Hugo Chavez - Venezuela

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[Full Text] CARACAS, VENEZUELA - The man who won Venezuelan hearts three years ago as a strongman who could deliver a better life to the masses is now facing them in the streets.

More than 20,000 people turned out this week calling for the resignation of President Hugo Chávez, while some 2,000 supporters marched in a rival demonstration of support. The demonstrations come after months of building discontent with a president who has managed to alienate the labor class, the media, business groups, the church, political parties, and the military.

In November, Chávez introduced 49 "revolutionary" decrees. The package of laws - affecting everything from land rights and fisheries to the oil industry - unified virtually the whole of organized society in a nationwide business and labor stoppage that paralyzed the country on Dec. 10.

The protests this week have a note of irony, because they started out as a commemoration called by President Chávez. In his eyes, Feb. 27 is a milestone of his so-called revolution - "the date on which the people awoke" in 1989. That is when thousands of rioters and looters took to the streets in protest of an IMF-backed austerity plan, in which the government hiked gas prices.

In what became known as the caracazo, or noisy protest, thousands of rioters and looters were met by Venezuelan military forces, and hundreds were killed. Three years later, Chávez and his military co-conspirators failed in an attempt to overthrow the government responsible for the massacre, that of President Carlos Andres Perez. Chávez was jailed for two years.

"But the elements that brought about the caracazo are still present in Venezuela," says lawyer Liliana Ortega, who for 13 years has led the fight for justice on behalf of the victims' relatives. "Poverty, corruption, impunity ... some of them are perhaps even more deeply ingrained than before."

Chávez's supporters consist of an inchoate mass of street traders, the unemployed, and those whom the old system had marginalized. This, to Chávez, is el pueblo - the people.

"But we are 'the people' too," protests teacher Luis Leonet. "We're not oligarchs like he says. The oligarchs are people like Chávez, people with power."

On Wednesday, Leonet joined a march led by the main labor confederation, the CTV, to protest what unions say is a series of antilabor measures, including one of the 49 decrees dealing with public-sector workers.

Chávez won't talk to the CTV, whose leaders, he says, are corrupt and illegitimate. So he refuses to negotiate the annual renewal of collective contracts with the confederation, holding up deals on pay and conditions for hundreds of thousands of union members like Leonet.

Across town on Wednesday, a progovernment march sought to demonstrate that the president's popularity was as high as ever.

Pollster Luis Vicente Leon, of the Datanalisis organization, warns that marches are no measure of relative popularity. "There is a lot of discontent among ... the really poor," Leon says, adding that so far the protests are mainly among the middle class.

But the middle class can be a dangerous enemy. It includes the bulk of the armed forces, and the management of the state oil company, PDVSA.

This month, four uniformed officers, ranging from a National Guard captain to a rear-admiral and an Air Force general, called on the president to resign, while repudiating the idea of a military coup of Chávez, himself a former Army lieutenant-colonel.

But senior "institutionalist" officers "are under severe pressure from lower ranks frustrated at the lack of impact" that these acts have had, a source close to military dissidents says. In other words, a coup cannot be ruled out, although the United States publicly denounces the idea.

Meanwhile, the president's imposition of a new board of directors on PDVSA this week sparked a virtual uprising by the company's senior management. In an unprecedented public statement, managers said the government was pushing the company "to the verge of operational and financial collapse" by imposing political, rather than commercial, criteria.

The political opposition remains relatively weak and divided. But in the view of many analysts, a president who offends both the military and the oil industry is asking for trouble. In the bars and restaurants of Caracas, the debate is no longer over whether Chávez will finish his term, which has nearly five years to run. It is when and how he will go - and what comes next. [End]

Venezuela's Chavez Blames Media Laboratories and Nazis for plotting his downfall*** CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Testifying about an anti-government march that ended in bloodshed and the botched coup that followed it, a combative Hugo Chavez claimed both were part of a premeditated and violent attempt to oust him from Venezuela's presidential palace. "I ask the nation: Is it a peaceful expression of democracy to march to the palace to depose the president?" Chavez said in dramatic testimony before a congressional panel investigating the coup that unseated him for less than 48 turbulent hours in mid-April.

"There was nothing peaceful about it," he said. At times clutching a tiny copy of the constitution, at others a cross, the outspoken Chavez called his opponents "Nazis," asserted that "media laboratories" are plotting his downfall and said security forces are investigating another conspiracy to end his rule.***

Venezuela's Chavez Says He's Coup Hero, Not Villain *** CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez portrayed himself on Friday as the heroic survivor of the coup against him last month, saying the plotters planned to kill him and denying charges that he ordered a massacre of demonstrating opponents. Giving his first public testimony to a parliament inquiry into the April 11-14 coup, the left-wing former paratrooper pilloried his foes as "Nazis" and defended his self-proclaimed "revolution" in the world's No. 5 oil exporter. "They wanted to kill me ... I was on the brink of death," Chavez, who brandished a small silver crucifix and a miniature blue copy of the constitution, told a National Assembly commission at the presidential palace. ***

Argentina bank freeze partly lifted***The banking freeze has kept deposits locked up since last December to protect the nation's fragile banking industry from collapse. But the government's plan does not give the public unfettered access to its cash, as so many have been demanding in daily protests.

Faith shattered

Instead, President Duhalde has offered to swap 30bn pesos ($8.5bn) of deposits for government bonds that can be converted to cash in either five or 10 years' time. Deposit holders who do not want the bonds will be given bank certificates that they can use to buy big ticket items such as properties and cars.

The restrictions on cash withdrawals remain in place, but the government is also going to allow exporters to open dollar bank accounts for foreign trade. The hope is that the package will help stoke consumer demand, which has all but dried up in the country's worst economic crisis in its history.***

Palace coup for Chavez marriage***[Full Text] FED UP with a succession of palace coups, the wife of President Chávez of Venezuela says that she wants a divorce. "I can't carry on subjecting the children to the stress of living in a place from where we've had to run away three times, practically with our possessions tied into a bundle and hanging from a stick," she said. "That's no life for anyone."

Señora Chávez was forced to flee the Miraflores Palace in Caracas during an attempted coup in April. Though her husband returned to power after just 72 hours, it appears that their marriage cannot be restored. In an interview with a leading opposition newspaper, Marisabel Chávez, a 37-year-old former beauty queen, blamed the split on the country's topsy-turvy politics and on her husband's abrasive personality.

The couple were married shortly before Señor Chávez, 47, won a landslide election victory in 1998. They have a four-year-old daughter and both have children from previous marriages. In the interview Señora Chávez said that their married life had deteriorated after her husband's election. "Many things changed, our surroundings, our friends," she said.

Her statements reflected a widespread sentiment of concern across the country over Señor Chávez's highly divisive politics. Since taking power, he has launched what he calls a social revolution to close the gap between Venezuela's wealthy elite and the poor majority. Many critics say his left-wing policies have caused deeper economic problems and social resentments that could explode in violence. Señora Chávez appeared to distance herself from her husband's policies, suggesting that he had been seduced by power and the idolatry of his supporters. "I don't want to be a martyr of the revolution or to be used as a political object by the opposition," she said. [End]

U.S. still hopeful about Latin America -- or so it says *** In a region where politics has generally moved in cycles -- dictatorships in the '70s, center-left democracies in the '80s, and pro-business governments in the '90s -- a leftist victory in Brazil could influence Argentines to elect a leftist president in their own upcoming elections late this year or next year, and could encourage Venezuela's populist president, Hugo Chávez, to radicalize his ''Bolivarian Revolution,'' the alarmed Latin American diplomats say. ''The regional scenario in the second half of this year will be critical,'' says Argentina's ambassador to the United States, Diego Guelar. ``The anti-free market credo is gaining ground. There is a mistaken perception in the region that Argentina was the best student, that opened its economy the most, and that this was the reason why it ended so badly.''

But several U.S. officials reacted with skepticism to these gloomy scenarios. ''There is a general [regional] commitment to market economies and open trade that remains firm,'' says Lino Gutierrez, the No. 2 official at the U.S. State Department's Latin American affairs office. ``We are encouraged that the Argentine government is beginning to take the steps necessary to put the country on better economic and financial footing.''

Asked about the South American domino scenario, another senior Bush administration official noted that the same kinds of theories were floating around a little more than year ago, when many predicted that populist former President Alan García would win in Peru, and that leftist former Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega would win in Nicaragua, and that the whole region would move left. It didn't happen. Bush administration officials are confident that, over the next three months, the U.S. Congress will give President Bush ''fast-track'' authority to expedite new free-trade agreements, and that this will lead almost immediately to expanded trade benefits for Andean countries, and to the signing of a bilateral free-trade agreement with Chile. ''All of these things are going to change the atmosphere in this hemisphere,'' a senior Bush administration official says.***

30 OAS Ministers Sign Deal to Fight Terror *** BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (AP) - Countries from the United States to Chile pledged to fight terrorism together, agreeing to a new treaty designed to increase security across the Western Hemisphere in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. The foreign ministers from 30 of the 34 nations in the Organization of American States signed the Inter-American Convention Against Terrorism on Monday at the annual general assembly of the OAS. "More than ever before, the Americas stand together today against terrorism and for democracy," Secretary of State Colin Powell said at the meeting in Barbados. "There can be no doubt of our resolve."

The treaty is meant to prevent financing of terrorism, toughen border controls and strengthen cooperation among law enforcement agencies. It requires each country to create a financial intelligence unit and institute strict measures to detect cross-border movements of cash that could be used to fund terrorism. Signatories agreed to transfer detainees whose testimony is needed in anti-terrorism investigations and to deny asylum or refugee status to terrorism suspects. "Today, our states, individually and collectively, face new goals and new threats," said Panama's Foreign Minister Jose Miguel Aleman.

The four OAS nations that did not sign - Canada, Dominica, the Dominican Republic and Trinidad and Tobago - need additional time to follow required procedures, OAS officials said. Foreign ministers and secretaries of state also discussed a possible OAS role in easing political tensions in Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez was briefly ousted by a military rebellion in April, and in Haiti, where an impasse over new elections is holding up hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.***

Ruling party legislators accuse Venezuelan journalist of treason *** CARACAS, Venezuela - Ruling party lawmakers said Wednesday they will ask prosecutors to formally charge a Venezuelan journalist with treason for releasing a video in which masked men claiming to be military officers criticize President Hugo Chavez. Three members of Chavez's Fifth Republic Movement party on Wednesday accused journalist Patricia Poleo of conspiring to overthrow President Hugo Chavez, who survived a coup attempt last month. "We are going to file a formal accusation against Patricia Poleo for crimes of treason, for rebellion," lawmaker Cilia Flores told reporters. "These conspirators, including Patricia Poleo, among others, are still determined to depose President Chavez."***

Venezuela Asks Ex-President Carter to Aid Talks *** CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuela on Thursday asked former U.S. President Jimmy Carter to help soothe lingering political tensions after April's coup against President Hugo Chavez and welcomed international observers to monitor the nation's democratic process. Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said he had written to Carter asking him to help foster dialogue in the bitterly divided South American nation. "We're not considering intervention, we're looking for a process to facilitate talks," Rangel said.

Nearly eight weeks after rebel military and civilian leaders briefly toppled Chavez, Venezuela is still mired in political uncertainty and jitters over another possible uprising. Talks aimed at brokering dialogue between Chavez supporters and his critics have descended into political sniping as both sides blame each other for the deaths of civilians shot by gunmen during the April 11-14 ouster.

Carter, working from his nonprofit Carter Center in Atlanta after leaving office in 1981, has established himself as an elder statesman helping to settle conflicts around the world. Last month he became the most senior U.S. statesman to visit Cuba since its 1959 revolution. He met Cuban dissidents in Havana as part of his push for internal reforms in the island's one-party Communist state.

The Carter Center confirmed it had received the request. "We did receive the invitation from the Venezuelan vice president and we are taking it under consideration," a Carter Center spokesman said. ***

Armed forces still simmer in Venezuela - Chavez conduct purge ***To discourage further rebellion, Chavez has ordered sweeping changes in every branch of the armed forces in recent weeks, in what amounts to a wholesale purge of the 100,000-strong military. In the last six weeks the president has sidelined more than a third of all generals and admirals, relieving them of their posts.

The new defense minister, Gen. Lucas Rincon, admitted to reporters recently that the changes were made necessary because of "certain discontent," especially in the high ranks of the armed forces. "The reason we have so many changes in the armed forces is because the situation we experienced (April 11) requires that we make them, it's as simple as that," Rincon told reporters.

Critics accuse the president of going back on his word. After his dramatic restoration to power in April Chavez vowed there would be no "witch hunt" against the military. "There is definitely a purge in progress and what we have is a very precarious situation," said Alberto Garrido, a political analyst and author of several books about Chavez. ***

In the Time of Hugo Chávez ***A man who usually talks in exclamations, Chávez strained to come across as modulated, as a democrat and a cheek-turning Christian who had no desire for vengeance. ''Those who don't want Hugo Chávez to be the president of the republic,'' he shrugged, ''fine, go organize yourself.'' The constitution allows for a referendum to be called in 2003, he noted, and he would take his chances at the polls. ''I'm not wed to power in an unhealthy way,'' he said. ''I'm not Yo el Supremo. I'm just Hugo, a regular guy.''

"I the Supreme,'' the classic novel by Paraguayan writer Augusto Roa Bastos to which Chávez referred, is a brilliant portrait of a president-for-life, one in a subgenre of dictator literature that flourished in Latin America before multiparty democracies began taking root. Whether Chávez is indeed a latter-day caudillo or simply a charismatic populist with authoritarian tendencies or actually a genuine leftist revolutionary is a matter of fierce debate in Venezuela. But many believe that he is so gifted and yet so flawed a leader that he almost seems to be the fictional creation of a Bastos or a Gabriel García Márquez.

In Venezuela, almost everyone is either passionately for Chávez or against him, a Chavista or an anti-Chavista. The poor who feel embraced by Chávez worship the Venezuelan president as their redeemer: ''Hugo the Messiah!'' His equally zealous foes see him as Hurricane Hugo, with the power to transform Venezuela into a Communist backwater like Cuba or, alternatively, a violent, riven republic like Colombia.

Whether they love him or loathe him, Venezuelans say that Chávez, who took office in early 1999, has awakened Venezuela from its political somnolence, empowered the poor and stirred the elite to re-engage after years of inactivity. He has been like a shock therapist, exposing and exploiting the profound class divisions in Venezuelan society that can never be ignored again.

''There is no going back to the way things were B.C.,'' before Chávez, said Nelson Ortiz, president of the Caracas Stock Exchange and a self-proclaimed ''anti-Chavista light.'' ''In the passions that he arouses, Chávez is one in a million. For many generations to come, people will be talking about him and about this very surreal, probably defining, moment in our history." ***

Carter to mediate post-coup Venezuela talks *** CARACAS, Venezuela -- Former President Carter accepted Venezuela's invitation to mediate talks between the government and opposition, which aim to restore stability following a failed coup, Venezuela's vice president said Sunday. "Ex-President Jimmy Carter told me that he has instructed his office to touch base with Venezuela and organize his visit," Jose Vicente Rangel told state news agency Venpres. Rangel said that a delegation from the Georgia-based Carter Center would visit Venezuela in two weeks. He did not say when Carter would come. Venezuela invited Carter last week, hoping to salvage flailing reconciliation talks with opposition leaders.***

Venezuela Heads From Bad to Worse*** CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez's government is driving Venezuela toward economic crisis by year's end, economists and Wall Street analysts warn. "In the next six months, there will be a traumatic crisis," says Francisco Rodriguez, head of the oil-rich nation's congressional budget office. Venezuela, says the Harvard-trained economist, is suffering from a variety of ills: inflation, unemployment, growing poverty, a looming budget deficit, capital flight, high interest rates, a weakening currency and, on top of it all, a shrinking economy.

But the biggest problem, Mr. Rodriguez suggests, may lie with the leftist president himself. "A lot of investors are worried about Chavez," he says. "There are deep worries about the security of property rights in Venezuela and that things will get politically more difficult. The specter of political instability has hovered over the Venezuelan economy since January, beginning with a series of mass demonstrations, strikes and, finally, an unsuccessful military coup that ousted Mr. Chavez for 48 hours, before he was brought back by loyal troops. Since then, the country has been in a fiscal swoon, despite rising prices for oil, which accounts for 80% of exports and generates about half of government revenues.***

Opposition humorists, Chavez allies hold dual rallies on anniversary of failed coup *** "Did you know that Chavez is traveling to Cuba on Sunday?" joked comedian Manuel Graterol on Monday night. "Yes, because it's Father's Day," he said, alluding to Chavez's admiration for Cuban President Fidel Castro. CARACAS, Venezuela - They admit it was no laughing matter. But anti-government humorists couldn't resist using their talent to mark two months since a bloody opposition march that helped spark a failed coup against President Hugo Chavez.

Standup comedians and political cartoonists led hundreds of flag-waving, pot-banging Venezuelans in a rally Tuesday to demand justice for those who died in three days of upheaval that deposed and quickly reinstated Chavez. "This is a very sad time for us, but the people are going to continue making humor," said Pedro Leon Zapata, a renowned artist and political cartoonist for El Nacional newspaper.

Also in downtown Caracas, the capital, hundreds of Chavez sympathizers held their own rally to protest an opposition campaign to oust the president through a popular referendum. "I am here to support Chavez," said Nancy Cepeda, 36, surrounded by hundreds of people waving posters of the populist former paratrooper and wearing knockoffs of his trademark red military beret. "We would be living in a dictatorship if Chavez had not returned."***

International journalists group warns media bias, Chavez's threats hurting press freedom in Venezuela *** CARACAS, Venezuela - The International Federation of Journalists warned that both blatant media bias against President Hugo Chavez and the president's verbal threats against the press are threatening press freedoms in Venezuela. "The media have got to take themselves out of the political process," said IFJ General Secretary Aidan White. "And it's quite clear that some sections of the media have been actively engaged in the political process in a way that is an impediment to free and independent journalism." White added that Chavez's "strong, provocative and powerful attacks on media ... has created a difficult atmosphere of confrontation."***

Argentinians gripped by hunger in country's worst recession ***On March 23 a truck carrying 22 cattle overturned near Rosario, 180 miles to the north. As hungry shantytown dwellers gathered around the injured animals, men appeared with butcher's knives and carted away dripping sides of beef. Sociologist Artemio Lopez, at the Equis consulting group, said the government's "basic food basket" of essential goods like bread, rice and eggs soared 47.4 percent in the first five months of the year.

"With each passing day there is more hunger in Argentina," said Lopez. To properly feed a family of four cost 215 pesos in March and 252 pesos in April, government figures show. That's an increase from $61 to $72, and salaries haven't risen at all. The cash-strapped government has social programs for the poor, but critics say these can't keep pace with the spreading crisis. On May 17 the government started dispensing aid worth $42 a month to 1 million unemployed heads of households. The critics say it should be double that amount. ***

Chavez facing a storm of coup threats - Wary Venezuelans hoard food, guns*** CARACAS - A new wave of coup threats against President Hugo Chávez is pushing Venezuelans to the edge of hysteria, with many residents of the capital stockpiling food and condo associations preparing an inventory of guns in case of looting. Clandestine communiqués and videos from alleged military officers vowing to topple the leftist president emerge almost daily. As each rumor peaks and wanes, the country's battered currency fluctuates wildly against the U.S. dollar. The threats and an accompanying gusher of dire rumors have sparked an unprecedented crisis in this oil-rich nation, virtually paralyzing the country and awakening fears of bloodshed, even civil war.

U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro said Wednesday the coup rumors helped prompt a State Department warning this week that Americans in Venezuela should take security precautions. ''In a country where there are so many rumors, it's important for foreigners to be careful,'' he said. The crisis atmosphere is even more intense than in April, when a sudden military coup forced Chávez out of power for two days amid a whirlwind of political violence and looting that left 70 dead. ''The country is on the verge of a nervous breakdown,'' the centrist TalCual newspaper said this week in an editorial that called for calm.***

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