This fire-fighting approach continued even as Mr Chavez lingered on his Cuban sickbed, with Vice-President Nicolas Maduro implementing a 32% devaluation of the bolivar in February.
During my first reading of "Robinson Crusoe" as a child, I knew that I wasn't meeting an action figure, but a mortal touched by the prosaic realities of the sickbed.
Her message, whether to heads of state in banquet halls or to journalists at her sickbed, was that she was placed on earth to feed, nurse and comfort the poorest of the poor.