The broadcaster is the last remaining TV network that carries an anti-Chavez line, since the president refused to renew the license of another opposition station, RCTV, allegedly over telecommunication regulation violations. The station had to go off public airwaves and transmit solely on cable.

Abroad, Chavez was also known for his colorful -- if sometimes strange -- statements.

Last year, after several Latin American leaders were diagnosed with cancer, himself included, he wondered if the United States was behind it.

"Would it be strange if (the United States) had developed a technology to induce cancer, and for no one to know it?" he asked.

During a water shortage that Venezuela suffered in 2009, he took to the airwaves to encourage Venezuelans to take showers that lasted only three minutes.

At a summit in 2007, his repeated attempts to interrupt resulted in King Juan Carlos of Spain saying to him, "Why don't you shut up?"

Chavez was a believer that the days of the "Washington consensus," a model of economic reforms favored by the United States for developing countries, were over.

Along with Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and some Caribbean countries, Chavez formed the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, or ALBA, a group intended to offer an alternative to U.S. influence in the region.

As president, Chavez made clear his ambitions of being a regional and international leader who left, in his own way, changes that awakened passions and feelings in favor and against -- everything except indifference.