I can understand your disagreement with Chavez and the idea of feeling relief about what you considered a big problem, or hopeful about a future without him. But I can't understand getting joy out of all this. It just clashes with my personal views of what humanity is, or should be. Even if I felt like you did, I would do my best trying not to, as I don't think it would be justified or positive.
At the end of the day, Chavez was only a human being, just like all of us. And what ended up killing him was a variant of one of the biggest health issues of our times. A group of deseases that kills millions of people every year. Now, would all these people be considered "good" by your standards or mine ? Obviously not. Still, disagreeing with someone and even hating what they have done is no excuse to me to be happy of their death. The hate for the things they've done and their ideas is not more strong to me than the basic, human empathy or respect that I feel for anyone's existance, specially one that dies of a horrible illness like this. And whatever difference you have with said person won't die with him anyway... Ideas don't die.
Of course, I realize that this is mostly rationalization, and you can't just avoid feeling how you feel... I'm just giving you my opinion, based on what I believe, and how I feel. To give you another example, I was disgusted at the way some people in the US reacted to Osama Bin Laden's death, celebrating in the streets and so on. Despite all the horrible things that he was responsible for, I just couldn't feel happy about it... I was glad because of him being stopped, yes, but not happy. All I saw was a group of people celebrating for the death of another human being as if it were a football championship, with exacerbated hate rooted in nationalism, discrimination and intolerance. And regardless of whatever flag you favor or religion you believe, the only way to end intolerance or violence is its opposite.
Of course, many people could say that all this is just because I'm not from the US or Venezuela and so on... But I feel the same way with those who were involved in the dictatorship that my country went through, even having relatives that suffered it. And is one of the reasons why I'm against any kind of torture or the death penalty.
Finally, I don't want to get into a discussion of who Chavez was and the things he did or didn't do, but I just want to say this. From what I know and my interpretation of said knowledge, he was someone that had good intentions overall and did many good things for its people, specially the poor. And at the same time, I disagreed with many of his decisions, and think he had too much ego and abused his power sometimes. He was neither the devil nor the saint that many people make him out to be. Now that he's gone, I hope that people in Venezuela can find the way to conciliate their differences and recognize both the good and bad of Chavez's actions. First and foremost, for their own sake.
