Maracaibo Oil Region a Crucial Battleground for Chávez as Venezuelan Conflict Rages

www.nytimes.com By DAVID GONZALEZ

MARACAIBO, Venezuela, Feb. 28 — In this sun-drenched city built on oil and agriculture, government workers complain of missed paydays and stalled projects. Beyond the high-rises and office towers, impoverished families live in dank, crumbling shanties along bumpy dirt streets.

These scenes in the western state of Zulia make the billboard outside the government-run oil company seem like a cruel taunt, particularly given that Venezuela's journey to becoming the world's fifth-largest oil exporter began here in 1914.

"Social Investment Fund," the sign proclaims. "Improving the Life of All Zulianos."

Complaints that the central government has exported not just oil from the region, but increasingly its attendant profits as well, have turned many residents against President Hugo Chávez, whom they have accused of withholding $500 million from their state budget over the years.

Only one of the state's 21 mayors supports Mr. Chávez, while the governor, Manuel Rosales, has easily rallied tens of thousands of people against him.

In Mr. Chávez's struggle to overcome the devastating effects of a two-month nationwide opposition strike, Zulia, the country's most populous state with 3.2 million residents, is a crucial battleground. Mr. Chávez must not only boost oil production, but also his support in this state whose people tend to vote as a bloc.

Two weeks ago, with the strike faltering, he set his sights on removing Mr. Rosales, urging people to demand the kind of recall referendum that his own critics have sought unsuccessfully against him.

Yet even among the poor, the very group that Mr. Chávez says benefits most from his Bolivarian Revolution, disenchantment has grown.

"The economy is fatal, and since Chávez came to power it has gotten worse, because there is no work," said Addis Atencia, who shares a compound of five shanties with nearly three dozen adults and children. "In a country that produces petroleum, how can you live like this?"

Zulianos consider themselves a breed apart, which is evident in their accent, culture and temperament. The differences are a result of having been cut off from the capital, Caracas, for years, and of frequent contact with foreigners through the port here. For years before the bridge spanning Lake Maracaibo was built in the 1960's, residents intent on going to Caracas had to get a visa, since the ferry stopped first on the Dutch island of Curaçao.

When Mr. Chavez introduced reforms, including one allowing squatters to occupy fallow farmland, Zulianos reacted with a strike in September 2001. For many the reforms were another insult after years of seeing no returns on the revenue Zulia produced for the country.

"Zulia paralyzed the state and lit the fuse that led to a national strike," said Tomás Guanipa Villalobos, the local leader of the Primero Justicia political party. "Zulia has suffered the most under Chávez. The money which was generated by oil was not invested into making Venezuela truly productive."

Roads on the outskirts of Maracaibo are potholed, while signs heralding a commuter rail station rise above empty lots where work has stopped. The public hospital in the Veritas neighborhood looks rundown, paint flaking from its walls and weeds blocking one entrance even as patients stream into the building. A state medical supply store is shuttered.

Mr. Guanipa said that rather than tackle problems like those, Mr. Chávez devoted most of a brief visit here last month to lambasting the governor and the opposition as coup plotters.

"He said nothing about any program of investment to elevate Zulia," Mr. Guanipa said. "He spent hours urging people to eliminate the enemy. It was the politics of revenge, and that is very dangerous. It will get worse unless we get out of this fast."

The government insists that production has improved among the oil rigs on Lake Maracaibo, where soldiers patrol the lake and shores to prevent sabotage. It estimates that production nationwide is now back up to 2.1 million barrels daily after being paralyzed by the strike. Venezuela produced 3.1 million barrels a day before the strike.

Alexis Arellano, the coordinator of the oil company's Tía Juana district, said he was now able to pump almost 800,000 barrels daily, despite having dismissed 60 percent of his work force during the strike.

Combined with joint ventures that were not affected by the strike, he said regional production hovered at a little more than one million barrels daily.

"They said it was impossible to increase production," he said. "The people who stayed with us see it as a personal challenge to keep on operating and make the company grow."

But former executives dispute the government's figures and insist that actual production is half of that claimed.

"If they are producing a million barrels a day with so many less people, then they should have fired us," joked Tarciso Guerrero, who used to manage the gas facilities. "They are only saying they reached a million to show the country that everything is normal."

Outside the oil company's Miranda Building, lines of job applicants file past a ragtag group of "Commando Reservists," Chávez supporters who have guarded the area since December, a battered bus their headquarters and dormitory.

The mood has been tense, especially after two people were injured this week when unknown assailants tossed a grenade and fired a dozen shots while the Chávez supporters slept by the sidewalk.

"We are defending these trenches because this institution is ours," said one of the group, Leonardo Sencial. "Without this we are nothing. If they try to take it away, we will take to the streets as the president said."