Chavez and his party are leftists who took advantage of the highly stratified society that had developed in Venezuala with the ultra-rich living in proximity to the ultra-poor.
I wouldn't call it straight-up socialism but the seizures of foreign capital and material and subsequent nationalization of infrastructure combined with encouraging the landless to seize private land assets is as Marxist as is possible.
The US used to routinely kill these guys before they got to power back in the 50s but nowdays we let them enslave whole populations because of some retarded ideal about soveriegnty.
