On 17 February 2009, in an editorial criticizing the Hugo Chávez administration in Venezuela, Folha defined the earlier Brazilian military dictatorship as a "ditabranda" (meaning "soft dictatorship") as follows: "However, if the ditabrandas – such as the one Brazil had from 1964 to 1985 – started with an institutional breakdown then later on either preserved or created controlled forms of political expression and access to Justice, the new Latin American authoritarianism, pioneered by Peru's Fujimori, goes the opposite way. A leader democratically elected works from within to undermine the institutions, the checks and balances, step by step".