CHAVEZ HUGO: (1954-2013) President of Venezuela 1999-2013. T.L.S., `H.Chavez´ and beneath `Hugo´, three pages, 4to, n.p., 21st & 22nd December 1989, to Major Jose Antonio Gomez Ortega of the Panama military forces, in Spanish. To an additional fourth presentation page bears a six lines annotation signed by Herma Marksman, stating `This letter was written by Hugo in December 1989 when the United States invaded Panama and arrested Noriega. This letter addressed to Jose Antonio Gomez Ortega, a student former companion (of Chavez), never reached the addressee.´ On a lengthy call to freedom speech and revolutionary manifesto, Chavez states in part on 21st December `..now, 48 hours after the Empire coward bloody blow against your homeland…. Do not surrender to weariness because the Gringo is approaching, with his death machinery…No brother, I do not want to learn that you have been killed, I do not want to read your name on the list of massacred bodies by the damned north-American machine gun….What else can I do no? I am gagged by the wicked, persecuted by the cowards without honour or Homeland, accused of rebellion…´ further saying on 22nd December `I wonder what kind of crime has made your people to deserve such history. The same history of my people, with the difference that we do not have a Canal, but we have given our petrol, gold, iron and all our raw materials..´ Very small overall minor creasing, with a staple to the upper left corner. VG £300-400 On 21st December 1989 the United States, under George H.W. Bush Presidency, invaded Panama, the military operation was named ''Operation Just Cause''. During the invasion, de facto Panamanian leader general Manuel Noriega, who had worked with the CIA, was deposed accused of criminal organization and drug trafficking. With provenance from the private collection of Herma Marksman. Herma Marksman (1949- ) a History Teacher, born of a peasant woman and a German immigrant, who was in her 30s when she met the future Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who was then married and in his twenties. She became his mistress. They both were students of socialism and idealistic and she helped him in his academic studies. Chavez and Marksman founded the MBR-200, a clandestine Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement. After the failed 1992 coup attempt Chavez left both his first wife and his mistress.