Now Hugo Chavez fought and lost a long battle with cancer, for a longer battle to reshape Venezuela to suit his own idiosyncratic and often eccentric vision, adding a star to the flag, changing Venezuela's time zone, ordering the nation's coat of arms altered on suggestion of his then young daughter.

And beyond those eccentricities, he's spent 14 years challenging American influences in Latin America and the world and embracing global crisis like North Korea and Iran. In a moment, I'm gonna talk to Christiane Amanpour and Larry King, who both spent time with the late president. But, first, Jim Clancy on his turbulent years in power.

The roar of applause was music, the surging crowd his dance partner. And for Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, politics was performance art. The script came easily to Chavez, anything that might warrant outrage in Washington wasn't a cause for a concerned, but rather the measure of success. Chavez beamed and embraced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the Iranian leader toured leftist Latin America, knowing well the global concerns Tehran was aiming to devote the bomb. Chavez's joked, a nearby grassy knoll would suddenly open up and a nuclear warhead would spurt out. What Chavez really relished was playing on the world stage.

Yesterday, the devil came here, and it smells of sulfur still today. Standing at the lectern, the president George W.Bush used the day before Hugo Chavez sniff the air and made it personal. Accusing the American leader of talking as if he were the owner of the world.

When an earthquake rocked Haiti, Chavez claimed it was the result of U.S weapons testing, an excused to send American troops into the country. Chavez, of course, had humanitarian and aid programs of his own.

When cashed-strapped Americans were shivering in the winter cold, Chavez volunteered Venezuelan oils to heat homes in the Bronx for free, local politicians and local media turned out too.

Chavez was never afraid to wield his oil wealth against his foes or he'd use it to win friends and influence his neighbors  He once rewarded his three millionth tweeter follower with a new home, she was thrilled. So what if, as his critics said, the other 2,999,000 didn't get a thing. Online and in the streets, the crowds cheered.

In the end, Hugo Chavez even suggested that his cancer could be a result of an American conspiracy. He quoted Fedel Castro's warnings, to be careful what he ate and watch out for small needles.

The images of Hugo Chavez rallying the crowds, hurling insults and ridiculing his enemies survive and a facial portrait of the Venezuelan leader.

Even his staunchest rivals admit that he could be reelected again and again, that bombastic rhetoric embraced by his supporters, embraced as the courage to stand up to the power that be, it elevated him and he knew it, courageous, outrageous, it's what made Hugo Chavez larger than life.