cry might well be ``Prozac or death!''