CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Friday he was making a “progressive recovery” from a course of radiation therapy he underwent earlier this month in Cuba, but admitted he was suffering from a lack of physical strength.
“I am making a progressive recovery,” Chavez said in a telephone conversation with state-controlled television.
But he admitted that his cancer treatment had affected his physical strength and that he was no longer, as he put it, “a hard-charging horse of before.”
“I used to pass sleepless nights,” he said. “Now I work eight hours as mandated by the law. I rest and I follow a diet.”
Chavez said he was feeling what he described as the “normal effect of radiotherapy” that he underwent in Cuba in an attempt to beat his cancer.
Chavez, who returned from Havana on May 11, did not offer any other details about his condition.
The 57-year-old has undergone surgery twice in the past year to remove cancerous tumors, and has had chemotherapy followed by radiation treatments to try to rid himself of the cancer.
He has not disclosed the type of cancer he has or the prognosis, which, with presidential elections looming in October, has fueled political uncertainty at home.
Chavez, in power since 1999, is running for reelection as a “revolutionary socialist” against Henrique Capriles, the youthful Miranda state governor and center-left candidate for the united opposition.
Last month, Chavez put his health and political future in the spotlight, begging at a pre-Easter Mass, “Please don’t take me yet.”
“Give me your crown of thorns, Christ, I will bleed; Give me your cross — 100 crosses — and I will carry them for you. But give me life, because I still have things to do for my people and my country,” Chavez said.
Chavez is the most prominent face of the left in Latin America, and has rallied a group of like-minded leaders as a counterweight to the United States.
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