Chavez skips campaigning as he fights cancer

CARACAS, Venezuela -- With less than six months left until Election Day, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has hardly hit the campaign trail. Instead, he has been consumed with his fight against cancer, repeatedly traveling to Cuba for treatment and publicly vowing to defeat his illness.

While cancer would end the presidential ambitions of many politicians, Chávez's struggle against the disease has in fact become his main rallying cry. Cancer could serve as a political asset if his health holds through the October vote, and that's the big "if" hanging over Venezuelan politics.

Last week, he offered his starkest outlook yet as he wept while holding hands with his parents at a Mass and pleaded to Jesus Christ to give him more life. "Give me your crown, Christ," Chávez said in live footage broadcast nationwide. "Give me your cross, 100 crosses. I'll carry it, but give me life because there are still things left for me to do for these people and for this homeland. Don't take me away yet."

So far, what appears to be a serious life-or-death crisis hasn't dented his political support. To the contrary, one recent poll showed Chavez with a lead of 14 percentage points over rival Gov. Henrique Capriles. -- AP