www.bonitanews.com Saturday, March 15, 2003 By JANINE A. ZEITLIN, Staff Writer

The beach. The sand. The winterless weather.

Those are some of the reasons why folks settle in Bonita Springs. Few are stopping on a mission to write books on sexuality, fleeing what they see an oppressive government and happening to get baptized as a Presbyterian along the way.

Matilde Faria, a doctor and a psychotherapist from Venezuela, poses in her home office in Bonita Springs adorned with photographs of New York City where she studied for eight years. Faria is now trying to stay in the United States because of the political turmoil in Venezuela. Cameron Gillie/Staff That's what makes 39-year-old Matilde Faria unique.

From a Pennsylvania Avenue duplex peppered with American flags, Faria — a doctor and a psychotherapist in her native Venezuela — came looking for a quiet place to work her two books. Now, amidst political upheaval in Venezuela, Faria, a critic of the country's current leftist administration, says she doesn't feel safe going home. Protests for and against President Hugo Chavez, who was briefly ousted from office in April, have been ongoing for almost two years. General strikes against Chavez have slowed the country's economy.

She is working with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to find a way to stay. The First Presbyterian Church of Bonita Springs has embraced the high-energy intellectual and is guiding her in a scramble for a solution as time runs thin.

Faria, the only child of a Venezuelan Army general, was born in Caracas in 1963. Skipping grades in school, she graduated high school at 14 and headed directly to medical school, where she met her fiancée. Upon graduation, her fiancée died in a mountain-climbing accident. Faria cared for her fiancée's parents during the following year in a small town near Caracas.

That's when she discovered a knack for therapy, says Faria, whose coffee table is stacked with books by Freud.

"I forbid myself to cry. His mother came to talk to me and she started to find in me the pyschotherapist and maybe that was an open door," she said.

To leave painful memories behind, she left Venezuela at 21 to attend a language institute in suburban New Jersey and went on to master in human sexuality at New York University in New York City. When her student visa expired, she returned to Venezuela and worked as a therapist. She published a book in 1987 to help children understand their bodies.

"We say these are the eyes, this is the stomach until you just jump into the knees," she said. "If we don't give them the power of knowledge, then people have the power to abuse them."

Soon after the book came out, she moved to Valencia, Venezuela, where she worked until 1999 as a professor teaching education, human sexuality and child development.

In spring 2002, Faria moved to Southwest Florida to translate her children's book into English and write another book about the sexuality of middle-aged women. Her original destination was New York City. She ended up in Bonita because it was only a few hours by plane from Venezuela and she didn't want to subject her dog — whose likeness she has blazoned on a T-shirt — to many hours in the plane's cargo or the drive from Florida to New York.

Staying with a friend of a friend in Naples, she struck out to find her own place. But with no U.S. credit, she landed in a trailer in Rosemary Park. In the midst of rocky times, she found herself in front of the First Presbyterian Church of Bonita Springs and decided to attend. Not raised religiously, a Presbyterian pastor had supported her in New Jersey when she asked for help organizing a memorial for her fiancée.

Her first visit, she felt out of place.

"You can't imagine how the people were looking at me. I looked like a fly in a cup of milk. All these people are Anglo-Saxons!" said Faria, whose dark hair is lobbed in a boyish cut.

The church's pastors reached out to her and she was baptized before joining in June. Hesitant at first, the congregation soon embraced her, especially when George Pattison, a church deacon, and his wife Beth, whom Faria calls her "American parents," included her in church events.

"It wasn't easy but they would take me places and say, 'Well, she's with us. So what about it?'" Faria says. "But I came without anyone and now I have 2,000 members of my family."

Pattison, a-61-year-old New York native, approached her initially because of her background in New York. The Pattisons have helped her in editing her books. He says it's hard not to get to know Faria.

"She's very personable and friendly and led people into her life," he said, noting people are attracted to her uniqueness and sophistication. "Whereas when other people would come into the country they might have bought 25 changes of underwear, she brought artwork."

Riding on a recommendation from the First Presbyterian Church, Faria moved to her current home in July.

She returned to Venezuela for five short days to renew her tourist visa and re-entered the United States and started the process to stay. Church leaders arranged a consultation for her with an immigration lawyer and she applied for a six-month tourist visa extension upon recommendation that applying for political asylum was too difficult.

Christina Leddin, an accredited immigration specialist at the Amigos Center in Bonita Springs, a Hispanic advocacy group, says immigrants run a big risk applying for political asylum. If they don't win the case, they're deported, Leddin said. Leddin says most successful political asylum cases in the area come from Haiti and Colombia, but expects that may change if political turmoil in Venezuela persists.

"Venezuelan political asylum I haven't heard of as much, but as things continue to deteriorate down there, that may happen," she said.

Pattison said church leaders tried to find a place for Faria on staff, but there are no positions in the church for someone whose main professional focus has been sexuality and therapy. Plus, in order to sponsor an immigrant on a work visa the church must prove that it can't hire a local person, he said.

Now, George Pattison is helping Faria look into the possibility of gaining sponsorship to obtain a work visa, pending her receiving a visa extension. He thinks her best option is to gain U.S. nursing certification and attempt to obtain sponsorship from a local medical facility.

Faria — who is deeding the rights of the English version of her children's book to the First Presbyterian Church of Bonita Springs — is crossing her fingers for a yes from INS.

"It's the best thing I can do. They came to me and gave me such a feeling of joy" despite her life's complications, she says.

By month's end, Faria expects an answer from the INS. She says she fears for her life if she's goes back because she was vocal in her opposition of Chavez. She, like other Chavez opponents, says he's running a dictatorship and democratic principles have fallen by the wayside.

"It's another Cuba," Faria says. "Now, I'm not going back. I prefer to be alive than have a bullet in my head. I can't go back."

(Contact Staff Writer Janine Zeitlin at 213-6036 or jazeitlin@naplesnews.com)

www.alertnet.org 15 Mar 2003 02:00

BRASILIA, Brazil, March 14 (Reuters) - Forest fires burning in Brazil's northern Amazon jungle have spread to the reserve of the Yanomami Indians, one of the world's last hunter-gatherer tribes, and the government urged farmers not to light more fires during the dry season.

Environment Minister Marina Silva said on Friday the government would offer financial compensation to farmers who don't burn their land in preparation for the sowing season after fires set so far burned out of control in some parts of Roraima state.

Silva said satellites revealed that fires had spread two miles (three km) inside the Yanomami reserve, although they were still far from Indian villages in the remote area bordering Venezuela.

The fires, fueled by unusually dry weather caused by the "El Nino" phenomenon, have prompted fears of a repeat of the devastating 1998 blaze in the same part of the Amazon -- a region which is home to up to 30 percent of the world's animal and plant life.

"While the situation is serious, if we make a comparison with 1998, it is completely different," said Silva. "Before there were no specialized firefighters."

Brazil has five helicopters, 500 men -- including specialized firefighters and soldiers -- and dozens of vehicles in the area helping to put out the fires.

Silva said another 1,000 firefighters were on standby in Brasilia.

With the worst of the dry season approaching, the government offered financial compensation to prevent more farmers from burning their land, a common practice ahead of sowing.

The Yanomami, one of the world's only true Neolithic tribes, had lived in near-total isolation for about 2,000 years until the late 1970s, when Brazil's military government conducted aerial surveys in the area. There are an estimated 26,000 of them living in the jungles.

Environmental authorities estimate about 23 square miles (60 sq km) of forest have been destroyed in the current fires while in 1998, 185 square miles (480 sq km) were destroyed.

santafenewmexican.com By MICHAEL ASTOR | Associated Press 03/14/2003

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Brush fires raging out of control in Brazil's northern Amazon have entered the Yanomami Indian reservation, home to the world's largest Stone Age tribe, officials said Friday. Agricultural fires that got out of control due to extreme dryness caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon was blamed for the 335 fires burning across Roraima state, which borders Venezuela and Guyana. The fires had crossed into the Yanomami reservation, but authorities were trying to determine how far they had gone, said a press officer at Brazil's environmental ministry in Brasilia, the capital. Some 26,000 Yanomami live on a 25 million-acre (10 million hectare) reservation that straddles the border of Brazil and Venezuela. Sidnei Lima dos Santos of the Pro-Yanomami Commission, a group that works closely with the Indians, said they were flying over the reservation to assess the damage. "We learned the fire had entered the reservation yesterday (Thursday). It hadn't gotten very far, but with all the dryness things can change very fast," dos Santos said by telephone from Boa Vista, 2,100 miles (3,400 kms) northwest of Rio de Janeiro. Santos said the commission had radio contact with villages in the reservation but not with the area that was burning, near the reservation's southeastern edge. Environment Minister Marina Silva at a press conference in Brasilia said the fires in Roraima state burned along a combined extension of 160 kilometers (100 miles), of those 3 kilometers (2 miles) within the Yanomami reservation. The government could not say what the total area affected by the fires was. Silva said the fires were started by farmers to clear land and renew pasture, but then got out of control. "We will develop a permanent prevention and technical assistance effort so that farmers avoid these (burning) practices that threaten even their own families," Silva said, adding that 20,000 people live in areas threatened by fires. In 1998, when El Nino also caused severe dryness in Roraima, wild fires burned more than 1,150 square miles (3,000 square kms) of forest and scrub, part of it on Yanomami land. The 1998 fires were extinguished only when it rained. This time, meteorologists don't expect showers before March 25. Civil defense officials said the current fires are much less severe than in 1998. "It's a completely different situation," said Lt. Col. Paulo Sergio Santos Ribeiro. "In 1998 the fire was spread all across the state. Today it's concentrated in five small locations in four different municipalities." Ribeiro and the Environment Ministry said an accurate estimate of the damage would be possible only after the fires were out. About 500 firefighters, including federal troops, and five helicopters equipped with water carrying "Bambi buckets" were sent to fight the blaze. As the forest has become degraded, the fires are spreading deeper in the jungle, a trend that worries scientists. More than 95 percent of this year's fires in Roraima are in farming areas.

www.menafn.com AP Online - Friday, March 14, 2003

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Venezuela plans to produce above its OPEC crude oil output quota to make up for lost revenue during a two-month strike, the oil minister said Friday.

Rafael Ramirez wouldn't say how much Venezuela would pump above its 2.8 million barrels a day quota. Output is 2.9 million barrels a day now, the government says.

"We have to do it gradually so as not to affect the oil market too much," Ramirez told state television station Venezolana de Television. "It will reach a level that will compensate what we stopped selling in the market."

Ramirez said Venezuela had an agreement with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries allowing it to overproduce.

Venezuela is recovering from a political strike that petered out last month. Oil production reached a low of 200,000 barrels a day at the height of the walkout, which cost Venezuela $6 billion. It also forced Venezuela to spend $540 million on gasoline imports to make up for severe shortages.

Executives fired from the state oil monopoly for participating in the strike say production is only 2.1 billion barrels a day. The government fired almost half the 35,000-strong work force at Petroleos de Venezuela SA for walking out.

On Thursday, Venezuela brought its largest catalytic cracker back online, bringing the country a step closer to resuming gasoline exports to the United States. Venezuela was the world's fifth-largest exporter before the strike. Venezuela crude and refined products accounted for 14 percent of U.S. oil imports last year.

Venezuela also announced Thursday that it had stopped importing gasoline.

Ramirez also said there was an $8 to $10 premium on international oil prices because of U.S. threats to lead an attack on Iraq. He said there was enough world production to meet demand. OPEC agreed Tuesday to stick w

OPEC agreed Tuesday to stick with its production target of 24.5 million barrels a day.

www.cbc.ca 10:34 AM EST Mar 15

CARACAS (AP) - A leader of a failed two-month strike to oust President Hugo Chavez was granted political asylum by Costa Rica on Friday, the Costa Rican foreign ministry said.

Labour union leader Carlos Ortega, who faces treason charges, entered the embassy earlier Friday, Costa Rican Ambassador Ricardo Lisano said.

"For humanitarian reasons ... (Costa Rica) decided to grant asylum and it has communicated as much to the Venezuelan government," the Costa Rican foreign ministry said in a statement.

The statement said Ortega cited fear for his personal security when he requested asylum. He had been in hiding since Feb. 20, after a judge issued a warrant for his arrest for treason, rebellion and incitement.

Hundreds of flag-waving supporters gathered around the Costa Rican embassy in eastern Caracas chanting, "Ortega, friend, the people are with you!"

Ortega, head of the country's largest labour union, helped orchestrate a general strike to demand early elections or Chavez's resignation. The strike, which petered out last month, paralysed Venezuela's lifeblood oil industry and cost the country about $9 billion Cdn, according to government estimates.

Last month, authorities arrested strike leader Carlos Fernandez, president of Venezuela's largest business association. He is under house arrest pending trial on charges of rebellion and instigation. A judge struck down a treason charge.

Arrests warrants also are out for seven executives of the state-oil monopoly, Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. The seven are in hiding.

Secret police stormed an opposition march Saturday in an attempt to arrest oil executive Juan Fernandez, who made a surprise brief appearance. The police clashed with protesters, and Fernandez escaped.

Opposition leaders have denounced the arrest warrants as political persecution. Chavez says strike leaders must be imprisoned for at least 20 years for inflicting suffering on the population.

Ortega is third Chavez opponent to seek asylum abroad.

Last year, Colombia granted asylum to business leader Pedro Carmona, the figurehead in an April coup that ousted Chavez for two days. El Salvador granted asylum to another alleged coup leader, Vice Admiral Carlos Molina Tamayo.

Chavez opponents accuse him of steering Venezuela's economy into recession with leftist policies. They also say he has accumulated too much power under the guise of a "social revolution" to help the poor.

Chavez says his foes resent his efforts to end social inequality and his success in wresting power from two corrupt traditional parties that ruled Venezuela for 40 years until his 1998 election.

Chavez fired 15,000 workers from the oil monopoly - almost half the work force - for participating in the stoppage. He has threatened to close down four private television stations that gave supportive coverage to the strike.

Venezuela's oil industry, the source of half of government income and 80 per cent of export revenue, is recovering from the strike. Oil production has reached 2.9 million barrels a day, according to the government. Fired PDVSA executives say it's only 2.1 million barrels a day, about two-thirds of what it was before the strike.

Venezuela was the world's fifth-largest oil exporter before the strike.