Defending Venezuelan Circles

<a href=www.newsday.com>"Simply grassroots groups that are defending the "peaceful revolution"" By Bart Jones STAFF WRITER March 23, 2003

Their critics call them armed gangs of thugs who are terrorizing residents of well-to-do neighborhoods in Venezuela.

But Rodrigo Chaves says the Bolivarian Circles are simply grassroots groups that are defending the "peaceful revolution" of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his campaign to clean up some of the worst political corruption in the world.

"What we are proposing is a profound transformation of society," Chaves, national coordinator of the Bolivarian Circles in Venezuela, said in an interview Monday.

Chaves came to New York City last week to defend the organizations, attend a rally in Manhattan, plot strategies with Chávez supporters from across the United States and proclaim that his president is not the monster some contend.

"It's the most democratic government and the one that has given the most freedom of speech" in Venezuela's history, Chaves, a surgeon, said in Spanish.

Since winning the presidency in 1998, Chávez has survived a firestorm of street protests, strikes and - in April - a coup. A two-month walkout at the huge state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela ended in February, but left the economy battered.

Chávez has split Venezuela between those who maintain he is a new Fidel Castro and those who see him as the first president in Venezuela's history to stand up for the impoverished masses and challenge a corrupted class of wealthy elites.

The bedrock of his support is the Bolivarian Circles. They have grown rapidly in the past two years, Chaves said, comprising 220,000 groups and 2.2 million people across the nation.

The groups, named after South American independence hero Simón Bolívar, study Venezuela's new constitution, repair schools, install sewage systems and even host chess tournaments, Chaves said. Critics say they have a more sinister purpose: to physically intimidate Chávez opponents. Miguel Hernández Andara, head of the Queens-based anti-Chávez group Civil Resistance of Venezuelans Overseas, said the circles are modeled after Castro's community groups created to defend the revolution. "They are a bunch of terrorists," Andara said in Spanish.

Chaves scoffed at that, and said it is the opposition that has engaged in violence. He alleged that opposition leaders placed snipers on top of hotels in downtown Caracas in April, ordered them to fire on their own marchers during a protest, and then blamed the deaths on Chávez. Dissident military officials quickly carried out a coup against Chávez, who regained power 48 hours later in a counter-coup.

Opposition leaders say Chávez and his supporters were responsible for the killings. At least 24 people died, including some Chávez backers. Many analysts agree snipers were on top of the hotels, but disagree on who put them there.

Chaves laughs at accusations that the president wants to impose a dictatorship. He said that hundreds of thousands of people regularly protest for and against Chávez, and that opponents often go on TV calling for another coup or the assassination of the president - and nothing happens to them.

"If someone went on TV [here] and said they should kill [President George W.] Bush," Chaves said, "they'd be in jail in a minute."