<a href=www.vheadline.com> Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Thursday, March 27, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) rebel leader, Juan Fernández is concluding a week's visit to the USA to give his version of events in Venezuela and of course, inside PDVSA. Fernandez hightailed out of Venezuela on hearing that a Venezuelan court had lifted an arrest warrant against him and six other PDVSA leaders.

The Venezuelan government is holding Fernández & Co. (?) responsible for crippling the oil industry to oust President Hugo Chavez Frias from power in a minimum time possible and maintain a stranglehold on the industry.

Fernández's critics argue that the USA government would not tolerate a group of employees using a strategic national industry to ransom the Nation for political and personal motives. 

• Speaking toVenezuelan TV station, Globovision, Fernández insists that the trip was to "open up communications" with key sectors in the USA.

Fernández addressed a Council of the Americas session in New York on Wednesday, has met the Undersecretary of State for Western Hemisphere and US Department of Energy officials, dropped in at the White House and has talked to some Organization of American States (OAS) Ambassadors in Washington. 

The last leg of the tour is Miami where Fernández is expected to give a press conference, meet Venezuelan opposition figures and members of the Miami Cuban community sponsoring efforts to shoot down the Chavez Frias Administration for its support of Fidel Castro. 

Fernández says the government must fix a date for the recall referendum, obtain financial resources to hold a referendum and ensure the participation of the international community.

<a href=www.voanews.com>VOA News 27 Mar 2003, 16:25 UTC

The Venezuelan government has granted strike leader Carlos Ortega's request to seek asylum in Costa Rica.

Costa Rican ambassador Ricardo Lizano said Wednesday he received an order of safe conduct for Mr. Ortega to travel to Costa Rica. He said the Costa Rican government will not release details of Mr. Ortega's departure.

Mr. Ortega has been awaiting Venezuela's decision on the matter for nearly two weeks, after taking refuge at the Costa Rican embassy in Caracas.

Costa Rica immediately approved his asylum request for "humanitarian reasons."

Mr. Ortega went into hiding last month after the Venezuelan government ordered his arrest on treason and rebellion charges related to a massive strike. The two-month walk-out, which crippled the country's key oil industry, was aimed at ousting President Hugo Chavez.

Mr. Ortega is president of the Venezuela's biggest labor group, the Confederation of Trade Unions.Another strike leader, Carlos Fernandez, is facing charges of treason and other crimes related to the protest. A Venezuelan judge last week ordered police to release Mr. Fernandez from house arrest.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Friday, March 21, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Rear Admiral (ret.) Carlos Molina Tamayo has gone on the warpath again calling on Venezuelans to continue the struggle against President Hugo Chavez Frias. Pictured in St. Peter’s Square, Rome, the Rear Admiral says, "time is running short and Venezuela is first."

• Referring to his self-exile in Salvador, Molina Tamayo says he has become somewhat disenchanted. “Former Farabundo Marti Liberation Army Front (FMLN) veterans have been harassing me … the irregulars are allied with Chavez Frias.“

The Rear Admiral fled to the Salvador Embassy last year after the government decided to press charges against him for his role in the April 11 coup attempt.

Feeling that he has been left out in the cold, the rebel says he wants to see new leaders emerging in Venezuela that understand what people are feeling … “leaders who do not exclude sectors and at the same time are not bound by political interests.”

www.cnn.com Friday, March 14, 2003 Posted: 5:10 PM EST (2210 GMT)

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) -- A Venezuelan union boss sought by authorities for leading a crippling strike against President Hugo Chavez was granted political asylum at the Costa Rican embassy, that nation's government said in a written statement on Friday.

Carlos Ortega, a fierce critic of Chavez who spearheaded the two-month opposition strike that tried to oust the leftist leader, went into hiding last month ago after the government arrested another strike leader.

Chavez, a former paratrooper who survived a brief coup in April last year, brands his political enemies "terrorists and coup mongers." He has threatened to arrest strike leaders who he accuses of trying to sabotage the oil industry.

Ortega is the third major foe of Chavez to seek political sanctuary overseas in the last year.

Pedro Carmona, the opposition business chief who briefly replaced Chavez as president during April's coup last year, was allowed to leave for Colombia last year. Retired naval officer Carlos Molina, who faced an investigation for his part in the coup, was later granted refuge in El Salvador.

www.bonitanews.com Saturday, March 15, 2003 By JANINE A. ZEITLIN, Staff Writer

The beach. The sand. The winterless weather.

Those are some of the reasons why folks settle in Bonita Springs. Few are stopping on a mission to write books on sexuality, fleeing what they see an oppressive government and happening to get baptized as a Presbyterian along the way.

Matilde Faria, a doctor and a psychotherapist from Venezuela, poses in her home office in Bonita Springs adorned with photographs of New York City where she studied for eight years. Faria is now trying to stay in the United States because of the political turmoil in Venezuela. Cameron Gillie/Staff That's what makes 39-year-old Matilde Faria unique.

From a Pennsylvania Avenue duplex peppered with American flags, Faria — a doctor and a psychotherapist in her native Venezuela — came looking for a quiet place to work her two books. Now, amidst political upheaval in Venezuela, Faria, a critic of the country's current leftist administration, says she doesn't feel safe going home. Protests for and against President Hugo Chavez, who was briefly ousted from office in April, have been ongoing for almost two years. General strikes against Chavez have slowed the country's economy.

She is working with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to find a way to stay. The First Presbyterian Church of Bonita Springs has embraced the high-energy intellectual and is guiding her in a scramble for a solution as time runs thin.

Faria, the only child of a Venezuelan Army general, was born in Caracas in 1963. Skipping grades in school, she graduated high school at 14 and headed directly to medical school, where she met her fiancée. Upon graduation, her fiancée died in a mountain-climbing accident. Faria cared for her fiancée's parents during the following year in a small town near Caracas.

That's when she discovered a knack for therapy, says Faria, whose coffee table is stacked with books by Freud.

"I forbid myself to cry. His mother came to talk to me and she started to find in me the pyschotherapist and maybe that was an open door," she said.

To leave painful memories behind, she left Venezuela at 21 to attend a language institute in suburban New Jersey and went on to master in human sexuality at New York University in New York City. When her student visa expired, she returned to Venezuela and worked as a therapist. She published a book in 1987 to help children understand their bodies.

"We say these are the eyes, this is the stomach until you just jump into the knees," she said. "If we don't give them the power of knowledge, then people have the power to abuse them."

Soon after the book came out, she moved to Valencia, Venezuela, where she worked until 1999 as a professor teaching education, human sexuality and child development.

In spring 2002, Faria moved to Southwest Florida to translate her children's book into English and write another book about the sexuality of middle-aged women. Her original destination was New York City. She ended up in Bonita because it was only a few hours by plane from Venezuela and she didn't want to subject her dog — whose likeness she has blazoned on a T-shirt — to many hours in the plane's cargo or the drive from Florida to New York.

Staying with a friend of a friend in Naples, she struck out to find her own place. But with no U.S. credit, she landed in a trailer in Rosemary Park. In the midst of rocky times, she found herself in front of the First Presbyterian Church of Bonita Springs and decided to attend. Not raised religiously, a Presbyterian pastor had supported her in New Jersey when she asked for help organizing a memorial for her fiancée.

Her first visit, she felt out of place.

"You can't imagine how the people were looking at me. I looked like a fly in a cup of milk. All these people are Anglo-Saxons!" said Faria, whose dark hair is lobbed in a boyish cut.

The church's pastors reached out to her and she was baptized before joining in June. Hesitant at first, the congregation soon embraced her, especially when George Pattison, a church deacon, and his wife Beth, whom Faria calls her "American parents," included her in church events.

"It wasn't easy but they would take me places and say, 'Well, she's with us. So what about it?'" Faria says. "But I came without anyone and now I have 2,000 members of my family."

Pattison, a-61-year-old New York native, approached her initially because of her background in New York. The Pattisons have helped her in editing her books. He says it's hard not to get to know Faria.

"She's very personable and friendly and led people into her life," he said, noting people are attracted to her uniqueness and sophistication. "Whereas when other people would come into the country they might have bought 25 changes of underwear, she brought artwork."

Riding on a recommendation from the First Presbyterian Church, Faria moved to her current home in July.

She returned to Venezuela for five short days to renew her tourist visa and re-entered the United States and started the process to stay. Church leaders arranged a consultation for her with an immigration lawyer and she applied for a six-month tourist visa extension upon recommendation that applying for political asylum was too difficult.

Christina Leddin, an accredited immigration specialist at the Amigos Center in Bonita Springs, a Hispanic advocacy group, says immigrants run a big risk applying for political asylum. If they don't win the case, they're deported, Leddin said. Leddin says most successful political asylum cases in the area come from Haiti and Colombia, but expects that may change if political turmoil in Venezuela persists.

"Venezuelan political asylum I haven't heard of as much, but as things continue to deteriorate down there, that may happen," she said.

Pattison said church leaders tried to find a place for Faria on staff, but there are no positions in the church for someone whose main professional focus has been sexuality and therapy. Plus, in order to sponsor an immigrant on a work visa the church must prove that it can't hire a local person, he said.

Now, George Pattison is helping Faria look into the possibility of gaining sponsorship to obtain a work visa, pending her receiving a visa extension. He thinks her best option is to gain U.S. nursing certification and attempt to obtain sponsorship from a local medical facility.

Faria — who is deeding the rights of the English version of her children's book to the First Presbyterian Church of Bonita Springs — is crossing her fingers for a yes from INS.

"It's the best thing I can do. They came to me and gave me such a feeling of joy" despite her life's complications, she says.

By month's end, Faria expects an answer from the INS. She says she fears for her life if she's goes back because she was vocal in her opposition of Chavez. She, like other Chavez opponents, says he's running a dictatorship and democratic principles have fallen by the wayside.

"It's another Cuba," Faria says. "Now, I'm not going back. I prefer to be alive than have a bullet in my head. I can't go back."

(Contact Staff Writer Janine Zeitlin at 213-6036 or jazeitlin@naplesnews.com)