www.sunherald.com Posted on Sun, Mar. 16, 2003 CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela - After coping with food and fuel shortages during a recent two-month strike, Venezuelans are now dealing with scarcity of another essential: water.

This South American country is facing a drought that is severe even for its dry season, which runs from November to May. The government imposed water rationing in Caracas, whose 5 million residents are without water two to four days a week.

Things are especially tough for residents of the red-brick shantytowns that cling to the mountains ringing the city. The shortage is forcing slum dwellers to rely on water delivered by truck.

"Before we received water almost everyday," said Freddy Fuentes, an unemployed father of four. "It comes about once every two weeks now."

The shantytown where Fuentes lives lacks sewers and plumbing, so he and his neighbors buy water from a truck at $1.30 a barrel.

They haul it up a dusty mile-long hill in plastic containers to their tin and wood shack. One purchase "lasts a couple of days for washing, cooking, bathing and cleaning," Fuentes said.

Rationing could continue until the end of the dry season, said Jacqueline Faria, president of Hidrocapital, the government water company that serves Caracas.

Everyday, Faria appears in television advertisements pleading with Caracas residents not to waste water. To enforce that message, her agency swore in 100,000 kids as "water guardians," assigned with warning family and friends not to waste water.

The basin that feeds the Camatagua reservoir, the source of more than half the capital's supply, hasn't gotten rain for months.

"I've never seen it this low," said Juan Quintero, a fishing guide at Camatagua, 40 miles from Caracas.

Luis Olivares, a meteorologist at the Cajigal Observatory, which measures rainfall and weather conditions in Venezuela, said 2.3 inches of water fell in Venezuela's central region during November and December. None has fallen since.

"These figures generally reflect the quantity of rainfall across the country during that period," Olivares told The Associated Press.

The drought also has caused an increase in forest fires. Firefighters have put out 2,334 forest fires since October, most of them in the Avila mountain range that looms over Caracas, said Greater Caracas Mayor Alfredo Pena. That compares with 1,320 forest fires reported in the area for the full year beforehand.

The government has banned residents from using all but three of the trails in the Avila National Park because of the fire risk. On a highway bordering the park, motorists stop to fill up containers from trickling drain pipes.

The rationing is another headache in what has already been a difficult year for the impoverished country of 24 million.

The strike to try to force the ouster of President Hugo Chavez paralyzed Venezuela's vital oil industry, forcing motorists to wait for hours to fill their tanks. Fresh milk, soft drinks, beer, cornflour and some medicines disappeared from stores.

The failed strike ended last month, and fuel supplies have returned to normal. Shortages of some medicine and imported goods were starting to reappear, however, because of a new exchange control system that tightly regulates how Venezuelan can buy dollars.

www.sltrib.com .... Venezuela: After two months of business and labor strikes and what many regard as a wholesale breakdown of authority, police statistics indicate an explosion in street crime across Venezuela, with Caracas experiencing the brunt. Venezuela is now the second-most dangerous country in the hemisphere behind war-racked Colombia, according to the Pan-American Health Organization. .....

news.pacificnews.org Commentary, Alicia Torres, Pacific News Service, Feb 27, 2003

Beyond gaining support from the military and portions of the underclass, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has channeled the historical, mythical, and to some, mystical figure of 19th century General Simon Bolivar. PNS contributor Alicia Torres examines a popular religion with indigenous roots to find one secret to Chavez's continuing rule.

As Venezuela's fate seems locked between President Hugo Chavez's militant, underclass supporters and the middle class, media and business communities arrayed against him, a third force lurks behind the scenes.

Pacing the labyrinth of Venezuela's popular imagination, the unnamed actor is the magical, long-dead General Simon Bolívar, the nation's founding father. The Bolivar myth, skillfully channeled by Chavez, is key to the former paratrooper's grip on power.

After leading a failed and bloody coup attempt in 1992, Chavez famously spent many months in jail and emerged from his "captivity" with a powerful rhetorical and symbolic ace card. Reaching into the confusing current of Venezuela's political history, he found one untainted image, a myth untouched by decades of rampant political corruption and squandering of the country's vast oil wealth, a messy recent history that started long before Chavez.

Hugo Chavez's deft ability to incorporate into his campaign persona the historical legacy of the brilliant general who liberated half of South America from the control of the 19th century Spanish empire helped propel Chavez to the Venezuelan presidency in 1998 with over 80 percent of the vote. Today, Chavez's cult of personality is centered on his image as Bolívar's heir, the modern-day liberator of Venezuela's poorest.

In the United States, no figure commands the same kind of reverence as Bolívar does in Venezuela. The country's currency, plazas and universities carry his name. His maxims are taught in schools, broadcast on radio and emblazoned on government buildings. Bolívar is a liberator idealized in oral culture by small-town storytellers, and in the lyrics of traditional music such as contrapunto.

Chavistas, as the president's supporters are known, call the areas they control the "liberated zones of the Bolivarian Republic" and adorn offices and homes with giant portraits of Bolívar. Chavez trumpets Bolívar's dream of a politically unified South America, calls his political movement the Bolivarian Revolution and he has organized poor neighborhoods into political cells called Bolivarian Circles.

And, as Chavez well knows, besides the historical Bolivar there is a supernatural one, a figure of popular religious devotion who takes his place alongside other cult figures on home altars.

Alongside the Catholic religion, another spiritual tradition thrives in Venezuela, a popular religion with indigenous, African and Catholic roots called the religion of María Lionza. Based on the worship by Indians of a fertility goddess known as María Lionza, the syncretic faith predates any other touchstone of Venezuela's national identity. Many Venezuelans would not inhabit a home lacking an altar to the religion's principal divinities, each of which represents Venezuela's vibrant ethnic mixture of white, Indian, and black.

These religious altars usually feature a portrait of Simón Bolívar, and the religion's priests hold ceremonies in which the spirit of Bolívar is channeled through a medium who coughs when the general is present, since Bolívar had tuberculosis.

The official Bolívar celebrated in textbooks, statues and hymns still elicits the respect and devotion of Venezuelans, even if they inhabit luxury apartments. But in the figure of Chavez, some in Venezuela, including some of the nation's poorest, also see the spirit of Bolívar incarnate. The tradition of María Lionza has fed Chavez's grip on the country's imagination.

Chavez encourages this by echoing Bolívar's words and making his nationally televised speeches with a portrait of Bolívar placed next to his head. Venezuelans joke that Chavez always sets an extra place at his dinner table for Bolívar, and say that he parades the long hallways of his presidential mansion wearing the famed general's cape. Whether the stories are true or not, Chavez is definitely obsessed with Bolívar's legacy and exploits it to maintain power.

The president's posturing as a 21st century manifestation of Bolívar has helped radicalize the conflict in Venezuela. On one side, he is still revered by a significant part of the population as Venezuela's last hope -- a second liberator. The enraged opposition, on the other hand, thinks Chavez has betrayed Bolívar's legacy and 50 years of Venezuelan democracy with his authoritarian style and incendiary class rhetoric. It's one reason the new Bolivarian Revolution is in danger of ending in a civil war.

Torres has published several books of poetry in Venezuela and was a columnist for Caracas daily El Universal. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

washingtontimes.com EDITORIAL • March 13, 2003

     Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez may have triumphed over the opposition-led national strike that ended last month, but the country's economy has been badly wounded. The Venezuelan subsidiary of Spanish bank BBVA, called Banco Provincial, predicted the country will suffer the largest economic contraction in its history and that oil production will be seriously hampered. The bank's projections help clarify Venezuela's economic conditions, since the assessments made by the government and private sector (which is often aligned with the opposition) have varied widely, and have sometimes been regarded as too subjective.      Washington is observing Venezuela's economic development closely. Last year, Venezuela supplied America with 13 percent of its crude oil imports. The severe economic problems could signal unabated instability and further disruptions in oil production.      According to Banco Provincial, in the first quarter of this year, Venezuela's economy will shrink 40 percent and oil sector activity will drop by 69 percent. To put this in perspective, this slowdown would be more severe than America's sharpest Great Depression contraction. The bank also said that the non-oil sector would contract by 33 percent and the unemployment rate would rise to 25 percent from the official rate of 18 percent.      Still, the situation is not as dismal as it could have been. Many analysts expected Venezuela, which last year was the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, to be producing around 1.3 million barrels of oil a day during the fourth quarter. Even oil workers sympathetic to the national strike say the national oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, is producing about 1.8 million barrels a day, while the government says this production is up to 2.6 million barrels.      Nonetheless, Venezuela's situation looks grim. Economic projections for the whole year for Venezuela vary widely, with contraction predictions varying between 9 percent to 30 percent, demonstrating how unstable the country's socio-political situation remains. And the economic problems, as Mr. Chavez is well aware, will affect not only the oligarchs (who have become the president's nemesis) but Venezuela's poor as well. In this critical regard, Mr. Chavez's ability to deliver his promised Bolivarian revolution has been undermined.      Mr. Chavez blames the strikers and "coup plotters" for causing the current problems, while the opposition points to the president's heavy-handed tactics. Beyond the finger pointing, which has mutual justifications, it would appear that parties on both sides must strike a truce and find ways to ratchet down the tensions for the good of the country. If the opposition can not see past its hostility to Mr. Chavez, there could be little left of the country at stake. Similarly, if Mr. Chavez fails to honestly review his errors and temper his dangerously polarizing rhetoric, the president will become his own worst enemy.      Thus far, the White House has watched developments in Venezuela with concern and has forged a carefully calibrated policy. But the United States and other countries involved in the Group of Friends initiative, which are striving to facilitate talks, reduced their level of engagement after the national strike was called off. The bombs that exploded last month in Caracas demonstrate that the current situation remains highly volatile. The Group of Friends should step up their efforts, and be more aggressive in calling out publicly the dangerous brinkmanship of both sides.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Interior & Justice (MIJ) Minister, General (ret.) Lucas Rincon Romero has been quick off the mark to redress long-standing complaints from Venezuela’s prison inmates installing the first of special control tribunals to tackle a backlog of pending cases.

Arriving by helicopter to Carabobo’s Tocuyito jail at 9.00 a. m., Rincon Romero inspected administrative and inmate areas, as well as the women inmates' wing.

At 1.35 p.m. International Human Rights Committee Ombudsman for Latin America Juan Carlos Betancourt arrived at the prison with Zoraida Carillo to undertake a short report on the state of delayed legal processes and to establish responsibilities for delays ... but the National Guard (GN) did not let them in.

Rincon Romero has announced that the prisoners have agreed to lift their hunger strike.

The tribunals started working today at 10.00 a.m. and it has been announced that State Attorney Armando Paredes will coordinate the installation of the prisons tribunals.