The following is an email sent to all the Internatioanl Media from a friend - of a friend - who lives in San Francisco. To members of the International Media Dear Sir or Madame, I have become very disappointed with the poor amount of coverage given to the current Venezuelan political and economic crisis, as well as the slanted view presented in the American media regarding this extremely important matter. In the next few paragraphs, I will present some facts that I hope will give a different view of what is generally presented in American newspapers and broadcasts. I dearly hope that this will give a clearer sense of what is truly happening in Venezuela and shed some light on the indescribable damage that President Hugo Chavez has caused on the country's people and institutions. Please verify all these facts with the U.S. Embassy in Caracas and with your colleagues so that the truth will come to light and the American and Western countries will be informed of the intense repression and extreme fear currently lived by most Venezuelans. It is of the utmost importance that people know of this and take action, so that repressive, authoritarian regimes do not continue to spread in Latin America. This is a particularly pressing issue given the desperation currently lived by most Venezuelans for the fear that they will fall hostage to a repressive, communist, and authoritarian regime for which they did not vote and the indescribable cost to the country resulting from the current month-old strike, which is estimated at more than $50 million per day in foregone oil sales alone. The people are holding this strike, sacrificing short term sales at an incredible personal cost, in hopes that the current regime does not take away their long term dreams of raising their children in a free, democratic country with ample opportunities for all. Note: In order to simply present the facts and let your respected, serious media draw insightful analysis and logical conclusions, I will use brief bullet points (albeit each one could easily fill an entire chapter of a book.)

1. Establishment of the so-called "Bolivarian Circles" by the government with the sole purpose of causing terror in the cities to lower the morale of the opposition and incite them to emigrate. These groups are being funded with government money and are also provided with arms purchased by the state. Moreover, these terrorist groups allegedly receive training from Cuba. This is all being organized by Freddy Bernal, a close Chavez ally and mayor of Caracas’s Libertador District.
2. Lack of free speech and persecution of prominent businessmen, politicians, and reporters as evidenced by the fact that their telephone lines are intervened and they are followed by the Military Police. Also, many of these people were subject to house raids by the Government (specific examples include a former Minister of the Exterior, a former high ranking Army General (Gen. Manuel Rosendo), and many other officers who recently defected from the army.) Moreover, these people constantly receive threats of kidnapping and murder not only for themselves but also for their families.
3. Strong links by Chavez to several people considered by Western States to promote terrorism and/or deny citizens of basic human rights. The most notorious of these people include: a) Fidel Castro: He is Chavez's strongest advocate and closest advisor, and a large beneficiary of Venezuelan oil. In a deal that strongly favors Cuba, Chavez is exchanging oil for services provided by Cuba. These include military strategic and tactical advice, sport coaching, and medical training. In addition, many people claim that as many as 4,000 Cubans are infiltrated in Venezuela - even in the military - to provide the Venezuelan government with Soviet-style intelligentsia and advice. In addition, even Castro himself admitted that "the Cuban revolution cannot survive if Chavez's 'Bolivarian Revolution' fails." Chavez’s admiration for Castro is indisputable. The danger lies in the fact that Chavez is pushing his own personal agenda to establish a communist regime in Venezuela so that the country that he is representing can live like Cuba in a “Sea of Happiness” (the way Chavez described Cuba during one of his speeches at a university on that Island) even though the vast majority of Venezuelans don’t support that type of system. b) FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia): Venezuelan General Gonzalez Gonzalez, who recently defected from the Venezuelan Army, challenged Chavez on April 10th to deny that these groups, which are considered by the Bush Administration to be terrorists, do not operate in Venezuelan territory. There is strong evidence, including videos released by Venezuelan TV station Globovision, to support these claims. Moreover, Chavez has admitted dealing with FARC and ELN (Colombia's second largest guerrilla group) behind that country's back. The alleged link between the Chavez's Administration and the Colombian guerrillas is General Rodriguez Chacin, Chavez's former Interior and Justice Minister (Secretary) and a citizen who is currently holding multiple identities to carry on with his corruption deals. c) Saddam Hussein: Chavez was the first head of state to pay an official visit to the leader of a country belonging to what Bush called "the axis of evil." In addition, Freddy Bernal was spotted in Iraq in April. Moreover, the pilot of the presidential plane, who recently defected from the army and is seeking asylum in the U.S., presented evidence of intelligence exchanges between the two leaders. d) Vladimiro Montesinos: Alberto Fujimori's right hand was found hiding in Venezuela after Peru's government mounted a covert operation to find him and bring him to justice for committing very serious crimes, including crimes against humanity. Many people believe that Chavez provided Montesinos with logistical support to enter Venezuela and remain there illegally.
4. Constant threats to the public made through his weekly “Alo Presidente" radio broadcast. These programs, officially intended to inform Venezuelans of new policies, is actually used by Chavez to intimidate and harass. In them, Chavez tells people that those who revolt against him will see the full force of the Military's arms, face a myriad of problems, and be subject to intense pressure from the (people's) government. It was in one of these programs, for instance, that he removed several PDVSA's top executives after they threatened to organize a national strike in April 2002 (which they did and eventually lead to the April 11 events.) In addition, Chavez constantly says in these programs that he will rule Venezuela until 2021. More importantly, though, he gives explicit approval to his followers to literally fight the street battle –with their lives if necessary – against the “oligarchs” (the term he uses for people against his “Bolivarian Revolution”) by using terror.
5. Diplomatic clashes with the U.S. This has been building up since Chavez first came to power, given his radical, left-wing and authoritarian ideals. However, two events heavily strained their relationship even further. The first occurred in December of 1999 when Chavez returned an American ship full of supplies and humanitarian aid to help in the State of Vargas, which had just experienced mudslides that left more than 20,000 dead and scores more homeless. The second diplomatic impasse occurred after Chavez heavily criticized the U.S. in one of his "Alo Presidente" programs for America's response in Afghanistan after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The U.S. has been very quiet about the turmoil in Venezuela. However, if the U.S. does go to war with Iraq, wouldn’t it want to have a steady, close supplier of oil? Without a doubt, the managers at PDVSA have a Western mindset. This is precisely the reason why they are holding the oil strike: to preserve the meritocracy and efficiency of the company. It his Chavez, with his own political agenda, that is trying to distance PDVSA from the U.S. (There are reports alleging that he is trying to sell U.S.-based and PDVSA-owned CITGO to Nigeria)
6. Lack of check and balances in the government: this is a result of most of the public powers and institutions being elected by Chavez at his will. These include the Supreme Court judges (Tribunal Supremo de Justicia), the Secretary of Justice (Fiscal General), People's Defense Attorney (Defensor del Pueblo), and members of Congress (Asamblea Nacional). Moreover, when government officials speak out against the Administration for reporting undeniably unethical, patently wrong, or lavishly corrupt behavior, they are quickly replaced and are subject to a national campaign to tarnish their reputations. Specific examples of the lack of sovereign institutions include: a) The nonexistent investigations by the Fiscalia General regarding the deaths of more than 15 people that were peacefully protesting on April 11, 2002 against the Government. This is appalling considering that there is clear footage of the deaths and the gunmen, who were shooting indiscriminately upon the unarmed crowd from a bridge called “Puente Llaguno” near the Presidential Palace. After the gunmen were identified, they were detained but soon released for “lack of evidence.” As if this injustice were not enough, members of the “Bolivarian Circles” recently attacked (physically!) Mr. Mohamed Merhi, the father of one of the victims, for holding a hunger strike in front of the Supreme Court to protest the tardiness of the investigations. b) A similar event occurred on December 6, 2002 at Plaza Altamira, which has become the meeting point for the opposition. During a peaceful protest to show support for more than 140 members of the military who have been at this square for more than two months in “civil disobedience”, an identified Portuguese citizen (whose first name is Joao) and follower of Chavez shot at point-blank upon the unarmed crowd. Even though this happened in front of thousands of people, the investigations by the Fiscalia General are stalled. c) The double standard by Chavez in the way in which he treats the Supreme Court Justices. The members of the Judicial Power were chosen by the current Government, but some of them have upset the Government recently for voting against Chavez. In particular, the Supreme Court found late last year that, in fact, no coup had occurred in April. After issuing their finding, Chavez started a national campaign to investigate the credentials of the Justices that had voted in this way. In a democracy, it would be clear if a Justice possessed the necessary education and certificates to hold such an important job. It would be unthinkable to have people with forged documents holding these posts. Moreover, shouldn’t it be necessary to investigate the credentials of ALL the Justices, not just the ones of those who voted against Chavez? d) The Government’s unconstitutional takeover of the Policia Metropolitana from Alfredo Peña, who is the Mayor of a large section of Caracas called “Alcaldia Mayor”. This police force constitutionally falls under the jurisdiction of the Mayor but because they protect opposition marches, Chavez took them over with the military. It’s as if Clinton had taken over the New York Police Department from Giuliani for belonging to a different political party. As unimaginable as this sounds, exactly this happened in Venezuela. After the Supreme Court held this takeover to be unconstitutional, Chavez slowly returned the police force to Peña but without the high-caliber arms! Legally, Chavez is accepting the independence of powers, but in reality he is not.
7. Unclear elections after his initial sweeping victory. The many elections since December 1999 have used the services of INDRA, a Spanish company. Moreover, the CNE (Centro Nacional Electoral), the organization that oversees elections, was appointed by Chavez himself. In addition, Luis Miquilena, who until recently was the Minister of the Interior and is Chavez’s former political mentor, admitted receiving illegal funds from a large Spanish bank to finance Chavez’s elections.
8. Corruption, irresponsible spending, and lack of managerial capabilities of many government officials. While Chavez heavily emphasized the rooting out of corruption in his campaigns and the increase of efficiency in government, his administration has done the exact opposite, perhaps to a degree never experienced before in Venezuela. There are two noteworthy cases. (a) Plan Bolivar 2000, a social plan that utilized military personnel to run markets, paint schools, and build roads. However, it is widely known that top military brass took vast sums of money to their personal accounts and never faced a trial because the Secretary of Justice is aligned with the government. (b) Purchase of a new, unnecessary presidential airplane that cost the nation more than U.S. $65 million while 80% of the population lives in poverty. The pilot of this plane who recently defected from the Army has told of many instances where the country’s planes and other assets are used for personal trips by the Government’s friends and family. In addition, many security breaches occur during such trips (e.g. people with loaded guns are allowed to board the plane and unqualified personnel are allowed to operate it).
9. Dubious approval of the new Constitution. Some people claim that the new Constitution, which was written during 1999 by the Chavez government and subject to a national referendum, was modified after the people cast their votes to approve it. In other words, the Constitution that is currently in place was not the one that was approved by popular vote. Regardless of that, the current constitution contains Article 350, which allows citizens to stage civil disobedience against the Government for issues of national importance. It is precisely this article, which was drafted by Chavez to justify his coup in 1992, that the members of the opposition are invoking. Now that his own constitution is being used against him, he is rallying to amend it in order to “perfect it.”
10. Unprofessional leadership and corruption of the armed forces. This has been Chavez's action that has probably taken the highest toll on society because in Latin America, it is necessary for a President to have the support of the Armed Forces; else she or he runs the risk of a coup d'etat. During Chavez's tenure, he has promoted an unjustifiably high number of his former Military Academy classmates to posts, regardless of their possession of managerial or technical skills for the job. Some of these institutions include PDVSA, SENIAT (the tax-collection agency), and others. Moreover, constant salary increases for the military and accelerated promotions are commonplace nowadays. Responsible, traditional officers have been forced out for voicing their opposition to Chavez's promotion policies and close links to the Colombian guerrilla (while knowing that doing so would alienate their military careers forever). At the moment, many institutional officers, who strongly believe in the force as a disciplined, apolitical body whose purpose is to protect the country and its citizens, have defected to show their disapproval of the Army’s decaying institutionalism and increasing political involvement.
11. Persecution and harassment of media reporters and staff. This is done through the “Bolivarian Circles" by order of Freddy Bernal. These groups go in motorcycles and loot, burn, and physically attack anything or anyone associated with the media groups, which have continually showed concern for the government's increasingly autocratic behavior. This repression was clear on the night of April 12, when Chavez came back to power, and the media was cornered in a storm of bullets and flying bottles.
12. Signs of the use of indiscriminate force against the opposition. During the April 11 civilian opposition march, which drew more than 500,000 people in Caracas alone, a reporter caught footage of armed men (who were members of Bernal's "Bolivarian Circles") firing their semi-automatic handguns upon protesting civilians. This resulted in the confirmed death of 15 people and hundred of injured more. In addition, the National Guard recently physically and psychologically tortured crew members of the Ship “Pilin Leon”, a gasoline cargo vessel that joined the oil strike.
13. Use of state funds to draw support to Chavez's cause. Chavez's core followers, who are generally members of the poor class, are given hundreds of thousands of bolivares (approx. 1500 Bs/US dollar), food, drinks, and clothing to show up at government-sponsored marched and speeches. The opposition, on the other hand, shows up spontaneously and is constantly physically attacked by these followers. Moreover, the government frequently categorizes opposition-sponsored marches as illegal for lacking the necessary permits. It is important to note that opposition marches have drawn in many occasions more than one million people in Caracas alone even while the Government has implemented all possible tactics to sabotage them (e.g. blocking main highways with sixteen-wheeler trucks, hiring taxicabs to drive empty around Caracas to show “busy” streets, declaring several areas in Caracas as “Security Zones” effectively blocking free access to them, etc.) I hope that the aforementioned reasons will be persuasive enough to draw your attention to investigate these pressing matters immediately. The people of Venezuela deserve a fair coverage of this crisis as they are living in constant terror and intolerable oppression. If left untouched, I fear that Chavez's regime would consolidate itself even further, and perhaps form a stronger alliance with Cuba and Iraq, which would destabilize the region even further. This would wreck havoc the previous conciliatory efforts by Western civilized states to promote long-term sustainable economic development, social equity, justice under the law, the respect of human rights for all, and the establishment of democratic systems in the region. "When they came for the Jews, I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. When they came for the Catholics, I did not speak out because I was not a Catholic. When they came for the Protestants, there was no one left to speak out for me." Words of a Protestant minister who lived in Germany during the days of the Third Reich. Holocaust Museum, Washington, D.C. Sincerely, Another Venezuelan

Tuesday, January 7   Francisco Toro caracaschronicles.blogspot.com

It’s tough being a journalist in this country, especially if, like me, you’re trying to juggle roles as a critic in the local press and a beat reporter for a U.S. newspaper. Trying to play both roles – and trying to mediate between the sides – takes its toll. It’s the reason, in any event, for the new and regrettable need to password-protect this blog: one of my US editors was very uncomfortable with having one of his reporters taking such openly political stances on a public website.

The Venezuelan media and the foreign press corps are caught in a spiral of mutual misunderstanding and mistrust. The foreign press is horrified by the openly partisan nature of almost all reporting here, where the private press spends 95% of its time ruthlessly attacking the government and the public media spends 100% of its time defending it. Venezuelan reporters (well, opposition reporters) are just as appalled at the foreign papers’ insistence on treating Chávez as a more-or-less normal president, entitled to a fair hearing and to having the things he says reported at face value, as though they have any sort of connection with reality. Each is convinced the other is presenting a massively distorted story here to its audience. It’s not easy at all to juggle the two roles.

Fact is, neither the Venezuelans nor the gringos are giving their readers what they need to form an accurate picture of reality. Venezuelan readers have been exposed to four years of presidential lunacy; the last thing they need is yet another rant vilifying Chávez. What they could really use, though, is some dispassionately reported information to help them make sense of an increasingly volatile and dangerous situation, and they’re not getting it.

But U.S. readers, most of whom probably couldn’t pick Venezuela apart from Namibia on a map, are not well-served by “neutral” reporting that takes a he-said/she-said approach to covering the government’s disputes with the opposition. U.S. readers don’t have the background knowledge that they need to tell truth apart from falsehood here, and U.S. papers too often report giant, stinking, howling chavista lies without giving their readers the guidance they would need to recognize them as giant, stinking, howling chavista lies.

In general, U.S. papers have two ways of dealing with information from abroad. Normal countries with sane rulers are covered one way, abnormal countries with pathological rulers are treated in another way. Nobody would accuse the U.S. press of bias for basically dismissing statements from a Mohammar Khadafi, or a Robert Mugabe or an Slobodan Milosevic. These people have clearly crossed all sorts of red lines that put them well beyond the pale, so U.S. papers don’t feel the need to observe basic standards of journalistic politesse towards them.

At this point, Chávez is clearly getting sane-ruler treatment in the U.S. press, and that’s driving opposition-minded Venezuelans half mad. The Venezuelan press, including the magazine I write for, long ago decided that Chávez had screwed up so much that they’re allowed to play rough with him. For better or for worse, they’ve concluded that this government is incompatible with ongoing democracy, and that the imperative to fight the enemies of democracy overrides the standard dictates of journalistic ethics. So the private media here barely pay lip service to notions like journalistic balance anymore. Their raison d’etre is to undermine the government. To the extent that informing the public fits in with that, they’ll inform the public. But in cases where it doesn’t, they won’t.

The resulting stream of viscerally antichavista pap on the TV and in the newspapers is far from the kind of journalism I want to practice…even if, substantively, I agree with many of the criticisms levelled. The problem is that what the local press is producing is not really journalism at all, it’s propaganda disguised as journalism. Who knows? Maybe they’re right to act that way. Maybe when faced with a government as dangerous to democracy as this one, one’s duty as a citizen overwhelms one’s duty as a journalist. That’s a philosophical question; I’m not sure what the answer is. Clearly, TV stations are private businesses, and if their owners want to use them as propaganda mills that’s their prerogative.

What bugs me, though, and what I don’t accept, is the way the propaganda-making mascarades as something it’s not, how it uses journalists and the stylistic conventions of journalism to try to lay claim to journalism’s aura of credibility. If Channels 2, 4, 10 and 33 have decided that their sacred duty is to attack a dangerous government rather than to practice journalism, they should take the newscast logos off the screens, send their journalists on vacation and put opposition politicians in front of the cameras 24 hours a day (sad fact is, the content wouldn’t change much.)

Most antichavistas I say that to look at me like I’m smoking crack. They've gotten used to living in an atmosphered suffused with partisan propagandizing and they're seething with visceral (if well-deserved) anger at the government. They can’t for the life of them understand why the foreign press insists on covering the differences between chavistas and antichavistas more or less the way they might cover the differences between Tony Blair and the British Tories. They tend to assume that the foreigners must just be ignorant, that if they really knew what the government gets up to, they’d cover the news differently.

As a result, foreign correspondents here are constantly getting backed into these long, tediously didactic rants by opposition activists. Sometimes they’re not much more than cathartic gripe sessions where chavista outrages are piled one on top of the other for hours on end. Too often, though, they’re models of condescension, treating these fancy WashPost or L.A. Times journalists like they’re more or less mentally retarded. It’s painful to watch.

But, of course, the strategy is silly because, appalling as these journalists might find Chávez’s antics, they don’t rise anywhere near the threshold needed for a good old fashioned campaign of international villification. This is really, really hard for opposition-minded Venezuelans to understand, much less accept. But Milosevic had to start three separate wars before he got the full baddie treatment from the foreign press. Mugabe didn’t get it until he explicitly shifted the entire rationale of his government to racial hatred. Saddam Hussein had to start two wars and nerve gas his own civilians before the western press decided he’d forefeited his claim to journalistic politesse. The rap on Chávez, on the other hand, is that he appointed a bunch of cronies as Attorney General and Supreme Courth magistrates and such, and that there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest that he probably had something to do with the deaths of 19 people in April. It’s not that those are nice things to do – these are horrible things to do – it’s just that from a foreign editor’s point of view, they doen’t even come close as a rationale for demonizing him.

The problem is that the Chávez experiment amounts to a weird hybrid, a half-authoritarianism. Normally when someone describes a leader as authoritarian, s/he means that he’s both autocratic and repressive. Autocratic meaning that he intends to make every decision by himself, allowing no other person, institution or publication to have any effective say over how the country is governed, and trying to extend his control to every institution in the country, even nominally independent ones like Supreme Courts and labor unions and so on. Repressive meaning that he intends to use however much violence it takes to suppress any person, institution or publication that tries to get in his way.

Your average despot intuitively understands that these things go together, that to govern like an autocrat you need to be ruthless in repressing your critics. But Chávez doesn’t seem to get it. While he’s clearly an autocrat, his attempts at “repression” have been a wet firecracker, a series of half-baked attempts at intimidation that have intimidated no one. There’s so much evidence that the government’s repressive streak is a dud it barely seems worth it to elaborate. Think of the giant marches against the government several times a week in Caracas think of the hours and hours Napoleón Bravo gets to rant on national television every day.

That doesn’t mean that Chávez doesn’t intend to rule as an autocrat: he does. But he’s not willing to use violence on the scale he would have to use it in order to gain total control of the nation’s institutions. What small-scale, circulo bolivariano-led violence he is willing to deploy is pointless, or worse, counterproducting - earning him constant angry denunciations in the press without in any way silencing his critics or demobilizing his opponents. It's the worst of both worlds: the appearance of repression without any of the substantive "benefits" of repression. And it explains why the nation is as unstable as it is. Normally, authoritarian regimes have many, many problems, but stability is not one of them. But half-authoritarianism seems to me like a formula for systematic instability.

Not surprisingly, the foreign papers don’t quite know how to deal with this complex reality…they’re like the first guy who ever tried to eat a lobster, they just have no idea how to go at it. And while it’s probably naïve to expect them to give Chávez the full Mugabe treatment, he’s obviously getting off way too easy at present. Your average International Herald Tribune reader probably thinks Chávez is a pretty clumsy and slightly weird politician, or a fairly exotic species from the exhuberant political zoo that is Latin America, or maybe just a leftist with a taste for overstatement cursed with a particularly stubborn opposition…but no more than that. I don’t think s/he’s been told enough to really understand how serious the threat to democracy has become in Venezuela. And I think the tone of US reporters’ coverage of the crisis is to blame for that.

What’s for sure is that truth is a slippery notion in Venezuela these days, that questions of journalistic ethics that would seem fairly obscure or pedantic in a normal situation acquire particular urgency here, and that it’s very, very hard to find the right balance given the supercharged polarization here.

Friday, January 10   Francisco Toro caracaschronicles.blogspot.com

PDVSA’s strikers probably never set out to internationalize the Venezuelan conflict, but it looks like that’s exactly what they’ve done. The Washington Post reports today that the U.S. is about to launch a major diplomatic initiative to try to break the political deadlock here. The subtext is none-too-subtle here: there’s a war scheduled for next month, and the US can’t have major disruptions to its oil supply during a middle east conflict. So results, quick results, are of the essence.

As reported in the Post, the proposal is sneaky as hell, taking a Chávez proposal and transforming it subtly but decisively into the polar opposite of what he’d envisioned. Ten days ago, at Lula’s inauguration in Brazil, Chávez called for the creation of a “group of friendly nations” to help Venezuela overcome the crisis. Given Chávez’s psychopathological inability to differentiate between “Venezuela” and “me”, the proposal amounted to a plea issued at other left-wing or anti-U.S. governments to help Chávez break the oil strike. The “friendly nations” he had in mind were Cuba, Brazil, and soon-to-be-ruled-by-a-lefty Ecuador, along with Iran and Algeria – countries with some ideological affinities and some of the know-how needed to help get the oil industry crackin’ again.

At the same time, the proposal was meant to undermine the negotiations now being brokered by César Gaviria, who heads the Organization of American States. The Gaviria talks, centered as they are in seeking an “electoral solution” that Chávez looks highly unlikely to survive, have become a huge albatross around the president’s neck. His negotiators have been stalling and blocking negotiations for months now, while every government in the region throws its weight behind the initiative. Part of the idea, then, was to shift the focus of debate from the OAS to a group of “friendly (to Chávez) nations.”

Governments around the region were immediately suspicious of the plan – even Lula seemed cautious about it. Earlier this week Mexico’s foreign minister, Jorge Castañeda – who moonlights as one of my favorite writers – made a first statement about it, urging caution about taking steps that might be interpreted as hostile by the Venezuelan opposition. Very few hemispheric leaders wanted to be seen as taking sides with a leader as tone-deaf on democracy as Chávez

But then Washington seems to have devised an altogether better plan – rather than poo-pooing the Friendly Nations proposal, why not co-opt it? After all, where does it say that Hugo Chávez gets to decide which countries are friendly to Venezuela, and how those countries should behave? Riding this wave of inspiration, the U.S. will couch its diplomatic initiative in the language of Friendly Nations, except those nations will now include the U.S., Mexico, Chile and Spain, instead of Cuba and Iran. What’s more, rather than an alternative to the OAS talks, US diplomats are talking about it as “trying to put a little more ooomph behind what Gaviria is doing.”

Sneaky bastards these gringos…

Now, whether this is all going to fly is still very much open to debate. Washington’s main goal is to get the oil flowing again in the shortest time possible, and there’s no reasonably quick way of doing that other than allowing the striking oil managers to take control of the company again. This would be a catastrophic humiliation to a president who’s been slamming those guys as coup-loving terrorist coup-plotting sabouteur traitor coupsters for weeks now. And it’s not particularly clear why Chávez would back any of the solutions on offer at the OAS talks – solutions he’s been openly disdainful of for months.

Still, the initiative puts the crisis here on an international footing, and the higher priority the crisis has the more the world will scrutinize the government, and the harder it’ll be for the government to get away with any of the tin-pot autocratic delirium that passes for governing here. The more scrutiny we get here, the better.

The opposition must be thrilled about this, who can doubt it? The absence of any sort of movement in the last couple of weeks of the crisis has been driving them crazy – they need some sort of sense that they’re moving forward, that something is happening, that there is some light at the end of the tunnel. And they – no, not they, the country – is desperately in need of some sort of face-saving way to lift this strike, which risks unleashing a fiscal, financial and economic crisis of Argentine proportions.

So yes, God yes, let us have a bit of neo-imperialist gringo meddling here. We desperately need it.

Saturday, January 11   Francisco Toro caracaschronicles.blogspot.com

Today I came closer than ever to succumbing to complete despondency, just complete hopelessness about the crisis here. The impasse is total right now, and it's very difficult for me to visualize any way out. On the one hand, as Gaviria keeps saying, the only possible solution to the crisis is through negotiations, through give-and-take. On the other hand, Hugo Chávez will not, cannot, and doesn't know how to negotiate. Everyone can see that escalation is mad at this point, just mindlessly destructive and stupid. But escalation is all we seem to get.

Gaviria's speech two nights ago was powerful and wise. He said Venezuela might find an "outcome" that's not negotiated, i.e. the government might crush the opposition outright, or the opposition might overthrow the government against its will. But those wouldn't be solutions, they would be outcomes. They wouldn't address the underlying causes of the crisis, and they could leave the country unstable for years to come.

The status quo is obviously unstable, way too unstable to hold much longer. The opposition may not be able to stop the country cold, but they can disrupt life enough to make it ungovernable. And the government clearly retains enough supporters that they can't be wished into nothingness: if Chávez was shoved out of power in a way his supporters don't accept as legitimate they could set the country alight. So outcomes are cheap, there are lots of possible outcomes. But a solution to the crisis, a solution that leaves the country peaceful and democratic and minimally functional...that's something else entirely. One can only be found through negotiation, through bargaining and give-and-take between the sides.

Now, it's sad but true that not everyone in the opposition wants a negotiated solution. There's a violent fringe that would clearly prefer a right wing coup. But I think there's a critical mass of opposition opinion that would support a negotiated agreement, if one was on offer. Moderate voices would probably rise to the occassion and reach a deal if they could. The opposition crazies could be marginalized through debate.

That's because, in the opposition, there is a debate in the first place. The opposition is a notedly diverse bunch, made up of a variety of voices all vying for power and influence. Thankfully, they've deviced a process for processing those differences around a table. The problem is that there is no comparable debate on the government's side, because there is no comparable variety of opinions. There's no such thing as "a critical mass of government opinion" because "government opinion" is exactly the same thing as Hugo Chávez's opinion. And you can't marginalize the government's crazies because the only voice that matters in the government is that of the crazy-in-chief.

The autocratic, cult-of-personality underpinnings of the chavista movement are so marked that only the president's opinion matters. Hugo Chávez has made a political career out of equating negotiation with selling out, compromise with treason, and accomodation with surrender. Every time he speaks, he makes a mockery of the hopes of those who think it might be possible to work out an agreement with him.

It's hard to know how to write about Chávez's style of oratory. For those of you who've heard him any description is superfluous; for those of you who haven't any description is insufficient. Picture the most charismatic southern preacher you've ever seen, and square it. Behind a podium, Hugo Chávez is a man possessed. He doesn't speak, he shouts into a microphone in a kind of ecstatic fit. He can keep it up for hours and hours at a stretch. In four years he's fine-tuned his fire-breathing style of oratory. As his face contorts and the bombastic nonsense spews out in thicker and thicker densities, it's impossible not to wonder about the man's mental health. And as his ecstatic supporters get worked up into a hero-worshipping frenzy, it's impossible not to wonder about theirs.

The soundbytes that make it into the following day's newspapers vary, though usually they focus on the most over-the-top remark of the speech. Picking it out is not always easy, there are so many candidates. Real jewels get relegated to the inside pages by truly grotesque nuggets of megalomanic gobbledygook. For instance, yesterday he described Venezuela's four major private TV channels as "the four horsemen of the apocalypse." But the remark - incredibly incendiary though it was - was upstaged by his even more sinister threats to order a military take-over of Venezuela's entire food industry.

On the other hand, some of the most destructive, near-psychotic stuff he says doesn't even make the news anymore simply because he's repeated it so often. Nobody cares that he labelled the oil industry's managers a cabal of coup-plotting terrorist saboteurs again yesterday: it's the Nth time he's said it this week. There's a strong element of pathos to the nonsense marathons: nobody really takes him that seriously. After all, if he literally thought the PDVSA managers were really terrorist, might not one expect him to put them in jail? So it's fluff, and people recognize it as fluff, but it still irritates. Today it was a threat to takeover all the nation's private schools to break the strike, tomorrow it will be some other fantastically unworkable bit of neomarxist intelectual onanism. The specifics don't really matter that much, because none of these mad schemes are even remotely practicable. Nobody really takes them that seriously.

Now, it's an open question whether the president intentionally sets out to inflame the crisis with statements like that or whether they're just an accidental byproduct of the fits of psychopathological raving that TV cameras seem to send him into. But what nobody can question is the poisonous streak this kind of talk infuses into the nation's political atmosphere. The torrent of bile that pours out of the president's mouth everytime he gets near a microphone could be the single biggest obstacle to a negotiated solution in Venezuela today. Columnists here have said it a million times in a million different ways: it's impossible to reach a negotiated agreement with someone who slanders you as a treasonous coup-plotting terrorist every chance he gets.

The president's rhetoric suggests a man lost in his own private reality, totally unable to interact with the world around him in even a minimally reasonable way, and prey to truly bizarre delusions of grandeur. He really does seem to think he's starring in some sort of epic, world historical struggle between good and evil. The consistent use of military analogies, military rhetoric, "grand battles," "decisive struggles," and such suggest anything but a man who's seriously working towards a negotiated agreement.

At this point, even if he did have some secret plan to settle in the end, he's worked up his followers into such a millenarian frenzy it's impossible for me to see how he could send them home by now. It can't happen.

So you can understand my despondency: negotiating an agreement is the only way to find a peaceful, democratic solution to the crisis, but one of the parties to the conflict is working as hard as he can every single day to make sure negotiations can't succeed. Ergo, there cannot be a peaceful, democratic solution to this crisis. It's a dire, dark, depressing realization. The deadlock continues indeffinitely into the future while more and more businesses fail, more and more people lose their jobs, and the nation continues its steady, seemingly irreversible descent into total chaos. It's grim, it's really grim.

www.sfgate.com CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER, Associated Press Writer Saturday, January 11, 2003

(01-11) 17:01 PST CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) --

President Hugo Chavez vowed Saturday he will not be driven from office by an opposition strike and threatened to fire or jail teachers joining the work stoppage.

Meanwhile, Chavez supporters blocked the route of a planned opposition march through the streets of Maracay, the military's nerve center 42 miles from Caracas, to demand Chavez resign and call fresh elections.

After opposition protesters changed the route and continued marching, police used tear gas to prevent the rival groups from clashing. Police also formed a blockade in Venezuela's Caribbean island of Margarita to separate pro- and anti-Chavez marchers.

The strike, which began Dec. 2, has paralyzed the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, causing fuel shortages and costing Venezuela $70 million a day in desperately needed government income.

"Defeat is prohibited," Chavez told a rally of thousands of supporters at a Caracas stadium. "We are going to triumph."

Chavez, who warned businesses hoarding food on Friday that he might send troops to seize basic foodstuffs, promised he also would not allow schools to stay closed.

"The schools will be managed and directed by the people," he said.

Accusing strike organizers of closing public and private schools, leaving millions of students without classes, Chavez warned that teachers and school directors joining the strike will be fired or even jailed.

Leaders of the Democratic Coordinator opposition movement promised to expand the strike to drive Chavez from office if he sends troops against private businessmen.

"If they touch a media outlet, a private company, or a political leader we will expand the strike by incorporating other sectors," opposition leader Timoteo Zambrano said. "We are ready to retaliate."

But "Chavistas," as the president's backers are called, rallied in Caracas' La Vega neighborhood, one of the capital city's poorest areas, to support his efforts to end the food and fuel shortages.

Planned anti-Chavez rallies in Toronto and London failed to materialize Saturday, but about 200 Chavez foes demonstrated outside the White House, calling on him to resign.

Carlos Fernandez, head of Venezuela's leading business chamber, said many schools closed because of low attendance. He insisted most parents were not sending their kids to school in support of the strike.

Venezuela's opposition launched the strike last month to pressure Chavez, who was elected in 1998 and re-elected two years later, to resign and call elections if he loses a nonbinding referendum on his rule.

The opposition accuses Chavez of attempting to install a Cuban-style communist regime and overriding public institutions such as Supreme Court. They claim he is turning this oil-rich South American nation of 24 million into an economic wasteland.

The country's $100 billion economy shrank an estimated 8 percent in 2002, largely due to constant political instability. Inflation has surpassed 30 percent while unemployment reaches 17 percent.

Chavez has tried to jump-start oil production, which has been drastically reduced by the strike. He has fired 1,000 employees from the state oil monopoly Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., where at least 30,000 of 40,000 workers are off the job.

Crude output is estimated at about 400,000 barrels a day, compared with the pre-strike level of 3 million barrels. Exports, normally 2.5 million barrels a day, are at 500,000 barrels. Venezuela still is exporting more than it is producing because stockpiles remain.

In Washington, the White House has talked with members of the Organization of American States on ways to end the strike. OAS secretary general Cesar Gaviria is mediating negotiations between Venezuela's political rivals.

Carlos Ortega, president of the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers, the nation's largest trade union, and opposition leader Zambrano prepared to travel to the United States on Saturday to inform the international community of the situation in Venezuela.

The two opposition leaders plan to meet with U.S. State Department representatives and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.