"We are here at the gates of the assembly supporting you. We will never forget that you helped us," intoned one bullhorn-bearing demonstrator, as crowds repeated.
Under the leadership of leftist President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's oil industry has gone from being a big business to something more like a national passion. With oil now the centerpiece of national politics, the intricacies of state oil giant Petróleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, have become front-page news and dinner table conversation.
Energy authorities, once treated as boring technocrats, are now being accorded the status of celebrities. These displays are a sign of the powerful political backing for policies confronting oil companies with huge demands.
The throng, clad in signature red T-shirts emblazoned with the logo of the energy ministry, spent the next seven hours watching testimony on widescreen TVs.
On the screen, Ramirez delivered a condemnation of the opening of Venezuela's oil fields in the 1990s to international oil companies.
The minister's nationalist sound bites were greeted with hearty cheers. Opposition deputies who grilled Ramirez on widely reported declines in oil production were booed like umpires on the take.
"The people have to show their commitment to Minister Ramirez. He has done so much for the development of this country," Rogelio Bautista, 43, a student of Mision Ribas, a high school completion program financed by PDVSA. Packed between a throng of demonstrators thick with the unmistakable smell of newly printed T-shirts, Bautista cheered outside the congressional hearings next to a 10-foot-long banner that read "Bush, get your claws out of PDVSA." ...............................***
She did not directly mention Venezuela but Washington and other critics of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez say that although twice elected, the Venezuelan president is showing authoritarian tendencies in office.
Speaking before the conference began, Chavez accused the United States of trying to impose a "global dictatorship" and said that it, not Venezuela, should face OAS scrutiny.
"So, they're going to try to monitor the Venezuelan government through the OAS, they must be joking!" Chavez said, speaking on his weekly "Hello President" TV and radio show.
'GLOBAL DICTATORSHIP'
"If there is any government that should be monitored by the OAS, then it should be the U.S. government, a government which backs terrorists, invades nations, tramples over its own people, seeks to install a global dictatorship," he said.
......Despite the fierce rhetoric from Chavez, a U.S. official said Rice greeted Venezuelan Foreign Minister Ali Rodriguez and thanked him for his comments at a private meeting of OAS ministers on Sunday afternoon.
But in a gesture sure to anger Chavez, Rice plans to meet Maria Corina Machado, a prominent opponent of the Venezuelan president, on Monday, six days after President Bush welcomed her to the White House.****