Anxiety Mounting in Venezuela Strike

www.newsday.com Jan 14, 2003 By Letta Tayler Latin America Correspondent

January 20, 2003 Caracas -- For seven weeks, Lila Vega, a pediatrician, has worked only a fifth of her usual hours -- and earned a fifth of her usual income -- as part of a strike aimed at unseating populist President Hugo Chávez.

When Vega does go to her office, she bikes the six miles. That way, she doesn't have to wait hours in line to fill her car's tank with gasoline, which is almost impossible to find because Venezuela's oil monopoly has joined the strike.

Most teachers are participating, too, so Vega's daughters no longer attend school. "We have to continue the pressure,” said Vega, her mouth tightening. "We're not returning to our normal lives until Chávez leaves.”

As the massive strike entered its 49th day yesterday with Chávez showing no signs of resigning, daily routines have been turned upside down across Venezuela, and so has the mood of its 24 million citizens.

The realization that the strike could limp along indefinitely, severely wounding an economy that already was ill, has cast a combustible mix of determination, hostility and fear on this traditionally ebullient country.

"There was euphoria in the beginning of the strike, when the opposition thought Chávez would quickly leave,” said Caracas psychiatrist Ignacio Taboada. "But as people realize this could go on for months, the euphoria is being replaced by enormous anxiety, and anger.”

Strike organizers have in recent days quietly condoned an easing of the stoppage by participants who are going broke. Some stores and restaurants are cautiously reopening in areas frequented by the opposition, who are mostly in the middle and upper classes.

"I'm all for the strike, but I've got debts to pay and I need to eat,” said José Luis Martínez, a perfume-shop owner in an affluent area who recently reopened.

In Chávez strongholds, most stores have stayed open. But thousands are still closed in key industries, and more than half of schools and universities are shut or barely functioning. Cooking gas and cornmeal are widely unavailable except on the black market.

Most hospitals are handling only emergencies and lack many key medicines. Banks are open three hours daily, and movie theaters are shut.

Even Venezuela's beloved baseball league has canceled its winter season to support the strike. And its equally beloved beer, Polar, has stopped production, prompting guzzlers to turn to expensive imports, if they can afford to. The petroleum industry, which before the strike supplied 13 percent of U.S. oil imports, is producing a fraction of its normal output, which has pushed U.S. stocks of crude oil to nearly their lowest level in two decades.

Chávez's foes charge that he wants to impose a communist regime and is leading the country to economic ruin. Supporters counter that he is being targeted because he wants to share the nation's wealth with the 80 percent who are poor.

Chávez's popularity is at 30 percent, but he refuses to consider leaving until August, when the constitution allows a binding referendum on truncating his term. It is scheduled to end in 2007.

Many political observers believe opposition leaders have backed themselves into a corner by having declared early on that they'd continue the strike, which is costing the country $50 million a day, until they topple the leftist leader. "It was one thing to start the strike but another not to have any plan for the eventuality that Chávez wouldn't immediately leave,” said Janet Kelly, a political analyst here.

The strike has fallen into sometimes surreal patterns, even at the daily protests for and against the president. A few days ago, several thousand opposition housewives paraded through Caracas waving posters of the Virgin of Coromoto, the nation's patron saint, whom they implored to save them from "Chávez the dictator.”

A few hours later, flocks of kindergartners stomped jauntily through an adjacent neighborhood, chanting, "Chávez, friend! The children are with you!”

Sporadic violence has led to five deaths and hundreds of injuries, many involving children. The danger that her children could be caught in a confrontation is one reason Vega is relieved her daughters aren't attending school -- even if they only spend two hours daily studying lessons their teachers post on the Internet.

The other reason is that "they are receiving a valuable lesson in how citizens' participation can make a difference,” said Vega, who spends time collecting signatures for a constitutional amendment to force early presidential elections.

Others who disagree are gathering in increasing numbers to bang on school doors, declaring that the opposition has hijacked education.

Friction is even greater in poor Caracas neighborhoods such as La Pastora, a cluster of crumbling homes perched above a cliff. Though many La Pastora residents oppose Chávez, they expressed fury at finding cooking staples only on the expensive black market.

Rosa Martínez, a La Pastora housewife who lives with her husband and four children in a one-room apartment the size of a jail cell, said she paid almost seven times the normal rate for cooking gas and twice the normal price for cornmeal a few days ago.

"I didn't vote for Chávez, but I'd vote for him now if he ran again because what this strike is doing to us is even worse,” Martínez fumed.

"We're destroying the country to get rid of one man,” said Fanny García, a retired secretary who backs neither Chávez nor the opposition. "I wonder if it's worth it.”