Chavez's dominoes

Disclaimer: the second I start talking about economics or politics, I am on shaky ground. I am a neuroscience major, and anything I know about anything other than science and philosophy and high school knowledge is from personal study and not expertise.
That said...
"The Economist" tells me that because Brazil won't stand up to Chavez about Columbia updating the agreement with the US over facilities use, some fear a Latin American domino affect of Chavez-like dictatorships (I'm assuming that's an allusion to the domino effect scare in Southeast Asia during the US involvement in the communist "threat" over there).
Okay, here's the question: will Chavez-like regimes spring up around Latin America, a region struggling in some areas through peaceful color revolutions and others through violent revolution/insurgency to achieve some kind of stable democracy and turnover of power in the presidency? And is that a bad thing?

As for Venezuela, I think that the socialism rising there isn't necessarily a bad thing. I've heard speakers talk about whole factories revolting and forming a classless system where anyone can be trained to do any job. And I suppose that's great, and alleviating the poverty gap and all that. But I think Venezuela has a real problem with the balance of its federalism. From what I understand, Chavez pretty tightly rules on the national level but tends to ignore the local grassroots revolutions that he's supposedly supporting. There's too much disconnect. I don't really understand how the nation is stable at all.

Brazil is more democratic, and it seems like the president is less willing to subscribe to extremist politics or to give into thinkers from either wing. And he's also narrowing the poverty gap without any messy socialist revolutions. I think that Latin America would be worsened by a Chavez domino effect, especially since it would really put tension on international relations between Latin America and the US.

Do I think it will happen? I don't know, I'm not an economist or a political scientist.

I don't really know what I'm talking about. Seriously. I just love that nobody can get too mad at me for spilling out vague ideas in a blog.