Ever the showman, Chávez would jump from theology to jokes, and from Marxist rhetoric to baseball metaphors in building an almost cult-like devotion among followers.
Throughout his presidency, he projected himself in religious, nationalistic and radical terms as Venezuela's saviour, and it largely worked. While his foes reviled him and portrayed him as a boorish dictator, Chávez was hailed by supporters as a champion of the poor and he won four presidential elections.
He took over from his mentor Fidel Castro as the leader of Latin America's left-wing bloc and its loudest critic of the United States, winning friends and enemies alike with a cutting and dramatic frankness that no one could match.
When the cancer first struck, Chavez could have stepped aside to fight it. Instead, he stretched his physical limits by staying at the front of his government while running a successful campaign to win a new six-year term last October.
Born the second of six sons of teachers in the cattle-ranching plains of Barinas state and raised by his grandmother Rosa Ines in a mud-floor shack, the young Chávez first aspired to be a painter or pitcher in the US major leagues.
He joined the army at 16 and was promoted to lieutenant-colonel. Though mixing with left-wing rebels and plotting from long before, Chávez burst onto the national stage when he led a 1992 coup against then leader Carlos Andres Perez.
The coup failed and Chávez surrendered, but in a famous speech live on TV before being carted off to jail, his comment that the coup had failed "por ahora" ("for now") electrified many Venezuelans, especially the poor, who admired Chavez for standing up to a government they felt was increasingly corrupt and cold to their needs.
Pardoned in 1994, Chávez left jail and won a presidential election four years later.
By doing so, the former paratrooper ended the grip of Venezuela's traditional parties and launched his self-proclaimed "Bolivarian Revolution" - named for Venezuela's independence hero Simon Bolivar.
His first big test surfaced three years in when he faced huge street protests and a buildup of withering criticism from political foes, business and labour leaders, Catholic bishops and even dissident soldiers.
But when military officers briefly pushed him out in their own coup in 2002, Chavez proved himself to be a survivor and bounced back to power after two days incommunicado and under arrest.
A counter-coup by loyalist troops and demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of outraged supporters forced Pedro Carmona, who had seized power, to resign and restored Chávez to the presidency.
His critics regularly accused him of being corrupt and inept, and of steering the country towards a Cuban-style authoritarian regime. Certainly, opponents ended up in exile or jail, normally on graft charges.
Business detractors said his socialist reforms, including the expropriation of rural estates and nationalising much of the economydestroyed jobs and scared off investors.
A decade of high oil prices allowed Chavez to spend huge amounts on social programs that became the linchpin of his support among poor voters.
They included his famous slum "missions" that provided free healthcare and education, plus subsidized food, clothes and even electronics, and are likely to be his biggest legacy. - (Reuters)