"The nation needs solutions. ... The crisis is too deep," opposition negotiator Rafael Alfonzo told Reuters. Chavez, whose opponents accuse him of dragging the South American nation toward Cuba-style communism, refuses to resign. The opposition has proposed a constitutional amendment to cut his term to four from six years and trigger early elections.
Dampening hopes for an accord, Chavez, elected in 1998, told strikers Wednesday to forget about him leaving office. "I can't work with terrorists and coup mongers," he said. He has vowed to beat the strike, which he portrays as an attempt to topple him by wealthy, hostile elites opposed to his self-styled "revolution" in favor of the nation's poor. ***
As more and more businesses shut their doors for good, still others technically remain open but are at a standstill. The strike froze imports, leaving food companies without packing supplies, construction companies without cement, and shoe factories without glue. If the strike is lifted tomorrow and the materials suddenly appeared, experts say, it would not matter: Most business contracts and projects have been canceled.
The squeeze has forced businesses to negotiate with workers, having them work part time or take unpaid leave. ''You have to be honest with yourself and save yourself a lot of headaches,'' said José Antonio Couto, a contractor who shut his business when every pending deal was canceled. ``I paid my workers for doing nothing in December, but I just couldn't do it in January. That's 18 more people on the street.''
According to political science professor Janet Kelly, not a single industry has been spared. Newspapers have published for nearly two months without running a single advertisement. The Venezuelan American Chamber of Commerce lost a deal to promote business in Florida, and had to make cutbacks. Kelly's own graduate school of business has its workers on ''voluntary'' leave -- in this climate, no firms are about to pay for executive business courses for managers. 'If you are honest and objective, you ask yourself, `Did you have to destroy $5 billion of the economy?' '' Kelly said. ``I think there was a cheaper way.''
As accountants calculate what the damage, strike leaders defend the decision and say it was the only way to avoid the imposition of a dictatorial, quasi-communist regime. ''The anguish and the patience has been worth it, because we want a free country,'' said Juan Fernández, a former manager of the state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, PDVSA, which has been at the forefront of the strike. ``Our democracy and our nation are at stake.''
According to independent pollsters, a solid 30 percent of the population remains fanatically devoted to Chávez. Government surveys show the opposite: Chávez enjoys 70 percent support. Strike leaders also insist that the economic collapse that has engulfed Venezuela is not so much product of the strike, but of Chávez's policies. To be sure, the economic decline began some time ago; many businesses started pulling back when the crisis bubbled a year ago, a situation that worsened after a short-lived coup in April.
DIFFERENT VIEWS
Despite the thousands whose names have been added to the unemployment rolls, many people outside the strike leadership also view the stoppage as the only means of ousting a leftist firebrand who threatens to shut down media and private business. Others say even the strike organizers know it was a big error, but have invested too much effort to abandon a strategy whose slogan is, ``Not one step back!'' ''The attitude of most workers is that this strike is worth it,'' said travel agent Morela Cifuentes, who lost her job when the agency she worked for shut down. ``Right now, my household has zero income, and I continue totally to support the strike.''***