And isn't it ironic that this name was used to re-enforce Hugo Chavez's "Bolivar Revolution" aka dictatorship. Now Venezuela is in shambles and the poor people can barely afford food when the government controls more proven oil reserves than Saudi Arabia.

> And isn't it ironic that this name was used to re-enforce Hugo Chavez's "Bolivar Revolution" aka dictatorship.

Actually, Hugo Chavez was very popular and won all his elections by a wide margin. You could say a lot of things about him but he was not a dictator.

Except for the time he lost, and within two days a military coup of the democratically elected body put him back in power (amongst other thing):

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-15240081

Forget the excessive gerrymandering or his successful change to the Venezuelan constitution which allowed for him to be reelected indefinitely. He was indeed a lot of things, but his legacy will be mismanaging a country with enough natural resources to be one of the richest countries in the world. He was an authoritarian dictator. Faux democracy with fake votes and a press which is govt controlled and a leader that wants to run forever is a dictatorship no matter how you skin it.

Many of your critiques apply to many countries considered democracies. Excessive gerrymandering is an issue in many democracies including the US. Not to mention that in the US minorities are specifically targeted for exclusion. A lot of countries don't have term limits for heads of state (for most of its history the US didn't). Press freedoms aren't what defines what a dictatorship is either. Would Saudi Arabia be a democracy if suddenly all censorship laws are purged from the books?

> Except for the time he lost, and within two days a military coup of the democratically elected body put him back in power

LOL. The coup was done against him after being democratically elected in 2000 but it failed disastrously, making him some kind of a folk hero in most of Latin America. If you don't know this basic fact you really have no business talking about Venezuela, let along calling Chavez a dictator just because you didn't like the guy. Venezuela had many chances of getting rid of him democratically and they decided not to, we all can disagree about how wise a decision it was but that is different matter.