As I blogged the other day, Venezuela’s populist dynamo Hugo Chávez has left the country yet again for more cancer treatments in Cuba, possibly for the last time.  In his absence:  intricate clan wars among the ruling party, an aspiring opposition, and a staggering heap of social ills.  Francisco Toro writes in The New Republic on whether or not the chosen successor Nicolás Maduro step outside the shadow of his patron:

The trouble with Yes Men, of course, is that you can never tell what they’re really thinking. Maduro’s resume provides only limited guidance: A Caracas bus driver turned radical union organizer for bus drivers, he’s seen as a champion for the civilian side of the Civilian-Military divide, a split typically described as pitting more radical, leftist, pro-Cuban civilians against more conservative, corrupt, nationalistic military men in the upper echelons of bureaucratic Chavismo.