Chavez’s Body To Be Permanently Displayed, Venezuela’s Vice President Says

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela’s acting president says Hugo Chavez’s embalmed body will be permanently displayed in a glass casket so that “his people will always have him.”

Vice President Nicolas Maduro says the remains will be put on permanent display at the Museum of the Revolution, close to the presidential palace where Chavez ruled for 14 years. Maduro says the president will lie in state first for at least another seven days.

A state funeral for Chavez attended by some 33 heads of government is scheduled to begin Friday morning. Tens of thousands have already filed past his glass-topped casket at a military academy following a seven-hour procession on Tuesday which took his body from the hospital where he died.

Other world leaders whose bodies are on display

World leaders whose bodies have been preserved and put on perpetual display, as Venezuela’s government plans to do with Hugo Chavez:

VLADIMIR LENIN: Body of Soviet Union’s founder has been displayed since January 1924 in a mausoleum at Red Square. His tomb is one of Moscow’s most famous symbols and Communists consider it almost a shrine. The embalmment for display is considered the model for subsequent Communist world leaders put on exhibit.

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JOSEF STALIN: Soviet leader’s embalmed body was put on display next to Lenin on March 9, 1953. Soviet authorities ordered it removed from the tomb Oct. 31, 1961, and had it buried during a period of “de-Stalinization.”

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HO CHI MINH: Corpse of the Vietnamese revolutionary leader was put on display on Aug. 29, 1975. It rests in a glass sarcophagus in the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi and is a popular destination for tourists.

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MAO ZEDONG: Embalmed body of the founding father of the People’s Republic of China was unveiled on Sept. 9, 1977. It rests in the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall in the center of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Long lines of people form daily to view the man commonly known as Chairman Mao.

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KIM IL SUNG: Preserved body of the man considered the founding father of North Korea was unveiled on July 8, 1995. It lies under glass for viewing purposes in the Kumsusan mausoleum, a cavernous former presidential palace.

@AP, The Olympian