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Venezuela won’t bury Hugo Chavez. It will embalm him and put him on display. The old autocrat wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Chavez lived his life as a performance piece, starring himself as the hero of a global melodrama, battling an array of super-villains: oligarchs, bourgeois, Americans and Jews. Chavez was not a dictator, exactly. Like Vladimir Putin in Russia, Chavez could claim genuine support. Also like Vladimir Putin, Chavez carefully controlled the country’s institutions — courts, media, bureaucracy — to ensure his rule. Chavez mimicked Putin in one final way: His power ultimately rested on his control of his nation’s oil.