Por Janet Kelly 13 de marzo de 2003

Hace unos años durante la profunda recesión y crisis financiera de los noventa, mi colega Asdrúbal Baptista opinó que, si bien estábamos en un punto muy bajo, no se podía decir necesariamente que habíamos "tocado fondo". Los países siempre pueden caer más; no hay fondo. Jamás hubiera pensado en 1994 que, casi diez años después, tendría que hacer un desvío en la Avenida Libertador porque una barricada estaría bloqueando el acceso a la zona cerca de la sede de Pdvsa en La Campiña. Esta barricada está construida de piedras y desechos varios, como un símbolo de la absoluta desintegración y división de la sociedad venezolana de hoy. Como protección para nuestra otrora gran empresa petrolera, ahora tenemos improvisión y la amenaza de violencia. El sistema entero está trancado con muchas barricadas, difíciles de desmontar, poderosas y destructivas en sus efectos.

Los venezolanos están dándose cuenta de que la tarea de reconstrucción será larga. En su último programa dominical, el presidente Chávez se refirió a "la miseria humana concentrada en la Plaza Altamira". Ojalá que Altamira fuera el único foco de miseria, porque sería fácil resolver el problema. Pero la miseria se ha instalado en los alrededores de Pdvsa, en las plazas de Caracas, en las empresas, en las universidades, en la administración pública y en los hogares venezolanos. En cuatro años, la mayoría de los venezolanos han ido perdiendo la esperanza.

La desesperanza crea barricadas también en las mentes de las personas, porque, con cada día que avanza, parece más lejos la posibilidad de desmontar lo hecho. Hay una tentación a tirar la toalla: irse no es un opción para la gente en general. Desgraciadamente, algunos están concluyendo que lo único que queda es encogerse, pasar agachado y tratar de sobrevivir. En el oficialismo, se verían estos pensamientos oscuros con desprecio, como los lamentos de los desplazados que no se conforman con el futuro bonito propuesto por la "revolución". Pero de esta revolución tal como está concebida no saldrá ningún futuro mejor, como evidencia cualquier paseo por las calles y carreteras del país. No se puede construir la prosperidad sobre la base de buhoneros y conuqueros con modelos dignos de Pol Pot. La miseria está en todas partes, pero Venezuela no tiene que ser así. Tiene que buscar, para todos, modernidad

El país democrático reconoce también que no se puede remplazar un proyecto impuesto sin el consentimiento de la mayoría por otro que no haya ganado la legitimidad por la vía electoral. Ya es evidente que el gobierno perdió hace tiempo su mayoría y que el apoyo que todavía tiene viene de los pocos beneficiados del régimen actual y de quienes temen un regreso a un pasado que no les concedió oportunidades. Por eso es tan importante que la oposición ofrezca futuro, y no una reedición del modelo anterior. Muchas grupos están haciendo un esfuerzo para diseñar ese futuro, como evidencian los documentos que se están presentando en estos días. Es importante seguir en la vía electoral, para que todo quede cristalino en cuanto a lo que quiere el pueblo.

La posibilidad de elecciones luce lejano y los avances de la Mesa de Negociación y del Grupo de Amigos se parecen a un baile a paso lento. Hay muchos que creen firmemente que el régimen podrá utilizar su poder gubernamental para trancar el juego, ganar tiempo, cansar a sus opositores y mantenerse en el poder. Esta actitud es otra barricada contra la acción y la organización. En particular, la Coordinadora Democrática, actualmente en un proceso conflictivo de repensamiento de su estrategia, tiene que reconocer que la organización necesaria es una organización electoral capaz de aprovechar las estructuras existentes de sus varios componentes en una red eficiente de movilización. La ley favorece la oposición en cuanto a la claridad del proceso venidero: un referendo revocatorio en el cual todos los votantes puedan expresar su voz. Los amigos de afuera podrán velar por la pulcritud del proceso. Podrán condenar a un gobierno que salga de las reglas. Pero sólo los venezolanos están llamados a forjar una poderosa coalición de voluntades para escoger el camino del futuro.

Hay barricadas en la calle que hay que desmontar. También hay barricadas en el pensamiento que tienen que ser tumbadas rápidamente para facilitar el tipo de acción, planificación y organización necesaria para los meses venideros.

What Mr. Bush Left Out

Wed Mar 19,10:13 PM ET Add Op/Ed - William F. Buckley to My Yahoo! By William F. Buckley Jr.

The finality of the long -- seemingly endless -- period of indecision, fractured alliances, ambivalent allies and fruitless diplomacy had an unusual touch. The president flew two-thirds of the way across the Atlantic to meet with the leaders of the diminished ranks of our allies.

The trip doesn't take much more air time than a flight to Denver, but there was operatic grace in seeking out a remote island, one of an archipelago as beautiful as any on Earth, and touching down with the prime ministers of Great Britain, Spain and Portugal, where the language spoken is foreign, and where an Atlantic U.S. Air Force base serves as a promontory of U.S. vigilance for the world Columbus left, to discover the new world.

The mother country of the Azores endured a left-wing coup in 1974. A few years later, the governor of the islands disclosed, with not much discretion, that if the military continued in power in Portugal, the Azores would declare their loyalty to Lisbon ended and make out for themselves. The Azores had been a colony for about 500 years.

We learn that the leave-taking of President Bush (news - web sites) was especially moving. He treated the natives who came to see him off in his majestic carrier, an airplane with more bodies on board than Columbus brought on his ship, to a special show of fraternity, not visibly different from his intensive exchanges with the firefighters in New York. And we know what he was thinking as, after nightfall, he boarded the plane with the honor guard, because the next day he would express himself. In New York, three days after Sept. 11, a fresh chapter opened for America; at the air base in Terceira, it moved forward to the next stage. We would be going to war.

We learned that on Air Force One there were two speechwriters there to help him craft the address he would give 24 hours later. Mr. Bush spoke the language of going to war so very different from such as was spoken during the first centuries of the Azores' sentient life on Earth. When the islands were discovered, there was no human life there. Before the colonizers settled down to being a metropolitan district of Portugal, they were fought for, and dominated intermittently, by the Spanish. When they went to war in those days, the missions were outspoken. The rulers wished for glory, foreign possessions and wealth.

Nothing of the kind preoccupied Mr. Bush in the missions he described on Monday night. Lenin preached to faithful Marxist ears that colonialism was the chief and vital enterprise of the bourgeois world, motivating policy and life. Revisionists have carefully argued, in recent years, that the overhead of colonialism often exceeded its fruits, challenging a central postulate of Marx-Lenin. It is not widely held that we are moving against Iraq (news - web sites) for material reasons, and it is plain that our motives are hardly material, unless one classifies as a material motive the determination to safeguard one's freedom and security.

In his speech the president was airborne with confidence in his mission and in the reasons for it. His exposure to the Azores might have made him more cautious when he spoke of the prospects for Iraq after liberation. Portugal, climbing out from monarchy soon after the turn of the century, moved toward an autocracy that lasted for 35 years, after which was the military coup, reaching an institutionalized democracy only in the late '70s.

President Bush spoke directly, using the personal pronoun, to the people whose country he would invade. The military campaign "will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you. As our coalition takes away their power, we will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror."

And then? "We will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free." And at the close, "Unlike Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), we believe the Iraqi people are deserving and capable of human liberty. And when the dictator has departed, they can set an example to all the Middle East of a vital and peaceful and self-governing nation."

Mr. Bush would have done better to speak more modestly about expectations. Sitting down on vast oil reserves does not bring prosperity or freedom, as we are quickly reminded merely by citing Venezuela, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. What Mr. Bush proposes to do is to unseat Saddam Hussein and to eliminate his investments in aggressive weaponry. We can devoutly hope that internecine tribal antagonisms will be subsumed in the fresh air of a despot removed, and that the restoration of freedom will be productive.

But these concomitant developments can't be either foreseen by the United States or implemented by us. What Mr. Bush can accomplish is the removal of a regime and its infrastructure. The Iraqi people will have to take it from there.

<a href=www.newsday.com>"Simply grassroots groups that are defending the "peaceful revolution"" By Bart Jones STAFF WRITER March 23, 2003

Their critics call them armed gangs of thugs who are terrorizing residents of well-to-do neighborhoods in Venezuela.

But Rodrigo Chaves says the Bolivarian Circles are simply grassroots groups that are defending the "peaceful revolution" of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his campaign to clean up some of the worst political corruption in the world.

"What we are proposing is a profound transformation of society," Chaves, national coordinator of the Bolivarian Circles in Venezuela, said in an interview Monday.

Chaves came to New York City last week to defend the organizations, attend a rally in Manhattan, plot strategies with Chávez supporters from across the United States and proclaim that his president is not the monster some contend.

"It's the most democratic government and the one that has given the most freedom of speech" in Venezuela's history, Chaves, a surgeon, said in Spanish.

Since winning the presidency in 1998, Chávez has survived a firestorm of street protests, strikes and - in April - a coup. A two-month walkout at the huge state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela ended in February, but left the economy battered.

Chávez has split Venezuela between those who maintain he is a new Fidel Castro and those who see him as the first president in Venezuela's history to stand up for the impoverished masses and challenge a corrupted class of wealthy elites.

The bedrock of his support is the Bolivarian Circles. They have grown rapidly in the past two years, Chaves said, comprising 220,000 groups and 2.2 million people across the nation.

The groups, named after South American independence hero Simón Bolívar, study Venezuela's new constitution, repair schools, install sewage systems and even host chess tournaments, Chaves said. Critics say they have a more sinister purpose: to physically intimidate Chávez opponents. Miguel Hernández Andara, head of the Queens-based anti-Chávez group Civil Resistance of Venezuelans Overseas, said the circles are modeled after Castro's community groups created to defend the revolution. "They are a bunch of terrorists," Andara said in Spanish.

Chaves scoffed at that, and said it is the opposition that has engaged in violence. He alleged that opposition leaders placed snipers on top of hotels in downtown Caracas in April, ordered them to fire on their own marchers during a protest, and then blamed the deaths on Chávez. Dissident military officials quickly carried out a coup against Chávez, who regained power 48 hours later in a counter-coup.

Opposition leaders say Chávez and his supporters were responsible for the killings. At least 24 people died, including some Chávez backers. Many analysts agree snipers were on top of the hotels, but disagree on who put them there.

Chaves laughs at accusations that the president wants to impose a dictatorship. He said that hundreds of thousands of people regularly protest for and against Chávez, and that opponents often go on TV calling for another coup or the assassination of the president - and nothing happens to them.

"If someone went on TV [here] and said they should kill [President George W.] Bush," Chaves said, "they'd be in jail in a minute."

Pascal Fletcher at The Manila Times: Fired Venezuela oil strikers are jobless but still defiant

Sunday, March 23, 2003 By Pascal Fletcher

CARACAS, Venezuela—Four months ago, Migdalia  Salazar and Cecilia Hernandez had cushy office jobs at Venezuela’s state oil firm Petroleos de Venezuela (pdvsa), one of the giants of the oil world.

Today, jobless and struggling to keep their family budgets afloat, they are selling homemade cakes and pastries at a makeshift stall outside their old office in east Caracas.

Fired with 16,000 other pdvsa employees for joining a recent two-month opposition strike against leftist President Hugo Chavez, the two are fighting to come to terms with their new status among the ranks of Venezuela’s unemployed.

“I can’t say that we’re feeling happy. This is tough for all of us,” said Hernandez, 45, as she waved away flies from a cloth-covered table offering potato omelets and cakes.

As a bilingual secretary of 23 years service in pdvsa’s operations department, she and other fired colleagues enjoyed some of the best-paid and most coveted state jobs in the poverty-plagued nation, the world’s No. 5 oil exporter.

But their lives as members of the country’s envied professional elite were turned upside down in early December after they joined an opposition walkout seeking to force populist Chavez to resign and hold early elections. His foes accuse him of trying to install Cuban-style communism.

The tenacious former paratrooper, who survived a coup last year, refused to budge and ordered the strikers fired in their thousands, vilifying them as “traitors” and “terrorists” trying to topple him. The fired workers represent more than 40 percent of the original pdvsa work force.

Chavez, who makes a point of emphasizing his own humble background, displays little sympathy for the fired strikers. While they held their jobs, their average living standard was far above the destitution experienced by the impoverished majority of Venezuela’s population.

Invoking the social and economic fault lines that bisect Venezuela’s society, Chavez portrays the pdvsa rebels as a snobbish, insensitive “mafia” whom he accuses of plundering the country’s oil wealth while turning their backs on the poor.

Come down in the world

Most found out about their dismissals through daily newspapers, where the government published long lists of the executives and employees being removed from their posts.

“I was fired twice, in two lists,” said Maria Gabriela Gil,  who used to work for pdvsa’s technology and information department but now staffs the strikers’ cake stall.

The fired oil employees are now rallying together to survive, setting up a solidarity fund to help out the most needy of their out-of-work colleagues and organizing raffles, bingo games, dances, markets and cake sales to raise money.

Salazar, a 56-year-old mother of three who worked for pdvsa for 34 years and speaks English and French, is unrepentant.

“This is all about resistance. We’re not moving an inch,” said the veteran oil company staffer, who before the strike served in pdvsa’s external relations department attending foreign oil delegations and helping to organize conferences.

But some of the fired workers, who range from highly paid executives and engineers to secretaries and field workers such as welders and divers, are already feeling the pinch from not having received a paycheck for several months.

“I think the majority of us are already living off our savings,” said Mirna Santella, who had worked as a supervisor at the pdvsa petrochemicals affiliate Pequiven.

The strikers have set up a meeting place outside pdvsa offices in east Caracas, a hotbed of opposition to Chavez. They gather daily around the building to plan their next protests against the government, organize solidarity campaigns or simply to offer each other advice, sympathy and support.

“There is a sense of family that is being maintained . . . It’s as if the company is existing on the street,” said Rafael Porras, a former advisor for strategic planning in pdvsa’s exploration and production department.

Hoping to return, but when?

Porras said private companies and individuals were supporting the solidarity fund with donations. Associations of doctors and psychologists, insurance firms and even landlords’ groups were also offering services, facilities, credits and discounts to make life easier for the fired workers.

But Porras said the strikers were so far avoiding holding mass public collections in the streets because they are aware that even without jobs they are still better off for the moment than the vast majority of unemployed Venezuelans.

The strikers maintain the hope that, sooner or later, they will be going back to the company. “We’re doing this with the conviction that we are going to return,” said Gil.

But the question is when. Chavez says most of the recent pdvsa strikers actively backed the short-lived coup against him in April 2002 and vows they will not be given another chance to cause mischief in the country’s most strategic industry.

“There will be no forgiveness for anyone. Traitors are traitors. They can’t come back and they won’t come back,” the president said earlier this month as he swore in a new, firmly pro-government management of pdvsa.

This means that the former pdvsa employees are banking on Chavez being pressured or voted out of office well before he completes his current term due to end in early 2007.

The president has resisted opposition calls for early elections. But his government says it accepts the idea of a binding recall referendum which under the constitution can be held after August 19, half-way through Chavez’s current term. “He’s going, before August,” said Hernandez optimistically.

Opposition leaders struggling to negotiate a deal on elections with the government have promised the fired pdvsa workers their reinstatement will be a condition of any political agreement. Government negotiators have dismissed this demand as a nonstarter but the strikers see it as a lifeline.

Sabotage denied

But the pdvsa rebels insist they will not go back while the company remains under Chavez loyalists, such as the current president, former left-wing guerrilla Ali Rodriguez. He served as secretary general of the oil exporters’ cartel opec before he took over as pdvsa president last year following the coup.

Chavez has called for the arrest of the oil industry strikers, accusing them of seriously damaging the national economy and sabotaging the installations they abandoned.

State prosecutors issued arrest orders for seven leading pdvsa strikers, forcing them into hiding, but an appeals court later quashed the orders, alleging legal flaws.

The strikers deny any sabotage and say the faults, fires and oil spills that have occurred at refineries and fields in the last few months were caused by inexperienced personnel and troops brought in by the government to replace them.

Nevertheless, the government says it is gradually restoring the country’s oil operations to normal. The strikers dispute this, saying the company will never recover its former output and export levels unless the fired workers are reinstated. -- Reuters

Wait and see Sunday, March 23, 2003 By Alistair Scrutton

CARACAS, Venezuela—They disrupted Christmas. They froze Venezuela’s oil lifeblood. They marched in their millions. To little avail.

Vast numbers of Venezuelans who failed to force out leftist President Hugo Chavez with a huge strike are now in limbo. They are wondering what do to next and fearful of what may come as the nation, split along economic class and political fault lines, falls deeper in recession.

“Depressed isn’t the word for it. I’m totally crushed,” said Maria Jose Alonso, a brooding, out-of-work pharmacist who chatted in a restaurant about the two-month strike that petered out early last month. “Now Chavez is on the offensive.”

Chavez, a former paratrooper who survived a bungled coup in April last year, took on and defeated the strike which slashed oil output in the world’s No. 5 petroleum producer.

He has called his foes “oligarchs” out to destroy his self-styled “revolution” to help the poor.

“We thought the strike would push Chavez out in a week, 10 days at most,” Alonso said, flashing ten fingers in the air.

In December, she took part in demonstrations for the first time ever. Like many Venezuelans across the country, she spent Christmas banging pots and pans to protest against Chavez and to call for early elections.

Alonso’s pessimism reflects a mood swing among the middle and upper classes, the backbone of the opposition whose marches often ended in street battles with Chavez’s mainly poor supporters.

Trip wires still lie ahead—from opposition calls for a referendum to fears the government could take over private TV stations—that could spark further civil unrest. But many of Chavez’s foes are soul-searching.

Opposition in disarray

“There’s disarray. The opposition aren’t weaker in the sense they can still mobilize a lot of people. But most agree mobilizations are not the way,” said Caracas-based political analyst Janet Kelly. “The debate is over what to do now.”

Resigned, scared and depressed are some of the words Chavez’s opponents use to describe their reaction to the fact that the president, whom they see as a power-hungry class warrior trying to turn Venezuela into a Cuba-style communist state, is still leading the country.

“Two months ago we were optimistic. Now it’s all just so uncertain,” said Tom Bokor, a systems auditor at the pvdsa state oil firm who was fired after he went on strike. He now supports his wife and three children with his savings.

Several million Venezuelans have participated in dozens of huge opposition marches over the last year. But polls show that the populist president could still win an election with around 30 percent support, if the opposition vote remained divided between anti-Chavez leaders.

Opponents fear a government counterattack. Chavez has fired more than 15,000 striking state oil workers, and authorities have arrested businessman Carlos Fernandez, a strike leader, on rebellion charges. Detention orders have also been issued for several other strike organizers.

Unexplained bombs at Colombia and Spanish diplomatic buildings on February 25 sparked fears of an upsurge in political violence. “Maybe the only way out is flying to Miami but now I can’t even buy dollars. I’m trapped,” Alonso added, referring to currency controls introduced in February by Chavez to curb what he called the “dolce vita” of the rich.

People must make a living

Caracas, a sprawling city nestled in lush mountains, is returning to the normalcy of chaotic Latin American capitals.

Streets empty during the strike have filled up again with snarling traffic. Once-closed restaurants are busy, surrounded by gleaming sports utility vehicles tended by security guards.

Demonstrations are smaller now. One recent Sunday, protesters on gleaming motorbikes and draped in flags rode through a wealthy business district, but they numbered only a few hundred. Only several thousand people protested Fernandez’s arrest.

“A lot of the opposition are shell-shocked. They fired their biggest artillery and missed. They underestimated Chavez and now they’re marched out,” said one European diplomat.

Private TV stations, some of Chavez’s most vocal opponents, still broadcast spots show flag-waving protesters calling for liberty and urging Venezuelans to keep up the fight against the president. But the images have little resonance on the streets.

Ice cream vendors outnumber visitors at the posh east Caracas Altamira square, a few months ago a hub of resistance to Chavez that teemed with students, office workers, military officers and housewives who gathered daily to protest.

“People have to make a living, you know, now the strike has ended,” said Leonora Acevedo, a university teacher who has been protesting in the square for four months. She sat alone.

The opposition umbrella group, Coordinadora Democratica, is an alliance of interest groups ranging from unions and civic groups to a business federation. Their divided aims range from throwing out Chavez with military help to having a referendum. “We need to refresh the movement,” said Miranda State governor Enrique Mendoza, an opposition leader.

Wait and see

Meanwhile Caracas is in wait-and-see mode. Its inhabitants still talk about latent class hatred between the poor western and posh eastern halves of a city that may explode in unrest.

Rich districts store arms and chains to mount barricades.

Chavez-loyal soldiers have confiscated the heavy weapons of the opposition-run Caracas metropolitan police. Soldiers stand guard outside police stations.

Downtown Caracas is a Chavez stronghold of street peddlers, run-down buildings, graffiti and garbage. The presidential palace is a heavily guarded mansion surrounded by troops and road blocks. But nearby his supporters seem confident.

“The people are with Chavez. They know he’s fighting the rich who are responsible for all this mess,” said Antonio Lopez, selling children’s toys on a street corner.

A few miles away to the east the atmosphere is different.

“Don’t Despair” reads one banner on the windows of an expensive dried flower shop in an upmarket Caracas mall. “We feel hemmed in now,” said Flor, a retired woman who said she was too worried about recriminations to give her full name. She strolled by the flower shop, her neck laden with jewelry. “But don’t count us out. We’ll be back.” -- Reuters