CANCER is a personal tragedy. Even his bitterest foes should
wish Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, a speedy recovery from
the illness that has now sent him to doctors in Havana for the
second time in six weeks. There is no way of knowing whether
this is likely: Mr Chávez's government treats the details of his
condition as a state secret, in the worst traditions of the
Kremlin or North Korea (see article). But his supporters should
be under no illusion: even before the man himself was struck
down, chavismo was in terminal decline, outside Venezuela at
least.  In his heyday five years ago, Mr Chávez projected his
“Bolivarian revolution”, a gaseous concoction of authoritarian
socialism and populism, as a continental force. With like-minded
presidents from a handful of other Latin American and Caribbean
countries, he forged an “anti-imperialist” (ie, anti-United
States) block. Not only did Mr Chávez deploy the popular touch
of a born communicator, but he was also armed with seemingly
limitless oil money. Latin