It's not very complimentary:
Hugo Chávez, who passed away today at 58, had one central skill, it was getting people to develop strong opinions about him. Chances are that you have one yourself. Passionate and charismatic, Chávez slipped comfortably into the role of romantic Latin American revolutionary, championing the poor against an unfeeling local oligarchy and its imperial paymasters. Reactions to this narrative arc are always visceral; ill-suited to nuance.
Lost in the parallel strains of adulation and disgust was an appreciation of the complexity of his rule. In fact, Venezuela under Chávez was a glorious contradiction -- an autocracy with a popular, elected megalomaniac at its center.
To start to appreciate the dynamics of Chávez's power, you have to begin with his speeches: endless, vituperative, folksy, rambling and always, always unscripted, they electrified supporters, infuriated opponents and built over the years into a kind of corpus of law. They became the sources of ultimate power in the country, their authority far outranking -- in practice, if not in theory -- that of laws, regulations, even the constitution. Under Chávez, Venezuela became an Oral Republic, a place where an off-the-cuff remark could land you in jail, end your job, see your property seized, or, alternatively, set an orgy of petrodollar spending loose on your community.
The debate on whether this mode of governance could meaningfully be described as "democratic" has been hashed over again and again ad infinitum, both in Venezuela and abroad. The recitation of arguments on both sides long since went stale: yes, Chávez was beloved -- genuinely beloved -- of millions of poor Venezuelans, and won election after election for a decade and a half. And yes, having won all those elections he proceeded to act like an absolute monarch rather than an elected official, relishing every chance to showcase his contempt for the institutions of constitutional government, and gradually dismantling them in the process.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/03/chavez-wasnt-just-a-zany-buffoon-he-was-an-oppressive-autocrat/273745/Contrary to the above view is that of a Colombian law professor, in the Guardian:
He wrote, he read, and mostly he spoke. Hugo Chávez, whose death has been announced, was devoted to the word. He spoke publicly an average of 40 hours per week. As president, he didn't hold regular cabinet meetings; he'd bring the many to a weekly meeting, broadcast live on radio and television. Aló, Presidente, the programme in which policies were outlined and discussed, had no time limits, no script and no teleprompter. One session included an open discussion of healthcare in the slums of Caracas, rap, a self-critical examination of Venezuelans being accustomed to the politics of oil money and expecting the president to be a magician, a friendly exchange with a delegation from Nicaragua and a less friendly one with a foreign journalist.
Nicaragua is one of Venezuela's allies in Alba, the organisation constituted at Chávez's initiative to counter neoliberalism in the region, alongside Cuba, Ecuador and Bolivia. It has now acquired a life of its own having invited a number of Caribbean countries and Mexico to join, with Vietnam as an observer. It will be a most enduring legacy, a concrete embodiment of Chávez's words and historical vision. The Bolívarian revolution has been crucial to the wider philosophy shared and applied by many Latin American governments. Its aim is to overcome global problems through local and regional interventions by engaging with democracy and the state in order to transform the relation between these and the people, rather than withdrawing from the state or trying to destroy it.
Because of this shared view Brazilians, Uruguayans and Argentinians perceived Chávez as an ally, not an anomaly, and supported the inclusion of Venezuela in their Mercosur alliance. Chávez's Social Missions, providing healthcare and literacy to formerly excluded people while changing their life and political outlook, have proven the extent of such a transformative view. It could be compared to the levelling spirit of a kind of new New Deal combined with a model of social change based on popular and communal organisation.
The facts speak for themselves: the percentage of households in poverty fell from 55% in 1995 to 26.4% in 2009. When Chávez was sworn into office unemployment was 15%, in June 2009 it was 7.8%. Compare that to current unemployment figures in Europe. In that period Chávez won 56% of the vote in 1998, 60% in 2000, survived a coup d'état in 2002, got over 7m votes in 2006 and secured 54.4% of the vote last October. He was a rare thing, almost incomprehensible to those in the US and Europe who continue to see the world through the Manichean prism of the cold war: an avowed Marxist who was also an avowed democrat. To those who think the expression of the masses should have limited or no place in the serious business of politics all the talking and goings on in Chávez's meetings were anathema, proof that he was both fake and a populist. But to the people who tuned in and participated en masse, it was politics and true democracy not only for the sophisticated, the propertied or the lettered.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/05/hugo-chavez-people-venezuelan-presidentIf you want a view of Chavez that involves the opinions of Venezuelans and other South Americans, you should be looking to newspapers and magazines, not the TV.
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