Hugo Chavez has been carried back to the Military Academy where he started his army career, his flag-draped coffin lying in state in the echoing halls until Friday's funeral.

As a band played the hymn from his first battalion, a long ribbon of tearful mourners numbering in the hundreds of thousands bid farewell to the larger-than-life leader on Wednesday after a procession carried his casket through Caracas.

Generations of Venezuelans, many dressed in red, filled the capital's streets to remember the man who led their country for 14 years before succumbing to cancer on Tuesday afternoon.

Chavez's coffin made its way through the crowds atop an open hearse on an 8-km journey that wound through the city's north and southeast, into many of the poorer neighborhoods where Chavez drew his political strength.

At the academy, Chavez's family and close advisers, as well as the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay, attended a funeral Mass around the president's glass-topped casket. The public then began filing past to peer at their longtime president. Some placed their hand over their heart, others saluting or raising a fist in solidarity. The viewing lasted far into the night.

The head of Venezuela's presidential guard, General Jose Ornella, told The Associated Press late on Wednesday that Chavez died of a massive heart attack after great suffering.

Last moment wish

"He couldn't speak, but mouthed the words ... 'I don't want to die. Please don't let me die,' because he loved his country, he sacrificed himself for his country," said Ornella, who said he was with the president at the moment of his death on Tuesday.

Vice-President Nicolas Maduro and Bolivian President Evo Morales, one of Chavez's staunchest allies, mingled with the crowd.

Military officers and Cabinet members ringed the president's coffin. Other mourners pumped their fists and held aloft images of the late president, amid countless yellow, blue and red Venezuelan flags.

"The fight goes on! Chavez lives!" the mourners shouted in unison, many through eyes red from crying for many hours.

Chavez's mother, Elena Frias de Chavez, leaned against her son's casket, while a priest read a prayer before the procession left the military hospital where Chavez died at age 58.

People who passed by the glass-topped coffin said Chavez's body was clad in the presidential sash and the military uniform and red beret of his days as a paratrooper. Ricardo Tria, a social worker, said he waited nearly four hours to pass by the casket. Chavez looked "asleep, quiet, serious", he said.

"I feel so much pain. So much pain," said Yamile Gil, a 38-year-old housewife. "We never wanted to see our president like this. We will always love him."

Who will be president?

Cynthia Arnson, director of the Latin American Program at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said Maduro won't be able to harness "Chavismo" as Chavez did so successfully, but she expects him to win any upcoming presidential vote. "There's really no one who can step into those shoes," she said.

Maduro used a speech just before Chavez's death to lash out at the United States and internal opponents he accused of plotting to destabilize the government. He pointed to shadowy forces as being behind the president's cancer and expelled two US military attaches he charged with spying.

Then, in a televised appearance to announce the death, a shaken and somber Maduro called for peace, love and reconciliation among all Venezuelans.

Venezuela and the United States have a complicated relationship, with Chavez's enemy to the north remaining the top buyer of Venezuelan oil. But Chavez's inner circle has long claimed the US was behind a failed 2002 attempt to overthrow him. Venezuela has been without a US ambassador since July 2010, and it expelled a US military officer in 2006.

In Washington, senior Obama administration officials said on Wednesday they hoped to rebuild the US-Venezuelan relationship, but acknowledged that a quick rapprochement was unlikely given the Latin American country's impending presidential election.

(China Daily 03/08/2013 page12)