Brain, I’m going to have to look up my sources, and it may be in Spanish when I do get a cite, but ol’ Hugo HAS made expressions that could be considered threats against any state/locality foolish enough to unseat the government party, including use of the phrase “sacar los tanques” (bring out the tanks). Now, he’s probably doing his already tiresome blowhard bluster about how any advance by the opposition is a counterrevolution and he’s merely warning them that even if they win they should not try and turn it into a mandate to unseat him, but all the same as someone who got where he is in clean and fair elections he should know better.
OK, news clip with Hugo speaking, at 31 seconds in:
“if you allow the oligarchs, and specially that Yankee stooge putschist chicken to return to the governorship, maybe I will have to end up calling out the tanks of the Armored Brigade, to defend the revolution and the people of Carabobo.”
He may be insinuating that if Mr. Opponent becomes governor, eventually the guy will launch an uprising to be quelled; but it damn sure sounds like a threat to the effect that y’all better NOT elect Mr. Opponent or else the tanks roll.
Daily Kos(sorry, it was the quickest google) post on it, quoting Reuter’s report on it in English.
According to this report, at least 145 between 1999-2003:
http://www.cidh.org/countryrep/Venezuela2003eng/chapter5.htm
Look, I unreservedly condemn any and all hunam rights abuses and I unreservedly believe Chavez is a clown who is doing Venezuela more harm than good but, having said that, I also have to say that in his confrontation with the USA I feel he is much more in the right and the USA much more in the wrong. The USA promoted a coup against him which almost resulted in him being overthrown. The USA has a long history of helping overthrow democratically elected leaders and replacing them with dictators which have done all sorts of crimes against human rights. I may not like Chavez but he was elected and he has a right to be where he is without being undermined or overthrown by America. I will take Chavez over the American-backed Pinochet, the Argentinian Junta or the Nicaraguan Contras any day of the week.
So, in a nutshell, I believe Bush has been much, much worse for the world than Chávez. While they are both ignorant clowns, Bush’s actions have resulted in much more death, destruction and evil.
(…and the OP is forgotten in the mists of the unending tale of who’s worse…)
Look, can we stipulate that it’s not good to say you “may have to send out the tanks” if you don’t like the election result NO MATTER WHO SAYS SO and no matter if the other guy did it before?
Well, it’s now election +1, I suppose that by today or tomorrow we should start getting results.
If there are states that went the other way we’ll see if all his confrontational talk was just hyperbolic bluster in the heat of the campaign ot was for real. If the election goes all his way, OTOH, we’ll forever debate if the announcement to “call out the tanks if necessary” affected the turnout.
If only the Venezuelan moderate and Chavista-dissenter factions would have got their act together and made themselves into a credible alternative in time, rather than either boycott the process or allow holdouts and dead-enders from the discredited prior system to be the face of opposition, maybe it would not have gotten to this point. But at the same time, it’s worrisome that Chavez, who for all his fauts had so far consistently respected fair election results, apparently has signalled a turn in the direction of that he will not allow the people themselves to vote out the “revolution” and that he may use force to prevent it. That is NOT good.
The results are in and he won. I mean those favorable to him won. He was not running for anything.
Mostly, but the opposition did win some key posts. Story here.
Time to see if he rolls any actual tanks or just makes life politically miserable for those opposition winners (That was a stupid thing to say anyway. No need to roll tanks if you can just keep Mr. Opponent starved for funding and services and too busy with an ungovernable state/city).
But he won’t do that with Caracas – he has to live there. 
(An opposition candidate won the mayoralty of Caracas.)