Former PDVSA workers hailed the court ruling, but few seem to think they will ever work for the oil company again. Some say they don't want to.
"I wouldn't go back to work for this government, even if they called to offer me a job," De Freitas says.
Many executives from the company's upper echelons are now living off their savings while dedicating themselves to the opposition's push for a referendum on Chavez's rule, an effort that, they hope, will push him from office by the end of the year.
"Right now I'm unemployed, but I'm conspiring full time," jokes former PDVSA production manager Ignacio Layrisse, who collaborates with a group of former oil workers.
Many of PDVSA's fired mid-level managers and engineers now work odd jobs.
Jose Enrique Salazar, a former materials engineer, sells wooden picture frames in Caracas' street markets. Santiago Zerpa, an accountant employed by the oil company for 22 years, earns money by waiting in long vehicle registration lines for people who don't want do it themselves.
"I feel good about what I'm doing," says Zerpa, who also is involved with the opposition. "Fighting against this government keeps me going."
Many former PDVSA employees say they share Zerpa's spirit of resistance. Still, losing the prestige and security the oil company provided has taken its toll, many quietly acknowledge. ***
And the Bush administration is sending its special ambassador to Latin America, Otto J. Reich, to Spain, Italy and France next week to discuss the region's hottest crises, as well as lingering financial troubles in Brazil and Argentina, White House officials and Palacio told me.
Among the people who have been asked to meet with Reich is French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, the diplomat whose public criticism of the Iraq war so exasperated the White House. Others will be Spanish Ibero-American Cooperation Minister Miguel Angel Cortes and Italian and Vatican officials.
The most pressing issue on Reich's agenda will be Venezuela, U.S. officials say.
The administration fears that Venezuela's populist leftist President Hugo Chávez will renege on an internationally brokered agreement to convene a national referendum on the duration of his term, and that he will provoke a violent clash with the opposition in order to suspend constitutional guarantees and radicalize his ``Bolivarian revolution.''
''He is trying to create an incident where he can call out the military and say that democracy has been threatened,'' a U.S. official says. ***