the main reason people want to deduce Chavez is a despot is because he is an egomaniac with a flair for the dramatic
Oh yes. And how.
It's not the only reason, though. Venezuela had long been, not just a fairly US-dependent but also a culturally fairly northerly-oriented country (I mean, they play
baseball there. And their football team sucked so hard for so long that they used to play in the North American qualifiers because they couldn't compete with the big boys from the rest of South America.) Some of the same is also true of Colombia (which remains in US Clutches). There are also fairly sizable Venezuelan and Colombian immigrant communities in the US, and they're relatively White and legal.
But it's not just a US orientation, it's a Caribbean orientation as well (Capriles' family is from Curacao originally)... which the US also considers its own backyard, of course, but more to the point Cuba, too, is going to be a far more directly relevant issue in Venezuela than in Chile.
And then there's the oil, of course. And the way Chavez at times threw around oil money to buy influence, making him what you'd call a Stategic Adversary of the USA.
And then there's also the factor of Chavez starting the trend with Morales, Correa, Humala all coming later and inspired by Chavism.
Of course, there's absolutely nothing new in leftish populists coming to power on anti American rhetoric in Latin America. A lot of caudillos that were later perfectly tame internationally but not so much at home started out that way. Including one Fulgencio Baptista. It's the staying that way that assures Hugo his place in the history book... and I, for one, think we have mostly the bunglers in the Bush admin and the 2002 coup to thank for it. Credit where it belongs.
