By Brian Ellsworth Published 5/30/2003 9:33 AM

CARACAS, Venezuela, May 30 (<a href=www.upi.com>UPI) -- In an upscale neighborhood of eastern Caracas, demonstrators this week continued to congregate in Altamira Plaza to protest against President Hugo Chavez. A hotbed of Venezuela's political opposition during the opposition petroleum strike, the desolate plaza now looks a lot like an abandoned circus. But opposition leaders are just as agitated as they were at the height of the strike.

"He is a terrorist and a communist," says Gustavo Ramírez, 32, a student who showed up at the gathering. "He has people in the country going hungry and he wants to ensure that there's no freedom of expression."

While opposition sympathizers frequently levy similar accusations against their embattled left-wing president, Ramirez's condemnation was not aimed at the embattled Chavez, but rather at Cuban President Fidel Castro.

"President Chavez wants to turn Venezuela into another Cuba," says Ramirez, "but we can't let that happen."

Statements like these show how President Chavez's open admiration of Castro's communist revolution has infuriated Venezuela's conservative sectors and raised eyebrows in the international community. Even as the government and opposition on Thursday signed a cooperation agreement that could help ease the crisis, the opposition resentment over the Cuban issue remains high.

Since the arrival of Chavez, Venezuela has signed dozens of cooperation agreements with Cuba, increased cultural exchange and provided subsidized petroleum to the Caribbean nation -- much to the chagrin of Venezuelans already unnerved by what they see as Chavez's left-agenda. Government leaders defend the new cooperation with Cuba as a way of consolidating Venezuela's social reforms. But with Cuba once again in the eye of the international community, the relationship may prove costly for Chavez.

A former paratrooper turned populist president, Chavez became a household figure in Venezuela after leading a failed coup in 1992. Released from jail on a presidential pardon, Chavez swept elections in 1998 on an antipoverty, anticorruption platform dubbed the "Bolivarian Revolution" in honor of the Venezuelan founding father, Simon Bolivar. With a core constituency of Venezuela's burgeoning lower classes, Chavez has become a hero to the poor by promising to remake Venezuelan society. Although he has promised a peaceful revolution, Chavez often seems ideologically linked to the Latin American armed left. Faithful to his revolutionary roots, Chavez quickly increased diplomatic ties with Castro, a father figure for the Latin American left who in the 1960s sponsored Marxist guerrilla activity in Venezuela.

A year after taking office, the Chavez government signed an agreement to sell 53,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba at subsidized rates in exchange for medical treatment by Cuban doctors. Since then, the Venezuelan government has entered into numerous cooperation agreements with Cuba, covering everything from sports training programs to urban gardens overseen by Cubans. As a result, Venezuela has become Cuba's largest trading partner.

There was little initial backlash to the new cooperation during Chavez's first years in office, when he enjoyed popularity ratings as high as 80 percent. But his excessively confrontational manner, his willingness to insult his adversaries and his decision to legislate by decree led to a steady decline in his popularity during 2001.

Watching his approval slip, Chavez' adversaries pounced on his friendship with Castro, insisting that Chavez was trying to impose a model of "Castro-communism" in Venezuela. Although there is almost nothing about Chavez's economic policy that could be described as communist, his friendship with Castro has made it easy for his enemies to label him as such.

According to journalist and political commentator Clodosvaldo Hernandez, Venezuelans have such a primordial fear of communism that Chavez' flirtations with Cuba have greatly contributed to his decline in popularity.

"Chavez approaching Fidel has awakened Venezuelans terror of communism, which was successfully instilled during the era of guerrilla fighting in the 1960s," says Hernandez. "In addition, Venezuela is a very materialist society, which makes communism all the more threatening."

Hernandez points out that many poor Venezuelans, the president's core constituency, have moved away from Chavez for precisely this reason.

But government leaders such as pro-Chavez legislator Tarek William Saab say the opposition has exaggerated Venezuela's relationship with Cuba.

"We have similar cooperation agreements with dozens of other countries," says Saab, "but since it's Cuba, political leaders like to make it into an ideological issue. The issue has been magnified and exaggerated, in particular with the help of the anti-Castro lobby in Miami."

Miami, in the U.S. state of Florida, is a stronghold of anti-Castro Cuban émigrés.

Nonetheless, it's hard to describe the relationship as a simple commercial exchange. The two leaders clearly share an ideology, and Chavez's move toward Cuba is an open challenge to the U.S. embargo of the island. Indeed, while U.S. authorities in May were declaring Cuba a terrorist sympathizer and expelling Cuban diplomats, Venezuela was signing 15 new agreements with the communist island.

Many speculate that the fear of encroaching communism helped drive military leaders to oust Chavez on April 11 of 2002, when 19 people were killed as an opposition march approached the presidential palace. Businessman Pedro Carmona was installed as president, but Chavez was restored to power two days later by supporters and loyalist troops. During Carmona's government, opposition protestors surrounded the Cuban Embassy, cutting off the power and water to force hiding Chavez cohorts to leave the compound. The incident is frequently cited as one of the opposition's excesses, and served to strengthen ties between Castro and Chavez.

Government sympathizers such as Wilmar Perez, 42, a former taxi driver, have been drawn to the Chavez government through exchange programs with Cuba.

"The opposition criticizes Cuba because they don't know anything about it," says Perez, who was sent to Cuba for six months to receive medical attention for a gunshot wound he received on April 11. "They should continue the exchanges with Cuba, it is helping us to consolidate the revolution."

However, political analyst Alberto Garrido insists that popular approval or discontent is not the primary issue for Chavez.

"The real problem here is the armed forces," says Garrido. "Officers fear that Venezuela's armed forces are going to be turned into a revolutionary army. And you have to remember that many of these officers have been through the U.S. School of the Americas, they were trained to fight against communism."

Garrido adds that by embracing Castro too closely, Chavez also risks upsetting the United States, which buys most of Venezuela's oil exports.

"Staying tied to Castro is an enormous liability for Chavez," says Garrido. "It means confronting people that should be his allies. How far can he really take this?"

Widespread criticism of Cuba within Venezuela indicates that Garrido has a point. But Chavez shows no sign of distancing himself from Castro, even in the face of international condemnation of Cuba's recent human rights abuses. And Chavez, much like Castro, has never been afraid of a little healthy confrontation -- meaning the Cuban issue is unlikely to disappear from the Venezuelan horizon any time soon.

Story last updated at 9:39 a.m. Friday, May 30, 2003 The Post and Courier-Los Angeles Times

CARACAS, VENEZUELA--President Hugo Chavez and opposition representatives signed a controversial peace deal Thursday that paves the way for early presidential elections but was criticized as falling far short of solving the nation's political crisis.

Government and opposition members said the agreement represents the best hope to reconcile this deeply divided country, even as some in the fractured opposition expressed serious reservations about the deal.

"The government is not going to say we've won with this agreement, and I hope the opposition won't either," said Chavez, who did not attend the signing ceremony at a hotel here Thursday. "Let's say the country won."

The agreement is the culmination of six months of arduous negotiations by the Organization of American States, backed by the Atlanta-based Carter Center, the United Nations and the six-nation Group of Friends of Venezuela, which includes the United States.

The negotiations were intended to ease deep divisions in Venezuela, which in the last 18 months has suffered through an attempted coup, a devastating general strike and a plunging economy.

Foes of Chavez, a former paratrooper first elected to the presidency in 1998, accuse him of being a communist sympathizer leading the country to ruin with a half-baked social revolution. Chavez and his supporters see the opposition as right-wing coup-mongers who have done nothing to relieve the country's poverty.

The primary point of the agreement is that both sides will follow the system in the Venezuelan Constitution for a presidential recall.

But the agreement sets no timetable for an election. It also leaves unanswered a host of difficult questions about how, exactly, to conduct such a vote.

The body designated in the constitution to oversee elections, the National Electoral Council, does not exist yet and is currently the subject of an intense dispute in the assembly regarding the appointment of its members.

Also, Chavez made no promises to forgo court challenges to a recall election, though the opposition believes such delaying tactics would cost him in international political circles.

In fact, however, Chavez has already challenged the validity of the 2.8 million signatures the opposition has collected for the recall, which it hopes to hold as soon as August.

Still, OAS Secretary-General Cesar Gaviria, who oversaw the talks, said an election might be possible as soon as November.

<a href=www.washingtonpost.com>washingtonpost.com Friday, May 30, 2003; 7:15 AM

The long-sought beginning of the end of President Hugo Chavez's "Bolivarian revolution" is at hand. On Thursday, Chavez's government signed a plan brokered by the Organization of American States that could conclude his contentious reign by December.

The agreement, which some liken to a virtual suicide pact for the Venezuelan president, requires Chavez to submit to a binding referendum on his tenure. If he loses the referendum and is then not allowed on the ballot in a new presidential election, he will be out of office halfway through his current term. That is, if Chavez intends to comply and not simply use the agreement to dupe the international community into going away and further weaken his already battered opponents.

U.S. officials and others in the international community--as well as the Venezuelan opposition--say they will press Chavez relentlessly to abide by the outcome of the agreed-upon "electoral exit." And so they should. But this time they should really be careful not to overplay their hand.

With Chavez's political end in sight, the temptation for the opposition will be to denigrate anything and everything that he represents. But such actions risk alienating his supporters and ignore the opposition's own end of the bargain, which in both cases could help Chavez survive or give him an excuse to withdraw from the agreement.

Disillusioned with politicians that ignored their plight for years, millions of Venezuelans turned to Chavez and his promise to end the cruel irony of dirt-poor life in an oil-rich land. On these sentiments alone, Chavez remains popular among the disaffected. Personalizing opposition to him or offering little to the poor directly will cement their commitment to Chavez.

According to the agreement, the opposition must refrain from actions that may incite more violence, and also concentrate efforts to ensure that the media will play an impartial role in the events to come. Any backtracking by the opposition or Chavez will only make things worse for the country now.

The Bush administration's policy on Venezuela has caromed clumsily between two regrettable extremes: benign neglect and diplomatic blunder. More recently, it seems to be echoing the Venezuelan opposition's doubts that Chavez will stick to the plan if he believes he may not come outvictorious.

With that in mind, some observers outside the administration have begun to suggest threatening an oil boycott to keep him from balking. After all, the thinking goes, the United States is Venezuela's No. 1 customer, and as such carries one "big stick" to pummel Chavez into compliance.

But so far there is no indication the Bush administration is considering such an ill-advised tactic that would mostly hurt those Venezuelans already at the bottom, those who already suspect that Washington never fully trusted their ballots democratically cast for Chavez.

Viewed from here, their situation has hardly improved under Chavez. His social vision had merit, yet after more than four years in office, often appearing more concerned with antagonizing his enemies than with governing, he has strayed far from the path of responding to popular needs and discontent.

Chavez has presided over the worst economic contraction in his nation's history. Last Friday, Venezuela's Central Bank reported a 29 percent drop in the country's gross domestic product during the first quarter of this year. At its worst, Argentina's GDP dropped 20 percent in four years.

A great measure of the blame also falls on the shoulders of the opposition that organized a destructive strike at the end of last year aimed at forcing Chavez out, regardless of the economic cost to the country. With elections imminent, now is the time for the opposition to prove that it stands for something and not just against Chavez.

Opposition forces have begun efforts to gain ground among Chavez's supporters and to show commitment to a social agenda. Yet the initial, tragic results have only proved the complications of the task. One person died and many others were injured during a rally organized by one opposition party last weekend in a Caracas slum.

Ironically, the first phase of Chavez's "electoral exit" may be the easier one for the opposition--winning the referendum. A scant 30 days later, opposition forces would then have to unite behind a candidate. If they fail, and if Chavez gets on the ballot through Supreme Court intervention, the opposition's actions might prove to be its own undoing. This week's agreement then would have been merely a beginning with no end in sight.

Marcela Sanchez's e-mail address is desdewash(at symbol)washpost.com.

tcpalm.com Another crackpot Peronist is in charge, and the economic outlook is bleak.

May 30, 2003

Argentina's new president is off to a not-very-promising start. That's not great news for what should be one of Latin America's most prosperous and dynamic countries.

Nestor Kirchner was sworn in Sunday, the sixth in the last 18 months.

During that time, Argentina has defaulted on $141 billion in debt, unemployment is at 18 percent and about half of the population lives in poverty.

Kirchner is a Peronist, a member of the party that got Argentina in this fix through reckless government spending. After getting 22 percent of the vote in a first-round ballot, he won the presidency by default when his unpopular opponent dropped out.

During the campaign, he blamed American-style economic reforms for much of his nation's woes. At his swearing-in, he promised to defend domestic jobs and industry, which sounds a lot like protectionism.

Applauding heartily were invited guests Fidel Castro of Cuba and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, neither an exemplar of growth and prosperity. One would think South America had had enough of zany leftist experiments.

The Argentine people deserve so much better than they've gotten from their government. Maybe Kirchner will be a surprise and turn the nation around. If he does, it will be just that — a surprise.