www.vheadline.com Posted: Thursday, January 30, 2003 - 1:41:09 AM By: Almira Atencio

Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 21:44:40 -0400 From: Almira Atencio atencioalmira@hotmail.com To: Editor@VHeadline.com Subject: Re: K.D. Willke and Gustavo Coronel

Dear Editor: Reference K. D. Wilkie's letter directed at Gustavo Coronel(www.vheadline.com). He is absolutely right about the unequal development of the economy of  our country(www.vheadline.com), circumstances that have high incidence in  opportunities for Venezuelan's represented in better  salaries as a right, independent of racial or sex differences.

• Better and qualified  education should be the only measure used to distinguish between one worker and another.

Venezuela's democratic governments have  increased politic instability by wasting public resources in  bureaucracy to dominate power with its own people ... this has led the country to impoverishment and to deny to Constitutent representatives an  appropriate economic plan in order to obtain distribution of the PIB that  would help  solve poverty in our country and to seek economic development.

Chavez approved 49 laws, which were almost all unconstitutional in their articles ... these were the  instruments that would lead him to an  economic plan of development for his revolution for the poor .... he certainly is not taking the path he tells the international community he is ... he does not accept governability principles that are obligations in a democratic country where different interests must be attended to.

The President does protects poor people ... but only those who are  are members of a cooperative group called "Circulos Bolivarianos" (really composed of people who havealways been  members of the socialist group of unemployed people because of its lack of education and by people whose situation is of misery).

The mission of this group  is to protect his revolution ... several from these groups are in prison for killing people in a pacific march on April 11 ... they had guns and they announced to the media that they had to kill everybody because they had to protect revolution.

What is happening in our country?  Because of this, the military said they would not obey the President against civilians. After this, the President renounced. The President's politics,  revolution condemns the state to an absolute domination  of the state, totalitarianism, ideology pragmatism, continuous politic polarization, just like in Cuba. His principle  command  of violence and personal insecurity has misled  him from his  essential mission of the economy.

Our country is considered a high risk for about three years. Capital markets practically do not exist. Enterprises have gone broke. Labor rights have been defended in a clear fight against private enterprises.

Violence is the manual to govern the state. Federal states cannot create work for the regions because the central  state does not want to give them their state budget, just because the governors are not of the revolution.

"Do you still believe the President is doing the correct with us as citizens."  The President will not accept to hear the necessities of organized groups, like the business federation and the strongest trade union in the country.

Education is impossible in this climate and so are equal opportunities.

I would like to offer you Daniel J. Boorstin's opinion from his book: The decline of radicalism: "In the long run, our ability to raise  our American standard  of living will depend on our ability to remove menaces to our health and peace of body and mind , which come from the dissatisfactions and lack of satisfactions of men anywhere.  Equity  in a standard of living society  meant the right  to be educated together with and in the presence of other Americans (everyone has to be benefited)."

The President's plan was good when he sold it to us in 1997: equity for all, opportunities for all. But,  this is not the plan he had in the year 2002.

My respects, Almira Atencio (lawyer specialized in public administration, international finance) atencioalmira@hotmail.com

www.globeandmail.com By NAOMI KLEIN Thursday, January 30, 2003 – Page A17

The key word at this year's World Social Forum, which ended Tuesday in Porto Alegre, Brazil, was "big." Big attendance: more than 100,000 delegates in all! Big speeches: more than 15,000 crammed in to see Noam Chomsky! And most of all, big men. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the newly elected President of Brazil, came to the forum and addressed 75,000 adoring fans. Hugo Chavez, the controversial President of Venezuela, paid a "surprise" visit to announce that his embattled regime was part of the movement.

"The left in Latin America is being reborn," Mr. Chavez declared, as he pledged to vanquish his opponents at any cost. As evidence of this rebirth, he pointed to Lula's election in Brazil, Lucio Gutierrez's victory in Ecuador and Fidel Castro's tenacity in Cuba.

But wait a minute: How on earth did a gathering that was supposed to be a showcase for new grassroots movements become a celebration of men with a penchant for three-hour speeches about smashing the oligarchy?

Of course, the forum, in all its dizzying global diversity, was not only speeches, with huge crowds all facing the same direction. There were plenty of circles, with small groups of people facing each other. There were thousands of impromptu gatherings of activists excitedly swapping facts, tactics and analysis in their common struggles. But the big certainly put its mark on the event.

Two years ago, at the first World Social Forum, the key word was not "big" but "new": new ideas, new methods, new faces. Because if there was one thing that most delegates agreed on (and there wasn't much), it was that the left's traditional methods had failed.

This came from hard-won experience, experience that remains true even if some left-wing parties have been doing well in the polls recently. Many of the delegates at that first forum had spent their lives building labour parties, only to watch helplessly as those parties betrayed their roots once in power, throwing up their hands and implementing the paint-by-numbers policies dictated by global markets. Other delegates came with scarred bodies and broken hearts after fighting their entire lives to free their countries from dictatorship or racial apartheid, only to see their liberated land hand its sovereignty to the International Monetary Fund for a loan.

Still others who attended that first forum were refugees from doctrinaire Communist parties who had finally faced the fact that the socialist "utopias" of Eastern Europe had turned into centralized, bureaucratic and authoritarian nightmares. And outnumbering all of these veteran activists was a new and energetic generation of young people who had never trusted politicians, and were finding their own political voice on the streets of Seattle, Prague and Sao Paulo.

When this global rabble came together under the slogan "Another world is possible," it was clear to all but the most rigidly nostalgic that getting to this other world wouldn't be a matter of resuscitating the flawed models of the past, but imagining new movements.

The World Social Forum didn't produce a political blueprint -- a good start -- but there was a clear pattern to the alternatives that emerged. Politics had to be less about trusting well-meaning leaders, and more about empowering people to make their own decisions; democracy had to be less representative and more participatory. The ideas flying around included neighbourhood councils, participatory budgets, stronger city governments, land reform and co-operative farming -- a vision of politicized communities that could be networked internationally to resist further assaults from the IMF, the World Bank and World Trade Organization. For a left that had tended to look to centralized state solutions to solve almost every problem, this emphasis on decentralization and direct participation was a breakthrough.

At the first World Social Forum, Lula was cheered, too: not as a heroic figure who vowed to take on the forces of the market and eradicate hunger, but as an innovator whose party was at the forefront of developing tools for impoverished people to meet their own needs. Sadly, those themes of deep participation and democratic empowerment were largely absent from Mr. da Silva's campaign for president. Instead, he told and retold a personal story about how voters could trust him because he came from poverty, and knew their pain. But standing up to the demands of the international financial community isn't about whether an individual politician is trustworthy, it's about the fact that, as Mr. da Silva is already proving, no person or party is strong enough on its own.

Right now, it looks as if Lula has only two choices: abandoning his election promises of wealth redistribution or trying to force them through and ending up in a Chavez-style civil war. But there is another option, one his own Workers Party has tried before, one that made Porto Alegre itself a beacon of a new kind of politics: more democracy. He could simply hand power back to the citizens who elected him, on key issues from payment of the foreign debt, to land reform, to membership in the Free Trade Area of the Americas. There is a host of mechanisms that he could use: referendums, constituents' assemblies, networks of empowered local councils and assemblies. Choosing an alternative economic path would still spark fierce resistance, but his opponents would not have the luxury of being against Lula, as they are against Mr. Chavez, and would, instead, be forced to oppose the repeated and stated will of the majority -- to be against democracy itself.

Perhaps the reason why participatory democracy is being usurped at the World Social Forum by the big men is that there isn't much glory in it. A victory at the ballot box isn't a blank cheque for five years, but the beginning of an unending process of returning power to that electorate time and time again.

For some, the hijacking of the forum is proof that the movements against corporate globalization are finally maturing and "getting serious." But is it really so mature, amidst the graveyard of failed, left political projects, to believe that change will come by casting your ballot for the latest charismatic leader, then crossing your fingers and hoping for the best? Get serious. Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and Fences and Windows, resumes her monthly column in The Globe and Mail.

web.baytownsun.com Contact our news staff at (281) 422-8302. By Robbie Magness The Baytown Sun Published January 30, 2003

BAYTOWN — Heading into the spring season, Lee College’s Diana Martin is the best player on the best junior college tennis team in the nation.

Forgive her if she has other things on her mind.

Martin, 20, a sophomore from Valencia, Venezuela, has watched as a nationwide strike in opposition to the proposed policies of President Hugo Chavez has crippled the nation’s economy.

Here in Baytown, 2,200 miles away, Martin finds herself unable to visit her parents, cut off from her lifelong source of emotional and financial support. Talking about the home she has not seen since Christmas 2001, her voice remains strong, and she shows a remarkable grasp of her country’s sociopolitical structure, but her emotions clearly play across her face and in her voice.

“I have a lot of feeling going on because me and my family are really close, and I know they are having a hard time,” Martin said Wednesday, as the Lady Rebels stayed indoors following the afternoon rains. “It’s like my mind is not completely here with me. It has been real hard hearing all the stuff about the political system, how horrible Venezuelan citizens are doing right now. How are my family and friends? ... It hurts.”

Venezuela, on the northern coast of South America, has reached a 60th day in an opposition drive designed to strangle the world’s fifth-leading oil exporter and force Chavez to step down or call for elections.

While Chavez so far has refused to give in, the strike has put Venezuela on the verge of economic collapse, caused long-term damage to oil infrastructure and forced Chavez to extend his ban Tuesday on U.S. dollar purchases to preserve foreign reserves.

For Martin, that means her family cannot send money to help her with everyday expenses.

“My parents used to send me money just from their account ... They would transfer the money from Bolivars to dollars. ... I can’t get money from my parents anymore.”

Martin’s tennis scholarship includes tuition, fees, books and food, but the college has no on-campus housing, so there are living expenses. Martin shares an apartment with two teammates, Adriana Garcia of Mexico and Kalie Koening of West Columbia, Texas.

“The main things I need, thank God, the scholarship gives to me,” Martin said. “But, when it comes to bills and all that, that’s when I need the money. ... They have supported me since I was 16. They have sent me all the money I need. Everything I need, they have been there for me.”

Martin came to the United States when she was 16, spending most of two semesters at Troy State University in Alabama learning English. At 18, she took an internship at the John Newcombe Tennis Academy in San Antonio, where she both taught and learned the game.

Lee College coach Jason Haynes saw her there, and she joined the Lady Rebels in January 2002. She is ranked No. 2 individually nationwide, and the defending national champion Lady Rebels are ranked No. 1. There is much to enjoy, but perspective can dull the shine on such things.

“I’ve never had to work in my life, like work for money,” Martin said. “At Newc’s (Newcombe Tennis Academy), I was in an internship. I was learning. But this is actually my first time that I’ve got to step up for myself and start getting my money somehow. That’s kind of weird. And I’ve got to do it. If not, I can’t pay my bills.”

Martin said she hopes to land an assistant trainer position with Lee College, and she will continue to help the team with summer camps, for which players receive some compensation.

Martin said she has missed her family all along, “but it wasn’t like I was worried about them or anything.

“Since the president got there, things have been changing, new laws that most of the people do not agree with. But nothing really bad, nothing as bad as it is right now. ... To be honest, I don’t think (Chavez is doing a good job). I think he is trying to be a communist instead of a democratic (president). ... He is a really good friend with Fidel Castro. That’s a huge thing. Everybody’s scared because he’s listening to (Castro). Let’s hope he doesn’t want to turn Venezuela into Cuba.”

Martin said one of the policies Chavez tried to implement which most affected her family was an “equal society” system, under which landowners with large holdings would be forced to give up some of the land. This was particularly important to the Martin family because Carlos Martin Jr., Diana’s father, is an administrator of a large ranch in Venezuela, the former King Ranch. Her mother, Elizabeth, and one brother, Julio Castrillo, 30, round out her immediate family.

“(Chavez) was trying to make it a law,” she said, “but in the end, it didn’t happen. But when people hear this, they try to go over the ranch and take over, and it was a pretty rough time.”

Martin said two people working as security for the ranch were shot and killed in such a clash.

It’s just one more thing for her to worry about as she tries to focus on graduating, tennis and what she will do after Lee College. She admits to having “no idea what to do next” but says she wants to stay in Texas, partly because of her boyfriend of two years, Jason Wilson.

Wilson, of Marble Falls, recently moved from San Antonio to Houston to be closer to Martin.

“I would like to believe that,” Martin says with a laugh. “I don’t know if it’s true, though.”

Meanwhile, her concerns for her family are never far from the surface.

“I would love ... to really believe that this is gonna end real soon, but I don’t see it at an end anytime (soon). ... I was supposed to go at Christmas with them, and I couldn’t, and that was a big deal for me — my first Christmas without my parents. That was hard for me. Martin reassured herself with the thought that she could go for spring break instead, but that possibility is dimming as well.

“Now that I’m seeing how it’s getting long,” she said, “I don’t think I’m gonna get to go. I would love to believe that it’s gonna end shortly, but ...”

Her voice trails off as she thinks beyond her family to her downward-spiraling homeland and the president at the heart of what amounts to a civil war — one that thankfully has not given way to full-blown violence.

“I think (Chavez) has a lot of pressure from the population, and he knows that everyone is against him,” she said. “I don’t think a country can last this long in the same situation that it is. I don’t think it could last six months more because this is ridiculous. They have no food.

“I say thank God they are on the ranch, my parents, because they can (get food), but for the people who don’t have that opportunity, the country’s just going straight down, and the petroleum and the economic system is going down. I would say that if the population keep up with what they are doing, I think sooner or later he’s gonna give up.

“It seems so funny to me. I’ve seen interviews of him on the TV, like with another country, and he’s like, ‘In my country, nothing is happening.’ And I’m sitting here, and I’m saying, ‘Come on. How can you lie in front of everyone?’ I think he’s trying to (make) other countries believe that nothing is happening, but he knows it is.”

She said the press in Venezuela is fairly free from government control and that, despite the rhetoric, the people “definitely” know what’s going on.

Forty years ago, Martin’s grandfather, Carlos Martin, left behind wealth and property in Cuba and fled with his family to the United States, after telling Castro he could not live under a communist regime.

The family spent nearly 20 years in the United States before resettling in Venezuela. Now, Martin’s grandmother, Annamaria Martin, says she is “reliving Cuba.”

It’s one more worry piled on an already overburdened Diana Martin. So well versed in the real world, she allows herself at least a fleeting moment of fantasy.

“One of my dreams,” she said, “is the United States going down there and taking over that country. That would be my dream. I know it’s not gonna happen, but that would be my dream.”

ipsnews.net

Humberto Márquez The nearly two-month general strike against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez began to wane Wednesday with banks returning to their usual schedules and other sectors beginning to normalise activity as well, while the opposition tries to avoid the appearance of defeat.

The association representing the country's 30 private banks, which handle 90 percent of all financial activity, ''decided by a two-thirds majority to renew normal hours of operation as of Monday, Feb. 3,'' announced the group's president, Ignacio Salvatierra.

CARACAS, Jan 29 (IPS) - The nearly two-month general strike against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez began to wane Wednesday with banks returning to their usual schedules and other sectors beginning to normalise activity as well, while the opposition tries to avoid the appearance of defeat.

The association representing the country's 30 private banks, which handle 90 percent of all financial activity, ''decided by a two-thirds majority to renew normal hours of operation as of Monday, Feb. 3,'' announced the group's president, Ignacio Salvatierra.

Since the strike began Dec. 2, the banks have only been open to the public for half their normal hours -- in the mornings --, leading to long queues of clients and prompting difficulties in other sectors of the economy.

The political opposition declared the nationwide work stoppage to demand a non-binding referendum in which voters would indicate whether or not the populist Chávez should immediately resign.

But on Jan. 22, the Supreme Court indefinitely postponed its debate on the constitutionality of the referendum.

Another aim of the strike, according to the business, labour and oil industry leaders who are heading it, is to show the world the magnitude of the Venezuelan people's opposition to Chávez.

The strike was further designed to pressure the government and opposition negotiators, engaged in talks brokered by Organisation of American States (OAS) Secretary-General César Gaviria, to quickly come up with an ''electoral solution'' to the crisis.

Education Minister Aristóbulo Istúriz said 90 percent of the country's public schools are functioning again, while private schools have been holding assemblies to discuss opening their doors next week.

''We have a timetable for dismantling the strike without it being interpreted as a defeat,'' a Christian Democratic leader who has been one of the main organisers of the opposition protests told IPS on condition of anonymity.

''The logical thing is to start with the most sensitive areas, like the food industry and education,'' he said.

Since December, activity has been paralysed in shopping malls, department stores and the main manufacturing industries, although for some sectors the beginning of the strike coincided with the traditional December-January vacation period.

A large part of the country's small and medium industries continued to operate normally, including neighbourhood shops and bakeries. Mass transit was not involved in the strike, and many factories and other businesses had already begun to return to normal operating schedules.

Over the past week, central areas of Caracas and other large cities have experienced the habitual noise and traffic congestion seen after every annual vacation period, even though long lines of vehicles continued outside the service stations, as the Venezuelan oil industry is only beginning to restore production after it fell to a relative trickle.

On Sunday, the shopping centres will open their doors to opposition activists collecting signatures in support of various initiatives aimed at pushing Chávez out of power.

Petition drives will also be carried out in front of the hundreds of schools that generally serve as voting stations.

There are numerous initiatives for which signatures are being collected, including a constitutional amendment to cut short Chávez's 2000-2006 term, a referendum that would revoke his mandate, and a call for the creation of a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution.

A few days later, according to the opposition source, the malls and the franchises in Venezuela of international corporations will open their doors on restricted schedules, ''to maintain the climate of civic protest, the point towards which the current strike will ultimately evolve.''

The reduced hours will allow shopkeepers to readjust the prices of their products once foreign exchange controls go into effect on Feb. 5. The government announced the new controls after suspending foreign exchange trading by the Central Bank on Jan. 22.

Car-makers are negotiating agreements with their workers to put them on leave with partial payment of their wages while they sell off accumulated inventories.

General Motors, the leading automobile manufacturer in Venezuela -- the company sold 25,945 of the 74,560 vehicles assembled in the country in 2002 -- asked its 1,800 employees to remain on leave and to take a 25-percent pay cut until some 6,000 vehicles are sold on the local market or exported to Chile, Colombia and Ecuador, said the company's director of legal affairs, Luis Kolster.

Similar accords are being negotiated by Ford and Chrysler, while they await the reopening of their showrooms and sales lots. Much depends on the government's decision on foreign exchange, because around half of the components that go into each car are imported.

The strike's flagship industries -- those in which the two- month stoppage had most support -- include bottlers (of beer and soft drinks), flour, and food processing plants, which are to gradually reinstate operations throughout February.

The privately-held communications media, which halted broadcasts of advertising and changed their normal programming to focus on covering and promoting the anti-Chávez conflict, "will be the last to return to normal operations, though perhaps by Feb. 10," said the opposition source.

The oil industry, normally Venezuela's economic engine, has been the core of the power struggle here. The managers and several thousands of employees of the giant state-run Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) stopped working, halting operations at oil wells and refineries and on tankers.

Petroleum represents a quarter of the gross domestic product (GDP), half of fiscal revenues and 80 percent of cash inflows.

The country's normal output of 2.8 million barrels of crude per day fell to just 150,000 with the onset of the strike in December. Venezuela, an oil exporter for the last 90 years, had to import gasoline for the first time in three generations.

The government responded with an emergency plan backed by the armed forces, and has achieved a partial recuperation of production. Chávez says daily output now stands at 1.32 million barrels of oil. The opposition PDVSA managers' union, Gente del Petróleo, however, puts the figure at 1.05 million.

This was achieved "by overexploiting the fields of light crude, where are easier, while the heavy crude will be hurt because they are more difficult to reactivate, meaning the output levels from prior to the strike will not be achieved in the short term," a protest leader told IPS.

On another front at PDVSA, the government began rapid reforms "to streamline its structure and eliminate extra personnel," company president Alí Rodríguez said as he reported the layoff of 5,111 employees.

The anti-Chávez coalition is demanding amnesty for all oil employees who participated in the strike, "but the problem is that the government refuses to address the point in the negotiations," said Américo Martín, one of the six negotiators representing the opposition.

Officials say that some of the oil industry's installations were sabotaged. Administrative proceedings have begun against the leaders of the strike in the petroleum sector.

"For the saboteurs, there will be neither pardon nor amnesty," said Vice-President José Vicente Rangel, leader of the government's negotiating team. (END)

www.zenit.org

Code: ZE03012907 Date: 2003-01-29

CARACAS, Venezuela, JAN. 29, 2003 (Zenit.org).- The president of the Venezuelan bishops' conference appealed to citizens and the government to come to an agreement and put an end to the 2-month-old general strike.

The episcopate made this appeal at the start of its ordinary assembly, fearful that the country could degenerate into "anarchy or greater misgovernment," which would only lead to "greater violence and undesirable situations."

At the opening of the assembly, Archbishop Baltazar Porras Cardozo, conference president, emphasized the need for social reconciliation and rejected confrontation as a way to solve the crisis.

"A solution to the crisis through political exclusion is non-viable," he said. "The country must be reconstructed by all, materially and spiritually, ethically and institutionally. It is a task of giants, but not impossible."

The archbishop also lamented the systematic attack on the Church "as an institution and, in particular, its hierarchy" in Venezuela, in addition to the "indiscriminate use of Catholic religious symbols." The latter is a common practice of President Hugo Chávez.