Shortly after Hugo Chávez won his first election as Venezuelan president in December 1998, a lawyer from the western state of Barinas, which was then governed by Chávez’s father, delivered a prescient warning to Newsweek magazine: “Venezuelans are dreaming of a savior, but Chávez is a dictator. People don’t know what they are getting.”
More than 14 years later, a cancer-stricken Chávez is reportedly near death, but his autocratic legacy is very much alive.
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