Did Hugo Chavez declare himself a Marxist?

[noumignon]

I fact-checked a claim by the Economist and there were no English-language sources in the search results, so I thought I'd better post what I found. The Economist wrote:
In his annual address to Parliament, earlier this month, the president announced (to no one’s surprise) that he was now a Marxist.
It might come as a surprise to Chavez himself,

Comments

[noumignon]

As a footnote, one of the nice things about democracy is not having to listen to your leader rambling about his personal philosophy in the state of the union address and having to clap like it matters.