Strike's Effects Tear at Social Fabric in Venezuela
www.nytimes.com January 16, 2003 By GINGER THOMPSON
ARACAS, Venezuela, Jan. 15 — The sign on the door says "closed." The lights are dim. The staff is not in uniform. Customers are only allowed in through the out door. But in the seventh week of a national strike aimed at shutting down the economy and toppling President Hugo Chávez, Blockbuster Video began covert operations in at least two popular stores in the capital.
The staff and managers refused to fully identify themselves, or to even respond to simple queries about store hours and movie releases coming soon. However, in one brief outburst, a store manager who identified herself only as Eugenia, strived to make clear that her decision to open for business weighed heavily on her conscience.
"It is hard to work," she said. "But it is harder not to work."
The strike that once left most commercial areas of the city dark and abandoned — at an economic cost of more than $50 million a day — is now a collage of contrasts: abandoned shopping malls and bustling street markets; long lines outside gas stations and traffic jams; shuttered McDonald's outlets and packed gourmet restaurants. Venezuelan beer has been replaced by Mexican and German brands. Movie theaters are closed, but neighborhoods are setting up screens in parks and plazas.
Since it began on Dec. 2, the strike has become the fault line that divides this society into rival camps, wreaking havoc on neighborhoods and families alike. It was organized by a coalition of business executives, union leaders and civic organizations to force Mr. Chávez to call new elections.
So far, the strike leaders have failed to accomplish that goal. In the lingering war of attrition between President Chávez and his opponents, Venezuelan society has begun to take stock of the consequences. The economy is in ruins. A country that already endures one of the highest violent crime rates in the hemisphere — dozens of people are killed on an average weekend in this metropolitan area — has now been pushed to the brink of civil conflict. Mr. Chávez shows no sign of leaving.
In some places the strike holds firm, particularly in the state-owned oil company, which pumps the black blood of Venezuela's economy and is a chief supplier to the United States. Thirty-thousand workers walked off the job soon after the strike started. The government has been unable to lure them back in significant numbers, causing oil shortages around the world.
Marches by flag-waving Chávez opponents, rolling through the city like red, blue and yellow tidal waves, continue almost every other day; the most vibrant display, some analysts say, of the politicization of a once comfortable middle class that considered politics a frivolous pursuit. In a nightly ritual called the "cacerolazo," or pot-banging, a cacophonous clatter echoes through the skyscrapers and condominium complexes across this valley city at 8 p.m. as opponents of Mr. Chávez — housewives and professionals, rich and working class — emerge from their homes and offices to blow whistles and bang on cooking pots.
In a local newspaper interview, the poet Rafael Arráiz Lucca described the atmosphere: "Venezuelans are living a collective hypnosis very close to hysteria."
Still, in the day-to-day life of the city, the strike comes more in fits and starts. Some private and public schools have not reopened. Others have opened with the help of neighborhood volunteers. Banks and supermarkets are open for limited hours. Subway and bus service continues as normal.
"This is not a strike that will be lifted," said Ibsen Martinez, a newspaper columnist. "This is a strike that will slowly languish."
The opposition's base of support among the Venezuelan middle class — especially the owners of small and medium-sized businesses — consider President Chávez a dictator in a democrat's clothes. They point to his control over the Congress and the justice system as signs of a grand plan to install a Cuba-style government. But their dwindling financial resources have them grappling over how much longer they can hold out.
Gonzalo García, owner of a Subway sandwich shop, has lost more than $30,000 since the strike began. He added that if the Chávez government survives the strike, he and his family would leave their homeland.
"I would love to recover my store and even open others," he said, but "I cannot let my children grow up in an atmosphere of violence."
Lawlessness is not limited to Caracas. Local news media reported that three people were shot and wounded today as looters ransacked the town of Guiria, 310 miles east of the capital. Looting also was reported in Ciudad Bolívar, 280 miles southeast of Caracas.
Supporters of President Chávez seem simply fed up. Behind the marches and cacerolazos, they see a plot orchestrated by a group of the wealthy elite who are determined to impose their will on a democratically elected president.
Nicolasa Veita, a nurse the Centro Médico de Caracas, said the privately owned hospital had closed all but its emergency services. Last Friday, supervisors notified the nursing staff that they would not be paid this month. But she and the 130 other nurses refused to walk off the job.
"The first right that all people have, no matter what their political views, is the right to life," she said. "The doctors are looking for an excuse to close the hospitals and blame it on the government. The nurses are not going to let that happen."
On Tuesday the political storm that has battered this country came crashing down on the Mater Salvatori girls' school. Two-thousand parents — almost all of them mothers — packed into the small assembly hall to vote on whether to break the strike by opening the sprawling, affluent campus for classes.
The meeting turned into a rally, with parents roused from their seats, chanting "Not one step back." By the end of the morning, there was no need to take a vote.
One daring father stood briefly against the furious female outpouring against Mr. Chávez to ask how long parents were willing to keep their children out of school, and how teachers planned to make up the classes that would be lost.
The assembly hall filled with hissing. Then another father spoke up.
"This is not about losing some classes, or even the whole semester if that is what is necessary," he said, his bespectacled face turning red with emotion. "This is about losing our country."
School meetings like that one have become flashpoints for the strike against Mr. Chávez. After a vote at a private elementary school in a neighborhood called California Norte, Elenitza Guevara, a lawyer and mother of two, left fed up. The parents, she said, were not interested in a real debate about closing the school, she said. People like her, who were opposed to closing, were shunned. "I told them, what kind of tolerance are we going to be able to teach our children if we cannot let everyone express their views?" she said, still riled from the meeting. "The truth is, there was no room for negotiation."
What made her even more angry, she said, was that the cost of the decision had been passed on to the parents. While school administrators encouraged parents not to reopen the school, they advised the parents that they would be expected to make this month's tuition payments.
"If some parents do not want to send their children to school, they should have that right," she said. "But why should they take away my right to send my child to school? Why should they take away my child's right to an education?"
U.S. to Join Mediation Group
WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 (Agence France-Presse) — The United States said today that it would take part in a new group to assist regional mediation efforts to end the political crisis in Venezuela, whether President Hugo Chávez likes it or not.
"We would expect to be part of it and others would expect us to be part of it," said Richard Boucher, a State Department spokesman. After initial opposition, the United States now supports the creation of a "Friends of Venezuela" group to help mediation by the secretary general of the Organization of American States, César Gaviria.
Otto J. Reich, the United States special envoy to Latin America, discussed the plans on Tuesday with Mr. Gaviria in Quito, where they were attending the inauguration of the new Ecuadorean president, Lucio Gutierrez.
Earlier, Mr. Chávez, who also attended Mr. Gutierrez's inauguration, had signaled that he did not want Washington to take part in meetings to set up the group.