www.granma.cu Havana. January 27,  2003 BY ORLANDO ORAMAS LEON —Granma daily special correspondent—

PORTO ALEGRE.- A new era in Latin America and the world is about to start, affirmed Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who received numerous demonstrations of support from the authorities, participants at the 3rd World Social Forum (WSF), and the Brazilian people in Porto Alegre.

Chávez met with the president of Río Grande de Sul’s legislative assembly along with the WSF organizers, gave a press conference, and then, from a balcony, addressed a huge crowd of people who had been waiting since early morning.

Venezuela’s head of state explained that the WSF had become the most important political event of the yea, "because the hope of humanity is condensed here and we are building an alternative to the savage neoliberal model that is leading us to suicide."

He called the international economic order, one of the expressions of Third World debt, dreadfully unjust. As an example he cited that his government has paid $20 billion USD towards its debt; nevertheless the total amount it owes to international organizations remains at $26 billion USD.

Venezuela has been placed in the role of precursor of changes occurring in Latin America, he pointed out, commenting that it is the oligarchic groups and their instruments — the television channels and newspapers —opposed to those changes, who are waging a media war.

Responding to a question from Granma he affirmed that he hoped what has been happening in Venezuela does not occur in other countries. "We are making a peaceful revolution, which is also to the benefit of groups with economic power because they need it too. There are 224 million poor people in Latin America, and of those 90 million are destitute and cannot sit back and wait for a solution."

He explained some of the measures adopted by his government to confront the pro-coup mob and protect the population from its actions. In the years of the Bolivarian process land has been given to campesinos, educational resources have been increased to 7% of the GDP, the infant mortality and malnutrition rates gave gone down, as well as the indicator for low weight in minors. Entry to all educational levels has grown and popular participative forums have been established through the National Planning Councils.

Chávez qualified those trying to defeat the legitimate Venezuelan government as fascists applying the same tactics as those used in Chile nearly 30 years ago. "However, they made a mistake this time, because the people are in the streets and the armed forces are with the Bolivarian process," he observed.

Later, in the Porto Alegre legislature, the Venezuelan leader attended an event organized by the Brazilian Committee of Solidarity with Venezuela, where he introduced Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque, whose presence was applauded.

"New processes will appear in Latin America and throughout the world, some of those will be surprise ones, for which reason we need strong social movements to combat neoliberalism," he affirmed.

Outside, hundreds of people carrying flags from various countries and organizations gave him a their welcome to the 3rd World Social Forum. Chávez assured them that Venezuela would resist the fascist mob.

www.newsday.com

By Letta Tayler LATIN AMERICA CORRESPONDENT January 26, 2003

Caracas - Belen Coronado, a retired court employee, doesn't permit political discussion in the Caracas apartment she shares with her daughter and son-in-law. "If we talk politics, we argue," she explained.

Coronado, 69, is a fan of populist President Hugo Chávez. Her daughter, Natalia Coronado, and son-in-law, Tony Ponce, a food distributor, back an 8-week-old national strike that aims to topple the leftist leader.

Briefly lifting the ban on political discussion for a visitor one recent afternoon, the usually soft-spoken relatives remained polite for about a minute before the barbs began to fly across their comfortable living room.

"We've had it with Chávez, We want him out now," said Natalia, 29, a homemaker, her voice prickling with anger.

"Then you're willing to break with the Constitution," her mother shot back, noting that the law will permit Venezuelans to call a binding referendum on truncating Chávez's six-year term only after its midpoint in August.

"Chávez doesn't respect the Constitution either, and he's ruining the economy," counter-attacked Ponce, 32.

The polarization within Venezuela over Chávez's presidency is widely assumed to pit rich against poor. While in many cases that is the case, the fault line also cuts through social classes, institutions and professions, further complicating efforts to unify a nation teetering on chaos.

"The tensions generated within families who are divided over the president are profound and unprecedented," said Luís Vicente León, who heads the Caracas-based Datanalisis polling company.

"It's turning brother against sister and cousin against cousin," said Elizabeth de Barnola, 54, a Caracas leather merchant whose family is split over Chávez.

In a half-century of democracy, members of Venezuela's tightly knit families often have held divergent political views. In the past, however, "these distinctions were 'light,' generating the kind of discussion one hears among fans of different baseball teams," León said.

In contrast, political experts say, the flamboyant Chávez - a former paratrooper who led a failed coup in 1992 and was elected by huge margins six years later - incites extreme hatred or adulation with his combative rhetoric and autocratic style, particularly as the country slides further into inflation, unemployment and violence. With Chávez having largely failed in his campaign pledges to distribute the nation's vast oil wealth among the poor, numerous polls show him popular among only 30 percent of Venezuelans, far fewer than the 80 percent who live below the poverty line.

At the same time, one in five middle-class or wealthy Venezuelans supports the president, León said.

They include Belen Coronado, a diminutive, unassuming woman who lost 15 years' worth of her modest pension benefits - almost half the total - under austerity measures instituted by one of Chávez's predecessors.

Although she now lives in a comfortable apartment appointed with oil paintings and a crystal chandelier, Coronado remembers waiting in lines for food handouts during acute economic crises under previous regimes.

"Finally, for the first time in more than 40 years, we have a president who wants to help the poor instead of only helping the elite," she said.

"There are more poor children walking the streets now than there ever were before Chávez," rebutted her daughter, momentarily losing her own quiet poise.

"You can't expect a president to turn the country around in a few years," Coronado countered, adding that the opposition is "committing a crime against young children" by closing schools as part of strike actions.

For the indefinite future, Coronado has banned her daughter and son-in-law from watching news on the television in the living room, because all but one of Venezuela's highly politicized networks broadcast almost nothing but criticism of the government and praise for the strike.

If Natalia Coronado wants to join the cacerolazos, the nightly protests in which Chávez opponents march through the streets banging on pots and pans, her mother has decreed that she may do so only from the apartment's fifth-floor window. Should Natalia participate in a march, her mother flatly refuses to baby-sit.

Natalia circumvents that ban by leaving her 2-year-old daughter with her husband, who's been home every day since Dec. 2 because he has joined the anti-Chávez strike.

"I resent it that I can't express myself politically in my own home," Natalia said.

"What you're expressing is a hatred that will eat you up inside," her mother rejoined.

Since the severe rupture over Chávez began a few years ago, "everyone has begun to express their differences," said Caracas sociologist Mercedes Pulido. "The problem is, no one accepts them. What we need is a leader who can heal the wounds."

If the next president is elected peacefully, families will mend their internal rifts more easily, Pulido predicted. "But if it ends by insurrections or violence, it will be more difficult."

Asked if they would forgive and forget their political differences if Chávez is unseated through widespread violence, Belen and Natalia Coronado shifted in their seats and looked at each other expectantly across their marble coffee table. "I hope so," the daughter said.

"I don't think so," the mother answered, gently but firmly.

www.globeandmail.com By MIKE CEASER Special to The Globe and Mail Monday, January 27, 2003 – Page A10

CARACAS -- Engineering major Felipe Marquez fears that the loss of a full semester of university will delay his graduation and increase his education costs. That hasn't stopped him from rallying against the resumption of classes at Central University in Caracas, where students have been grappling with a strike against President Hugo Chavez that enters its eighth week today.

"We might lose our holidays, our summer vacation," said Mr. Marquez, 19, "but make [Mr. Chavez] leave."

The plight of the universities shows how the strike, led by a coalition of business and union leaders and most stridently implemented in the petroleum industry, has affected nearly all aspects of life for Venezuela's 24 million people.

Students say a gasoline shortage makes commuting difficult, that the capital's near-daily political violence makes the campus dangerous and that the strike has slashed even basic services; the campus cafeteria, for example, has stopped serving dinner.

Shortly after the strike began, university directors told students and professors to decide on their own whether to attend classes. The school's green lawns and covered walkways were quickly deserted.

Since then, students and professors have begun trickling back to classes. Chemical-engineering student Maria Eugenia Velasquez, 20, has been collecting signatures on a petition against the strike. Although she too opposes Mr. Chavez, she doesn't see the strike as the right way to oust him.

"This could set me back a semester, maybe more," she said. "The right to an education shouldn't be subject to politics."

Venezuelans are being forced to make choices in an environment where simply pursuing an education or serving a meal has become a political gesture.

When strikers shut down Venezuela's oil industry in early December, demanding that Mr. Chavez either resign or agree to early elections, few expected the confrontation to last this long. After all, petroleum exports normally produce 70 per cent of the country's international revenues and half of government income.

But Mr. Chavez has fought back, partly restarting the industry and importing gasoline to a country that is ordinarily the world's fifth-largest exporter of crude.

The strikers, who accuse the President of authoritarian rule and ruinous economic policies, have refused to back down too. Many middle- and upper-class Venezuelans say the upheaval and sacrifice are worthwhile if it means victory.

Leocadio and Carolina Sanchez were in a Caracas bookstore recently looking through workbooks for their six-year-old son Daniel, whose private school shut when the strike began. Even though the strike has left their real-estate business moribund, the Sanchezes recently joined 117 out of 120 of the school's parents in voting against a resumption of classes.

There is also a major economic motive for the Sanchezes. Since Mr. Chavez's election in 1998, their business has dwindled so much that they have had to reduce their staff from 35 to four.

For some small businesses, the cost of striking has been even higher. Many owners who joined the strike in its early days have chosen to reopen, even at the risk of being considered traitors by other strikers. A few blocks from the Sanchezes, a line of cars waited to park at the Mamma Mia Italian restaurant. Mamma Mia closed when the strike began, but in mid-December it reopened part-time. Now it operates normally.

"We endured 15 days" closed, manager Duarte Batista said. "One wants to take part, but there are too many costs."

Unintentionally, the strikers have fulfilled one Chavez goal. The President is a fervent opponent of globalization. Now, although many small independent businesses are open, most larger franchises and malls are not. Across from Mamma Mia, a Subway sandwich shop and a Domino's Pizza restaurant were closed and dark.

For other enterprises, cut off from gasoline and oil, there is no choice. Many plants and warehouses have ceased distributing their products; bakeries are running low on flour, and beer has been a rarity for weeks.

The shortages have combined with Venezuela's plummeting currency to double the cost of many goods, including food. On Wednesday, the central bank suspended trading in foreign exchange for a week to try to keep the bolivar from dropping further.

One of the most conspicuous costs of the strike can be seen at the country's gas stations. Citizens used to subsidized fuel and gas-guzzling SUVs must choose between leaving their vehicles at home or facing kilometres-long lines at the pumps.

At 5 p.m. one recent Friday afternoon, Juan Carlos Trejo, 34, pulled his blue Chevy Vitara into the line for a Mobil station near downtown Caracas. The station closed that evening before he could fill up, so he returned the next morning at 6 a.m., only to have the gasoline run out at noon, just as he pulled up to the pump.

With hundreds of cars waiting behind him, Mr. Trejo held his ground and waited.

"They say some could arrive during the afternoon," he said with a grimace.

And it did, the next afternoon. Mr. Trejo and others in line spent all of Saturday night in their cars.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/173uwdnt.asp

THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.

3

I am glad someone in the media can really describe the horror we are living in Venezuela right now (Thor L. Halvorssen, Horror in Venezuela).

I never thought that I would be preparing--along with my family and neighbors--for invasions at our houses. Now I know that in my house there are guns, where they are and how to use them.

I had to send my only son to the United States (since he a US citizen) and I wasn't able to tell him when he is coming back, or when I will be able to see him again.

But I am fine--I am much better than the thousands of Venezuelan that don't have a job and that have no income to support their families. And that is why the worst is yet to come. The sad part is that we are prepared for it.

Who's to blame? I am not sure. I think the strike is very hurtful for the whole country, but without it, international entities would have not paid any attention to us.

Please keep writing and informing the world what is really happening in Venezuela.

--Maria Alejandra Azar

4

Someone should inform Moby that there is a difference between peace-loving, and peace-making (David Skinner, Stardumb: Moby). Peace-making sometimes requires a confrontational approach when the person who is being approached is recalcitrant and uncooperative.

--Jason Hamby

5

Stephen F. Hayes makes two points in The Peacemongers: (1) some peace activists are stupid; (2) their actions help prop up the Iraqi regime, which oppresses the Iraqi people.

Even if we accept that both points are true, neither is a justification for invading Iraq. Hayes's article seems to imply that improving the lives of Iraqis would be a reason to go to war. This is naive.

There is an infinite amount of suffering in the world. The billions of dollars the U.S. would spend on an Iraq war could better the lives of millions of people in the third world without costing a single human life.

Of course, donating money to fight poverty would not topple a dictatorship and end repression. But there are repressive governments throughout the world and the United States is not trying to topple them all. The United States is not going to war to end the repression of the Iraqi people. The Bush administration describes Iraq first and foremost as a security threat, not a humanitarian project. A more cynical observer would say the war is about oil.

Yes, it's possible that war might improve the lives of Iraqis. It's also likely that thousands of Iraqi civilians would be killed in a war and it's possible that the post-Iraq government would be repressive, too. It will be hard to explain to orphans and widows how killing their husbands and fathers served the purpose of freeing them from political oppression.

--Daniel Connolly

-------- Mensaje Original -------- Asunto: Venezuela se declara libre. De: "Reynaldo V." vilacha@hotmail.com Fecha: Dom, 26 de Enero de 2003, 11:28 pm Para:

Me gustaría tener mas información, estoy dispuesto a colaborar pero la escasa información que me llegó no me aclara bien el fin de su propuesta, mientras tanto le envio un artículo hecho por mi persona que lo titulo Venezuela se declara libre.

Saludos Reynaldo Vilachá

Visita pronto: http:// www.karamba.com.ve Charla con tus amigos enlínea mediante MSN Messenger: Haz clic aquí

VENEZUELA SE DECLARA LIBRE

Venezuela se declara República Bolivariana, irrevocablemente libre e independiente. Así empieza nuestra constitución nacional en su Art. 1.

Libre si buscamos en el diccionario nos dice que es aquel que tiene facultad para obrar a su gusto y para escoger; no sujeto a un poder extraño o a una autoridad arbitraria, ni constreñido por una obligación, deber, disciplina, etc.

Ese concepto en el cual todos hemos vivido por mas de 10 o 20 años que va acompañado por lo que llamamos Democracia esta siendo manchado y es que no hemos conocido algo distinto. Pero por primera vez sentí ese miedo a perderla. Horrible es lo único que puedo expresarle ante tal sentimiento.

Sientan por un momento que no pueden expresarse, que nadie te crea, que nadie te escuche. No daría por nada del mundo chance a que me la quiten y sacrificaría todo mi ser por mi LIBERTAD.

Muchas personas de esta Sociedad están luchando por mantenerla, por mencionar algunos PDVSA, la marina mercante, etc. Están arriesgando no solo sus puestos de trabajos sino sus vidas y las vidas de sus familiares por el simple derecho de obrar a su gusto y para escoger (libre). Y hay algo que los mueve más fuerte que su propia libertad y es la libertad de sus Hijos.

Y la libertad te la da la Democracia, te da la garantía de construir un país mejor y como jóvenes no podemos estar alejados de la construcción de VENEZUELA y es por eso que ese ciclo de vida sigue, nuestros padres van construyendo un camino para que nosotros nos podamos desarrollar como seres humanos dignos donde tengamos una gama de posibilidades que nos ofrezca nuestro entorno, que es donde vivimos y es que esto no es solo trabajo de nuestros padres sino de todo un conjunto de personas con el cual nos relacionamos y entre ellos esta el Gobierno de turno.

Si leemos el artículo 79 de nuestra carta magna vemos que “Los jóvenes y las jóvenes tienen el derecho y el deber de ser sujetos activos del proceso de desarrollo. El Estado, con la participación solidaria de las familias y la sociedad, creará oportunidades para estimular su tránsito productivo hacia la vida adulta y en particular la capacitación y el acceso al primer empleo, de conformidad con la ley”.

¿Donde están esas oportunidades que el gobiernos nos da para que juntos estimulemos el transito productivo hacia la vida adulta? Mas bien nuestro inquilino de turno esta destrozando nuestro futuro, nos divide y además cuando salgamos como futuros profesionales, que país nos va a quedar con alguien que quiere quitarnos nuestros principales derechos.

Ya venezolanos están dando su cuota de sacrificios como indicamos anteriormente PDVSA y los Marinos Mercantes entre otros. ¿Cuál es nuestra cuota de sacrificio? Piensen que perdamos nuestra Democracia y nuestra Libertad por años porque no sacrificamos unos días, meses de clases para luchar por nuestro País.

No puedo evitar pensar y decir que si luchamos por un mejor país en libertad después podremos desarrollarnos en las aulas con más entusiasmo y con la certeza de que al salir de nuestra Universidad tendremos un país mejor. Tal cual como soñamos, lleno de un sin fin de oportunidades que como lo dice en la constitución nos facilite el tránsito productivo hacia la vida adulta y en particular la capacitación y el acceso al primer empleo.

Y si lo vemos bien es un pequeño sacrificio por este gran país VENEZUELA.

Ojala amigos aquí se terminara mi intervención, pero no puedo dejar de hablar de la inseguridad en la que vivimos. No se como expresarles el dolor que me embarga el ver a la hija de un venezolano que tiene el derecho a la educación, hoy esta en el cielo porque en la guardería no le pudieron garantizar su seguridad. La causa sin importar consecuencia fue que las autoridades locales tiraron una bomba lacrimógena y la Nena se asfixio. Solo tenía 7 meses.

Seguridad, es que acaso alguien hoy en día te la garantiza, será que ese venezolano podrá demandar al estado y obtener justicia, yo creo que no. Me vienen unas palabras que me dicen: sabes cuando sales pero no sabes si vas a regresar. Así estamos.

Que le podemos enseñar amigos a un Comunicador Social, que al salir a realizar su trabajo posiblemente le peguen un tiro, Que le podemos enseñar a un abogado, que en su país no hay ley y que uno solo es el que la rige, o tal vez a un Arquitecto que no va a tener nada que diseñar en un país en ruinas y así con cada una de las carreras que albergan a miles de estudiantes pendientes de salir adelante, pendientes de un mejor futuro.

El futuro estudiantes es ahora y nos toco salir a la calle a luchar por el país, por la Democracia por la Libertad y una vez que ganemos esta batalla empezaremos todos a construir un mejor porvenir. Y nos prepararemos mejor en las aulas pensando que cuando salgamos de nuestra Universidad encontraremos una VENEZUELA llena de oportunidades, llena de Paz, llena de Democracia, llena de LIBERTAD.

REYNALDO VILACHA