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![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Hugo_Rafael_Ch%C3%A1vez_Fr%C3%ADas.jpeg/500px-Hugo_Rafael_Ch%C3%A1vez_Fr%C3%ADas.jpeg)
Credit: Victor Soares/ABr Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (
Spanish pronunciation:
[ˈuɣo rafaˈel ˈtʃaβes ˈfɾi.as]; 28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013), commonly known as
Hugo Chávez, was a
Venezuelan politician who served as the
64th President of Venezuela from 1999 to 2013. He was also leader of the
Fifth Republic Movement from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when it merged with several other parties to form the
United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which he led until 2012.
Born into a working-class family in
Sabaneta, Barinas, Chávez became a career military officer, and after becoming dissatisfied with the Venezuelan political system based on the
Punto Fijo Pact,
[1] he founded the clandestine
Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200) in the early 1980s. Chávez led the MBR-200 in an unsuccessful
coup d'état against the
Democratic Action government of President
Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992, for which he was imprisoned. Released from prison after two years, he founded a political party known as the
Fifth Republic Movement and was
elected president of Venezuela in 1998. He was
re-elected in 2000 and again
in 2006 with over 60% of the votes. After winning his fourth term as president in the
October 2012 presidential election,
[2] he was to be sworn in on 10 January 2013, but Venezuela's National Assembly postponed the inauguration to allow him time to recover from medical treatment in
Cuba.
[3] Suffering a return of the cancer originally diagnosed in June 2011, Chávez
died in
Caracas on 5 March 2013 at the age of 58.
[4]
[5]