President Hugo Chavez waves during a meeting with supporters at a stadium in Caracas, Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2002. Chavez branded as traitors striking workers who have crippled the nation's vital oil economy and asked his supporters to be ready to fight for his government. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)
The woman with the blonde spike hair-do near Chavez looks like "Comandante" Lina Ron. Here's more about Ron:
Chavistas: Venezuelan street toughs: Helping "revolution" or crushing dissent? April 5, 2002 | By FABIOLA SANCHEZ, AP -[Full Text] CARACAS, Venezuela - From her bed in a Caracas military hospital, the wiry, chain-smoking prisoner vowed to continue a hunger strike and risk becoming the first death in Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's "revolution." "Comandante" Lina Ron, who considers herself a modern version of "Tania," a woman who fought alongside Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, says she is a willing martyr for Chavez's cause. She was arrested after leading a violent pro-Chavez counter-protest against demonstrating university students.
Thousands follow her lead in Venezuela and they have increasingly quashed dissent, breaking up anti-government protests, intimidating journalists and alarming the president's critics. Chavez has angered Washington by expressing his admiration for Cuban President Fidel Castro and adopting policies seen as anti-business. Venezuela is a key oil supplier to the United States.
"If I fail or die, the spirit of the revolution dies," Ron said. "But I'm not going to fail. I'd rather lose my life than my principles." Just what those principles are have sparked debate across the nation. Ron began her hunger strike after being arrested for leading a violent confrontation Feb. 26 at the Central University of Venezuela against students defending the university's autonomy against encroachments by Chavez's government. In recent months, the 42-year-old Ron has organized and led street marches - called "countermarches" here - to stop or intimidate demonstrations by civilians and a disorganized opposition to Chavez.
Two December marches to Miraflores, the presidential palace, were stopped by Ron's "countermarches." A February march to the National Assembly to commemorate Venezuelan democracy was similarly met - and diverted - by a countermarch. Ron and her followers burned a U.S. flag in Caracas' central Plaza Bolivar just after the September terrorist attacks in the United States. The anti-Washington demonstration appalled many Venezuelans. More recently, Ron's followers threatened journalists at El Nacional newspaper in Caracas.
Chavez has called Ron a political prisoner. "We salute Lina Ron, a female soldier who deserves the respect of all Venezuelans," he said recently. Ron's activism was inspired by her father, Manuel, a former director of the Social Christian Party in the western state of Anzoategui, according to her sister Lisette. The fourth of seven children born in Cantaura, a poor town just east of Caracas, Ron cut short studies in medicine at the Central University of Venezuela after becoming pregnant. She spent 10 years working with Caracas' homeless before joining Chavez's Bolivarian movement, named after native independence hero Simon Bolivar.
Ron is "very violent because of the 40 years of oppression, of injustice, of impunity" of administrations that ruled Venezuela since its last dictatorship was toppled in 1958, said her attorney, Oswaldo Cancino. Now Ron has become a focal point for debate about Chavez's "Bolivarian Circles," which the government calls self-help neighborhood groups. Chavez opponents call them a violent threat to democracy styled after Cuba's Revolutionary Block Committees. Created after Castro urged Venezuelans to "organize" to defend Chavez's revolution, the committees are forming street tribunals to demand Ron's release - and to symbolically prosecute government opponents as "traitors."
Greater Caracas Mayor Aldredo Pena accuses the government of secretly arming hundreds of Bolivarian Circles across the country - a charge the government denies. Yet circle members have clashed with students in Caracas and labor union activists in Barquisimeto. They've warned newspaper vendors in Ciudad Bolivar that they will torch kiosks unless they stop selling a newspaper, Correo del Caroni, that is critical of the government. After her arrest, Ron was hospitalized, forced to eat, and resumed her hunger strike, then went on a spartan diet. She is denied bail pending an April 12 court hearing on formal charges of inciting violence.
Ron suggested that violence is needed to quash mounting opposition to Chavez - whose combative rhetoric has contributed to a precipitous decline in popularity polls. It's needed, she said, to allow Venezuela's majority poor a stake in the country's governance for the first time in history. Ron attributes her growing flock of supporters to a "gift that God gave me" so that "the people follow me and believe in me. ... We're ready for the Fatherland to call us." Ron recently was transferred to a prison cell operated by Venezuela's secret police, known as DISIP. She said it doesn't bother her that the opposition to Chavez calls her "vulgar" and "violent." "I am the ugly part of the process - the part that is unpleasant, that is angry," she declared after the El Nacional protest, one dispersed by police using tear gas and water cannons.***