All Tuesday night, we listened to South Floridians react to the death of Hugo Chavez. Many (most) of the reactions were celebratory. Those celebrations took the form of songs, drive-by shoutings and apparently an accordion death ballad.
Below is a roundup of the most colorful reactions to the death of Venezuela's oft-beloved and perhaps equally hated leader.
1. "Husband and His Wife!" Sure, this chant gets a bit disorganized towards the end but it contains one of the more ambitious refrains we heard all night. It comes from the epicenter of anti-socialist celebration: Versailles. Roughly translated the chant says: "Chavez and Fidel! Husband and his wife!"
2. "He's gone!" No Latin American chant is complete without an "Ole-Ole" fútbol-style breakdown. In this case, Venezuelans at El Arepazo 2 in Doral choose simplicity over poetry.
3. Accordion Death Ballad: This is one of the odder renditions we found. Stadden McFadden on Youtube says "Another victory for Capitalism! This is the only Venezuelan song I know on accordion, and I'm playing it in celebration of Hugo Chavez's death. I just learned it 10 minutes ago haha I thought this song would be more appropriate than 'Ding Dong the Wicked Witch is Dead.' I'm saving that for Fidel Castro."
Is McFadden from South Florida? Is he Venezuelan? Is this song even Venezuelan? We have no idea, but we couldn't leave it out.
4. "Yeee!": Alright, we concede this isn't really a song. But there's something strangely hypnotizing about a woman (or man?) shrieking the word "yeeee!" out a passenger window. Plus, if you listen to this on a loop long enough it might start to sound like a song (see John Cage).
