Venezuelan Middle Class Flees Chavez Rule Of Hate

Venezuela's once-thriving middle class is packing its bags and fleeing the country, afraid for the future as the socialist president, Hugo Chávez, calls on the slum-dwelling masses to rise up and seize wealth from those better off than themselves.

Growing numbers of professionals, business owners and shopkeepers are fed up with the climate of hostility that the Left-wing president has encouraged in his effort to boost his populist credentials.

María Carolina García was blowing up helium balloons in her party-decorations shop in Caracas one day when two customers asked her how much they cost.

"When I told them the price, which was just a few dollars, they started yelling at me that it was far too much," Mrs García recalled. "You're a thief! You're all thieves! You just came to this country to steal from the poor," the men shouted before marching out of the shop.

Mrs García, 46, a mother of two whose parents emigrated to Venezuela to escape the Spanish civil war and made a new life as jewellers, was upset. But it was nothing new.

"Ever since Hugo Chávez was elected [in 1998] he has been fomenting hatred for those who have, among those who have not. 'Rich is bad.' That's his message. So the people who follow him have decided it's not just the world's superpower they hate, it's people like me too."

Mrs García said her parents were prepared to emigrate again as they see the same kind of autocracy, blind political allegiance and hatred in society that they saw in Spain years ago. They are gathering the documents that the entire family needs to claim Spanish citizenship, ready for the day they have to flee.

Many Venezuelans complain of the government's increasing control of the media and intimidation of opposition supporters. People report that their middle-class appearance leads to their being robbed, kidnapped or spat at.

The streets of Caracas have always been rife with crime but in recent years the city centre has become seedier, with homeless people sleeping alongside piles of rotting rubbish by blackened walls.

"It's never been a really safe city," said Mrs García, joining a queue outside the Spanish embassy with her identity papers. "But different people walked happily alongside each other not so long ago. I have never felt as threatened as I do now."

Since Mr Chávez, a former paratrooper and close ally of Fidel Castro, the Cuban president, was elected promising a 21st-century socialist revolution and making fiery anti-American speeches, the lines outside the foreign consulates have been growing.

Demand for Venezuelan passports is reported to be so high that the Chávez government has rationed the number of requests it can handle per day, pleading a shortage of passport-making materials.

Professionals, businessmen and women and educated office workers are seeking visas for countries such as Australia, Canada, Spain and Britain. Those with emigrant ancestry are asserting their rights to European passports.

There are no official figures and government supporters deny that anyone is leaving, but most middle-class people questioned by the Sunday Telegraph on the streets said that at least half their friends had left since Mr Chávez came to office.

Vanessa Bertran, 32, who works in public relations, said she would be sad to leave but could see her country going only backwards. She is moving to Canada as soon as her visa comes through.

"If you're middle class or you don't vote for Chávez, you find it's harder and harder to get ahead in life," she said. "Doors keep closing. It's hard to get credit at the bank let alone a job in the state sector. They are squeezing us out."

Marcial Rivera, a 30-year-old business graduate, packed his bags and left for neighbouring Colombia this week. He believes that it is a more stable place to live, despite its own huge problems. "I'm all torn up," he said. "I would like to stay but I don't want to be here when the big bang comes and I think it will be very soon."

Mr Chávez's supporters seem untroubled by the exodus, arguing that if the well-off are leaving it is simply to avoid paying higher taxes to provide benefits for the poor.

"He has united the country," said María Calderón, a middle-aged maid working in the smart Las Mercedes district. "He knows what it is to be poor. It is the first time we've had a leader on our side."

>>>She told me how there was no future for members of the middle class in her country. I think she will do well here.<<<

And I hope she does. But it is self defeating to let every middle class citizen from a budding thug-dictatorship immigrate to the United States.

Their flight to America just makes it easier for the dictator to consolidate power. We need the middle class to stay - and fight for democratic values or we will soon have nothing but pure dictatorships in South America; and an even larger group of unstimulated Hispanics here than currently.

About a year ago I came back to the states from Barbados thru Miami International at about 7:00 PM on a Saturday. I was caught up in a human wave of immense proportions going thru Immigration and Customs of mostly Hispanic folks entering at the same time.

There was no way that the border protection folks could cope....inspection and screening was a hit and miss proposition. I estimate there were at least 2 and possibly 3 thousand all entering the US at the same time. Maybe that was a peak hour - it is doubly scary to think that an influx of this size goes on hour after hour, day after day.

I lost all hope in border Protection at that point - without a through gutting of our State Department, a sea change in how we approach the problem, and a President that will sign on to limited growth of immigrants, this country is being quickly overrun.

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