Sun May 25, 2003 09:36 AM ET By Pascal Fletcher

MACHIQUES, Venezuela (<a href=asia.reuters.com>Reuters) - In the dawn light, it looked like an official road block.

There were red traffic cones on the road and the armed men guarding it wore camouflage uniforms that seemed similar to those used by Venezuela's National Guard.

But the Venezuelan bank executive making his daily early morning drive to work in western Zulia state had the fright of his life when the four men pointed their automatic rifles at him and ordered him out of the car.

"Their leader said they were guerrillas and that they needed my car to get to Colombia," the executive, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. The gang, who he said spoke Spanish with Colombian accents, threw the traffic cones into the car trunk and sped off toward the Colombian border.

Such hold-ups are common in Venezuela's neighbor Colombia, where a bloody four-decade-old war pits leftist rebels against government troops and right-wing paramilitaries.

But the executive's recent experience took place more than 30 miles inside Venezuela, near Rosario on the main road leading south from Maracaibo, Venezuela's second-biggest city and a major oil producing zone in the world's No. 5 oil exporter.

Ranchers and farmers in the Zulia border region say that Colombian guerrillas and paramilitaries are increasingly encroaching into Venezuelan territory, bringing with them an increase in killings, kidnappings, robberies and extortion.

And they complain that left-wing President Hugo Chavez' government is doing little, if anything, to stop it.

WAR SPILLOVER

The spillover of Colombia's war into Venezuela is a point of friction between the two Andean neighbors. Their 1,400-mile frontier is a rugged patchwork of mountain, jungle, savannah and rich pastureland.

Venezuela and Colombia earlier this year accused each other of not protecting the border. The war of words threatened to damage relations, and Chavez met his Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe in April to defuse the crisis.

In a surprisingly cordial encounter, they pledged to work together to try to keep the border secure.

But their smiles did little to dispel the fears of Venezuelan ranchers at Machiques, a prosperous farm town surrounded by lush grazing land near the frontier.

The ranchers say that guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Colombia's biggest rebel group, are roaming freely in the nearby Sierra de Perija mountains which straddle the border.

They said that from this stronghold sprinkled with drug traffickers' poppy fields, the guerrillas are foraying into Venezuela, raiding farms, extorting money and kidnapping landowners.

"The guerrillas are not even hiding any more ... they're setting up road blocks," Fabricio Rincon, president of the Machiques Ranchers' Association, told Reuters.

He said there had been five kidnappings of local farmers in the area so far this year, the most recent in early May.

Colombian officials and army commanders, and Venezuela's fiercely anti-Chavez media, have repeatedly denounced what they say are FARC camps located inside Venezuelan territory.

Chavez, a former paratrooper who was first elected in 1998 and survived a coup last year, rejects these accusations and insists Venezuelan troops will repel any incursions.

BORDER REINFORCED

This month, Chavez ordered two army ranger brigades, more than 4,000 men, to join the 20,000 troops Venezuela says it already has guarding the frontier.

But commanders admit that, apart from the main crossing points, it is almost impossible to police the whole frontier. "It's not a line, a fence you can see...There's dense jungle," Venezuela's Interior Minister Gen. Lucas Rincon told Reuters.

Opponents of Chavez, including landowners he condemns as wealthy "oligarchs," accuse the president and the armed forces of tolerating and even collaborating with the guerrillas, who are termed "terrorists" by the Colombian and U.S. governments.

"Our armed forces don't do any intelligence work or patrolling," said Adonay Martinez, leader of the Maracaibo Lake Ranchers' Association.

Critics point to Chavez' anti-capitalist rhetoric, his self-declared "revolution" in favor of social justice and his close alliance with Cuba's communist President Fidel Castro as evidence that he sympathizes with the Colombian rebel cause.

"We do not support any guerrillas," the populist president said recently, dismissing these criticisms.

The Miami herald Posted on Sun, May. 25, 2003 BY FRANCES ROBLES frobles@herald.com

CUZCO, Peru - Cuban President Fidel Castro will be invited to attend next year's Rio Group summit, Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced Saturday at the end of the pro-democracy group's 17th conference.

''I confess. I see no reason for Cuba to be out of the Rio Group,'' da Silva said. ``Since it was first created in Brazil, I don't know why they have not been invited. We are going to investigate that, and, next time, Cuba will be invited.''

The roots for the organization of Latin American presidents began in 1983, with a handful of nations trying to bring peace to Central America. It was formalized three years ago, and its 17 conferences since then have stressed strengthening democracy.

Cuba has been shunned from the Rio Group for years partly because of its communist government, but more because the group largely focuses on South American integration ssues. In past Rio Group summits, the organization has ''expressed profound concern'' for the situation in Cuba, but never condemned Castro.

The big difference now is that next year, da Silva -- a friend of Castro's -- will be president of the Rio Group and Brazil will host the summit.

The move to invite Cuba is unlikely to make many waves in Latin America, where Castro has friendly relationships with the presidents of not just Brazil but Venezuela, Bolivia and Peru. Cuba already participates in the Ibero-American Summit, and even recently signed a pro-democracy declaration.

''It's not going to be controversial in Latin America; it'll be controversial in Washington,'' said Eduardo Gamarra, director of the Latin America and Caribbean Center at Florida International University. ''Washington is going to be angry at any attempt to incorporate Cuba to anything.'' But Gamarra said inviting Cuba could even open Castro up to scrutiny and put the island on the global map.

Antonio Jorge, an expert on Cuba, said the invitation is significant because the invitation by da Silva -- president of the largest country in Latin America -- comes in the wake of the harshest wave of repression in more than a decade against government opponents on the island. Seventy-five dissidents arrested in mid-March are serving prison sentences of up to 28 years. Cuban authorities also executed three men last month who hijacked a passenger ferry.

Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo closed the two-day conference by emphasizing the ''concrete results,'' including a plan to raise international funding for highways linking South American nations.

''The debate has been frank, intense and rich,'' Toledo said.

Herald staff writer Nancy San Martín contributed to this report.

IRNA
Iran intends to increase its aluminum producing capacity from the current 140,000 to more than 1 Mt/y within 10 years and to this end is seeking the help of Venezuela's state-owned heavy industry giant CVG.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, May 25, 2003 By: The Very Reverend Roger Dawson May 25, Easter 6, 2003 sermon by The Very Reverend Roger Dawson Dean of St. Mary's Anglican Cathedral, Caracas

Coming here to Venezuela was a real culture shock for me. I had traveled about a bit but mostly within Europe. I have been to Africa twice, but only for a short time, and I lived abroad for a few months, but that was in Europe. I visited the USA on a couple of occasions, but nothing really prepared me for Venezuela.

Yet I believe that Venezuela is like many other countries in Latin and South America. It isn't that Venezuela is completely different to anywhere else, but it is very different to anywhere else that I have ever lived for any length of time. People think differently, have different expectations, and have different priorities and most importantly, have different ways of achieving those priorities.

I don't think that I am alone in my first reaction, which was to believe that I was right in my way and they were wrong in theirs. In time we make adaptations and, more than that, we adopt the new ways as being our new norm.

If that were not true, we would not have to experience a reverse culture shock when we return to the place from where we first ventured forth to come and live here. Rick and Ros Reycraft, who lived here in Caracas for six years, and with whom we spent a few days after Easter in Cincinnati, are assisting in a course of encounters for Proctor and Gamble, for whom Rick works, to deal with this special problem of reverse culture shock for people returning to the United States.

What happens is that what we regard as a sacred tradition is suddenly looks as though it is obsolete. I don't mean something found in church. I am talking about a way of doing things that has become so much part of us, we take it for granted that this is the way it is done, and to do it any other way must be wrong, no matter what.

This may actually be true of course ... we may do things in a particular way or come from a country that behaves in a particular fashion, and it could be that this is the very best way to do whatever it is that we do ... but what use is that if suddenly we find ourselves in a place that behaves quite differently.

It is a shock, and our initial response is to say "do it my way" ... but all calls for this fall on deaf ears because the people we would like to address have no idea what our way is. It drives us newcomers to the culture to the point of distraction and after living in a South American country for a year or two years many cannot cope with the culture difference and want to leave in order to get back to the safety of being where there are no great shocks.

Trying to understand the bible is another culture shock. Here we have documents not only written in cultures different to our own, but in times that we hardly can appreciate, because they are so very different.

The New Covenant documents are a whole series of culture shocks as the new faith of the Nazarenes, who were the followers of Jesus, was forged out of the worship of YHWH and pushed into a world beyond its original scope.

Much has been made of Jesus preaching a universal faith, but there is scant evidence for this and his brother James, who took over the running of the new faith after the crucifixion, could not see the possibilities of the faith going beyond the boundaries of Israel. He had a furious argument about circumcision with Paul, who wanted to dispense with this requirement for those who were born into a Roman or Greek culture and who had not been members of the YHWH worshipping community.

In other words, James and the rest of Jesus' brothers and sisters who ruled the Jerusalem church, believed that new converts would either be devout YHWH worshippers already like Philip and Stephen and other converts from the Essenes or like Paul who had been a Pharisee. These people were already circumcised and born what we now call "Jews" ... that is, they followed the religion that came out of Judah. If Gentiles wanted to join the disciples and family of Jesus, then they first had to become "Jews" before becoming Nazarenes, which was just one of the many ways of worshipping the God YHWH.

Last week, I described how the writer of Acts set forth the three point plan by which the world became evangelized. First they went to the Samaritans who were regarded as almost Jews. Second they went to foreigners who had Jewish connections like the Ethiopians and then thirdly they tackled the Gentiles who previously had no Jewish connections. The writer of Acts is an admirer of Paul, and supports his call for the inclusion of Gentiles without circumcision. The result of the dispute between Paul and James is settled by allowing Gentiles to be admitted to the faith without circumcision, but Paul has to make a large financial payment to the church in Jerusalem; something that takes him some years to accomplish. The settlement is based on the theological argument that we are all children of Abraham who came to an agreement with God before the circumcision requirement was introduced.

In today's reading from Acts we discover that the "circumcised believers were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles." My belief is that the circumcised would more than likely have been horrified rather than just plain astounded. Of course the writer is not going to say "horrified" because he is a Pauline argument supporter, but here we have a classic case of culture shock. People who have earnestly believed all their lives that their bodies should be marked out as belonging to God's Covenant by circumcision, now find that, in this outside alien culture, the new converts don't need this mark. The mark has become obsolete.

What does this say about them? We have many modern similarities such as when the liturgists brought the language of the Prayer Book and the Bible into modern times. It made some think that what they had treasured all their lives had been made obsolete and they have clung to the old in the belief that if it were good for them and their fathers it is good for all time. They could not make the break with the past. Yet here in Acts, and in the Letters of Paul, we find that the culture barriers are being broken all the time in order to bring the message of Christ to a wider audience.

Of all the people in the world who should know about culture shock, it is the members of the Christian Church. They broke the barriers to take the gospel into the Gentile world, they split along culture lines of Eastern and Western Christendom, and they broke again to form the Protesting Churches in the 16th Century.

In spite of all this ... in spite of all that, the New Covenant documents scream out about change, people resist the change because they believe that what they first believed must be better.

Here is the evidence before you ... if the church is to grow then sometimes the culture barrier has to be breached.

What we have to learn is that it actually doesn't make the old obsolete; it just shows us that it is different.

According to Acts ... if we resist the change we resist the work of the Holy Spirit.

Is that what we want?

Isabel Allende on feminism: "We are 51 percent of the population; we can do it. So get on your high heels and fight, ladies."

By Christy Karras The Salt Lake Tribune

    Sometimes, the most accurate pictures are made from a distance.     Isabel Allende's My Invented Country is a view of a place, its customs and its people, through the eyes of one looking back after years of exile.     It is full of cheerful generalities ("We Chileans are envious; we Chileans enjoy funerals; the Chilean loves laws") but also contains particular memories that increasingly pop up, Allende says, as she gets older. Like those memories, written gems pop out of her memoir. One example: "My clairvoyant grandmother died suddenly of leukemia. She didn't fight for life, she gave herself to death enthusiastically because she was very curious to see heaven."     The book is written in an honest and straightforward manner, almost as if she were answering a reader's question: "Where did you come from?"     In person, Allende speaks much the same way, with a conversational thread that addresses many subjects but hangs together, expressing her opinions candidly but always avoiding the impression of hauteur. Impeccably dressed, looking slender and younger than her 60 years, she gave The Salt Lake Tribune an interview when she traveled to Utah earlier this year to help open the new Salt Lake City Public Library -- a rare event, since she almost never travels when she has just started a new book.     My Invented Country began as an assignment from National Geographic, which asked her to write an essay on her sense of place. "The only place I could think of was Chile," she said -- an odd realization, since she had not lived there for nearly three decades.

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    Allende grew up in Chile but left after half her family was forced out of the country by a CIA-backed coup against its elected socialist president, her father's cousin Salvador Allende, in 1973 (Allende points out that the date was a Tuesday, Sept. 11).     During Allende's term, "I have never felt so alive, nor have I ever again participated so closely in a community or the life of a nation," she wrote in the book. The government was removed by a Cold War America fearing socialism in any form and replaced with Augusto Pinochet's military government, and "democracy was replaced by a regimen of terror that was to last sixteen years and leave its consequences for a quarter of a century."     She calls her take on life "half and half, good and bad," a description that also fits her depiction of Chile itself. In the 1960s and '70s, the country was mired in economic depression, but she remembers it filled with pristine nature and resilient, hospitable people. "I have traveled a lot, and I have never seen any place as beautiful as the south of Chile -- lakes, volcanoes, wonderful rushing rivers -- it's like Switzerland but rougher," she said.     The text ranges from fuzzy sentimentalism to clear-eyed realism to sharp sarcasm. Allende looks on her childhood, for example, and writes, "In those days there was no such term as 'abused children,' it was accepted that the best way to bring up little ones was with a strap in one hand and a cross in the other."     Allende also describes going through most of her life believing she didn't fit in anywhere -- a feeling that ultimately led her to write. "It gives me a sort of perspective which is the perspective of the outsider, which is good for a writer," she said.     As a child, she loved to read, but "there were no role models for women to be creative in any way," she said. She worked as a teacher and a journalist, but it was a long time before she dared think of herself as a fiction writer.     In 1981, she started writing a letter for her grandfather, who was dying in Chile. The result was The House of the Spirits, arguably the most beloved of her 10 books.     "From the first page, I knew it was going to be something different," she said. "By the end of the year, I had 500 pages of something, but I still didn't know what it was." After her mother and engineer husband read it and picked out all the mistakes, she had a coherent story. At a time when women writers were largely frowned upon in South America, the only publisher willing to take on the manuscript was in Spain. Her book quickly took off in Europe, then elsewhere after being translated out of Spanish, the language she still uses to write.     She wrote even while holding other jobs and raising children. "It's nice to have a room of your own and some time, but if you don't, you do it anyway. This is like making love when you're in love: You do it behind a door, if you have to."     Allende calls America home now, and she loves many things about her adopted country. Here, she is surrounded by children, related by blood or not, and friends she invites over on weekends.     She is still deeply affected by memories of the fear, suspicion and violence that overtook Chile while she became an exile, roaming first to Venezuela and then to the United States. Now, she is wary of attempts to bring democracy to Iraq. "How can you impose democracy and the American way of life anywhere?" she asks. "That's what the Nazis tried to do, impose their way of life on the rest of the world. I have seen a lot of violence in my life, and I know it never has a good effect. Never. Everything comes back to you, if you live long enough. And if it doesn't come back to you, it comes back to your children."     Allende has long been outspoken about social and environmental issues. In Chile, Allende's relatives and acquaintances discouraged her views on women's rights, but she was and remains an outspoken feminist, willing to criticize women who comfortably sit back and enjoy the fruits of their predecessors' labors while women around the world go without.     "The women who think that feminism is personal are those privileged women who have access to education and health care in industrialized nations, in urban areas," she says with fervor. "The rest of the world -- Africa, Asia, poor America -- those women have not heard the news yet. Take a look at your sisters."     Her message to other women: "Make fun of all this stupidity, and change the world. We are 51 percent of the population; we can do it. So get on your high heels and fight, ladies."