Castro and Chavez: Their last hurrah

Speaking on his return from chemotherapy in Cuba, he said doctors had found no malignant cells.

"I haven't for a single moment thought about retiring from the presidency," he said. "If there were reasons for me to do that, I would."

Mr Chavez, who is celebrating his 57th birthday on Thursday, first came to power in 1999.

With his charisma and skills as a public speaker, he centralised government, basking in the political limelight.

His style of government has become known as "chavismo" and his followers are dubbed "chavistas".

"The president's capacity for leadership is extraordinary," Reinaldo Iturriza, a member of Mr Chavez's United Socialist Party (PSUV), told the BBC. "Without doubt, finding another Chavez will be quite difficult."

Few other members of his cabinet and of the PSUV are recognisable faces either within Venezuela or on the international stage.

Nevertheless, if the president's illness were to leave him unable to continue as head of state or run for re-election, the PSUV would be faced with seeking a successor.

Chavez has gone so far as to talk of a "Venecuba", a merger between two allied states. These kinds of ideas - these two men - are relics of another era. While much of the region has embraced free markets and free trade, riding a wave of fast growth and rising incomes, "Venecuba" has lagged behind.

Brazil grew at nearly eight percent last year. The Venezuelan economy shrank by two percent. The year before that, it contracted by another three percent, and that's despite OPEC announcing this week that Venezuela has more proven oil reserves than Saudi Arabia. People in the most oil-rich nation in the world actually suffer from rolling blackouts thanks to years of bad leadership.

Meanwhile, Cuba and its finances are in free-fall, surviving only because of Venezuela.

Remember that Cuba has been a basket case for decades, but it was sustained by billions in Soviet aid. Then, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. Havana lost its ideological ally and its major sponsor. The economy contracted by a third and there were dire food and fuel shortages.

Enter Hugo Chavez. When he became president, he immediately sought the blessing of his hero, Fidel Castro. Association with Castro gave Chavez revolutionary street cred. In return, Chavez has virtually written Cuba a blank check.

According to a Brookings Institute study, Caracas ships 115,000 barrels of oil to Cuba at discounted prices every day. That accounts for 60 percent of the island's oil demand. In total, Venezuela's various types of aid to Cuba is said to add up to nearly $5 billion a year. Havana returns the favor by sending tens of thousands of doctors and nurses the other way.

It doesn't sound like a fair trade. In Cuba, there are signs the leadership realizes it needs to wean itself off Venezuela's largesse. Fidel Castro's younger brother, Raul, is now president and is trying to seek out investment from China, India and Brazil. But, structurally, not much has changed in Cuba since 1991. The island nation is still run on socialist principles that have produced shortages, black markets and mass poverty.

Imagine what happens to Cuba without Venezuela's support, and imagine what happens in Venezuela if its people begin asking questions about why they suffer one of the world's highest rates of inflation, a contracting economy and one of the worst crime rates despite having more oil than any other nation in the world. One day, these two countries will look around, see that Latin America is leaving them behind, and face the future.

So remember the images in the video above of the two amigos. They might turn out to represent the last hurrah of a dying world.