CARACAS: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will return to the international stage at a meeting of Latin American states in Brasilia Tuesday, after a battle with cancer kept him largely out of the spotlight for months.
The incumbent in Venezuela's October 7 vote is slated to travel abroad for the first time since the beginning of the year. He recently made his first big-crowd appearances, where long speeches, singing and some dancing, eased concerns about the longtime leftist leader's illness.
Chavez, the most visible face of Latin America's activist left, was diagnosed with cancer in June 2011. But he declared this month, after a long series of treatments and two operations in 2011 and 2012, that he was "healed."
During his treatment, Chavez, 58, was absent from the campaign trail and important regional events, notably the April Summit of the Americas in Colombia.
His presence at Mercosur, a political and economic union of several Latin American nations, will "say, 'I'm back. There's no problem with my health,' countering rumors about his illness," said Luis Vicente Leon, the head of Venezuela's leading pollsters Datanalisis.
Less than three months before the election, "Chavez must send concrete messages of his recuperation to erase any shadow of a doubt about his future," he added.
In power since 1999, Chavez continues to enjoy strong popularity among Venezuela's poor, and poll results also suggest he may well beat his main opponent, 40-year-old former governor Henrique Capriles.
But the incumbent's health condition is considered a weakness in his campaign.
Chavez has a more than 15-point lead on his main rival, a recent Datanalysis survey found. But polarization between pro and anti-Chavez camps is evident in opinion polls, where results differ widely among pollsters. The majority of polling organizations report that Chavez is ahead in the race, but give him leads from zero to 35 percent ahead of Capriles.
Electoral aspirations aside, Chavez is expected to use his trip to Brazil to demonstrate the importance of Venezuela's recent integration into Mercosur, political analyst Farith Fraija explained.
Mercosur is a customs union grouping Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay. Paraguay, where senate has blocked Venezuela's membership since 2006, was suspended from the organization in June, after the dismissal of Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo.
Venezuela's membership in the organization was approved shortly after. Chavez said last week that his nation's participation will "open a new horizon of possibilities for the South American homeland."
The push to join Mercosur may be part of "Chavez's calculated political move" to widen the franchise of leftist Latin American nations, hostile to Washington, said international relations expert Edmundo Gonzalez. Venezuela has one of the largest oil reserves in the world.
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