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Sarasota News Leader March 15, 2013 OPINION face looked normal. But his chest was still swollen. So we slit his jacket and trousers in the back to cover his new bulk. The body was then draped with the red Communist party flag and placed in a vacuum sealed crystal casket." Page 68 Without family permission, Princess Diana was illegally embalmed by French mortician Jean Monceau following her death in an automobile wreck in Paris on August 31, 1997. This procedure was done, Monceau explained, to prevent her body from decaying in Speculation persists that thanks to the team's the extreme heat in Paris at the time. In any incompetent craftsmanship, Mao's body de- event, Diana's body was entombed and not composed long ago and that a mannequin exhibited. has replaced it in the crystal casket. If so, the Nicknamed "Goofy" for his big feet and skinny Great Helmsman may finally have been grant- frame as a teenager, Commandante President ed his wish for cremation. Chavez faces a busy afterlife. A squad of morThe body of Eva ("Evita") Perón (1919-1952) ticians will attend him constantly, ensuring was a well-traveled cadaver, covering 14,500 that his corpse is uncorrupted by the natural miles in 20 years. This bizarre odyssey was forces of decomposition. Intervention will be ordered by the junta that overthrew Presi- weekly, if not more frequent. dent Juan Perón so the final resting place of Evita's corpse would not become a Perónist Like Uncle Ho, The-Relic-Formerly-Known-asshrine and pilgrimage destination. Her corpse Chavez will likely have to be transported to was described as waxlike. On orders from the Moscow annually for regular maintenance. To junta, one of her fingers was snipped off and keep the body at optimum humidity, a regutested to determine whether it was indeed hu- lating device may have to be implanted in the man. It was. Then the junta had the mummy chest cavity. The chemical composition of the surreptitiously flown to Europe for a series of atmosphere within the sarcophagus will have burials under false names. It went from Bue- to be carefully balanced. The temperature innos Aires to Bonn, then to Milan, then to Ma- side and outside the sarcophagus will also drid and finally back to Buenos Aires. When require regulation. The body will be bathed Evita's mummy was returned to Juan Perón, in soft pink light throughout eternity to give he often kept her coffin on his dining room ta- it a more natural appearance. Immortality, it ble. It is said that at Perón's request, his third seems, is not without its price or humiliations. wife, Isabel, now 82, would sometimes crawl into the coffin with Evita's corpse to draw into The future destined for Chavez's earthly reherself the spiritual energy radiating from the mains will not be pretty. One is reminded of Evelyn Waugh's doggerel eulogy for a characexceedingly well-preserved mummy. ter in his novel The Loved One: "… Here pickNot all recent mummies in glass display cas- led in formaldehyde and painted like a whore, es are socialists. There is Ferdinand Marcos shrimp-pink incorruptible, not lost nor gone (1917-1989), the Philippines dictator. His em- before." balmer, Frank Malabed, 62, has offered his services to the Venezuelan Government to Poor Hugo. There really is no rest for the preserve the remains of Chavez. wicked. %