Is Venezuela a dictatorship, and why should or shouldn't it be considered one?

I'm a Venezuelan and I live in Venezuela. You should disregard any opinion from anyone that does not live here. In Venezuela, what Nicolas Maduro (the president) dictates, gets done, period. There are no checks and balances; there is no division of power. There is no organ of the state that will tell him "No, you can't; it's against the constitution." The PSUV government party controls all organs of the state including the Supreme Court and the Electoral Council, yes, the vote counters. What makes a person a dictator is not how he got there initially, but how he wields power and how he treats every new election once he is a ruler. There will be people that will say that Chavez and his anointed successor Nicolas Maduro were voted in, but so was Hitler. Most African dictators initially won an election, but once they were in power made sure to "win" all others, even if this includes banning the opposition, killing opposition leaders, or throwing them in jail for some made-up crime "against the state," which is what they do in Venezuela (google "Leopoldo Lopez," "Antonio Ledezma, etc). Any ruler which is all-powerful, that controls all instances of power besides the executive branch, especially the judicial and electoral, and that keeps the military happy by all means (including corruption), is a dictator. He dictates, and it gets done, by any means, and citizens are defenseless against him; that's a dictatorship. According to this definition, Venezuela is a dictatorship.
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