Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez, whose death Tuesday from cancer has focused the world's attention on the Western Hemisphere, changed the face of the Americas for the better, the head of a UN regional economic body said Wednesday on its website.

"Mr. Chavez will take his rightful place in our hearts and minds among the great men and women who have left their mark on the history of our continent," Alicia Barcena, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), said in a letter to Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro.

Chavez's "emergence changed the face of the Americas for the better," wrote Barcena, "because Mr. Chavez proved that when the will for constructive change is the expression of majority aspiration, rather than just a personal enlightenment, it becomes an unstoppable force."

Barcena said she had the opportunity to witness Chavez's " unfailing commitment to the dispossessed, the poorest and the most humble, which defined his political and private persona."

Regional integration blocks, including the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), "owe their origins to Mr. Chavez," Barcena concluded in her letter dated March 5.

Meanwhile, Unasur chief Ali Rodriguez Araque echoed those sentiments Wednesday, hailing Chavez as a great promoter of Latin American integration, as did the head of the Latin American Association for Integration (Aladi), Carlos Alvarez.

"No one can question, not even his most vehement opponents, the role that Chavez played in promoting and driving progress on the path towards integration," Aladi's secretary general said in a statement.

"All of us who are committed to a Latin America that is more independent, united and just, must deeply regret the loss of President Chavez as one of the most decisively dedicated men to the Latin American cause," said Alvarez, whose association gathers 13 permanent member nations.

The statements from two regional chiefs came as Venezuelans massed in the streets to pay final tribute to their late head of state, whose coffin was carried to the Military Academy in the capital Caracas, where his remains will lie in state until his funeral Friday.

Maduro Tuesday announced that Chavez had died after battling cancer for more than a year and a half. Endi

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