Hundreds Of Thousands March For Venezuela's Chavez

by Humberto Marquez

"Chavez no se va!" (Chavez stays!) was the most frequently chanted slogan of the huge crowd, in which red -- the symbol of the "Chavistas" -- was the dominant color, with people wearing red clothes and berets and waving red placards and flags as they marched to the Avenida Bol’var, where the president spoke.

Shortly before his speech, one person was killed and 12 were injured when an explosive device went off outside the entrance to a subway station near the pro-government rally.

In the country's interior, in the meantime, the opposition protested a ruling handed down by the Supreme Court Wednesday, which suspended a non-binding opposition-backed Feb. 2 referendum on Chavez's rule.

"This is the man who took away the power of the rich and corrupt who governed for 40 years," Nancy Colina, a 42-year-old mother of two who prepares and sells fruit preserves in Aragua de Matur’n, a small town in eastern Venezuela, told IPS as she marched. "He can't leave, because we won't let him!"

Colina stepped off of one of the buses "in which the eastern patriots were riding," she said. Hundreds of buses brought in government supporters from every region, demonstrating the continued resistance against the eight-week-old strike in the oil industry aimed at paralysing the country.

The shutdown declared on Dec 2 by a coalition of anti-government business associations, trade unions, political parties and executives and managers of the state oil monopoly PDVSA is demanding that the president step down and call early elections.

Ramon Garcia, a bus driver from the Andean mountain state of Trujillo in western Venezuela, told IPS that "those who have to go are Ortega and the Fernandez's" -- an allusion to the heads of the labor, business and oil movements leading the strike: Carlos Ortega, Carlos Fernandez and Juan Fernandez.

"The more the fascist oligarchy tries to squash the people, the louder will be the response," Chavez told the demonstrators, who numbered half a million according to the organizers but less than 300,000 according to press reports.

Due to the tense political climate, the opposition leaders called on those opposed to the government to stay at home in Caracas Thursday, the 45th anniversary of the fall of the last dictatorship (1948-1958).

In the run-up to the pro-government march, pamphlets circulated and neighborhood meetings were held in the anti-Chavez middle-class residential districts of Caracas, to take inventory of available weapons, for fear of looting and violence by the Chavistas.

"We have observed with sadness how many people in the (middle to upper-income neighborhoods on the) eastside of Caracas have entrenched themselves...with their weapons ready and food and water on their roof-top terraces, out of fear of being attacked," said Chavez.

"We greatly lament that they are the victims of the fascist campaigns broadcast by the media," he added. "If we go to the east, it is to carry a message of fraternity and love to those who oppose us in the middle and upper classes. We are not going to wage war on them; we are building a fatherland."

The crowd shouted wildly when Chavez announced that his words were being broadcast nationally -- a measure to which the president frequently takes recourse and which is reluctantly obeyed by the private TV and radio stations, which openly support the strike and provide ongoing coverage in its favor.

The show of support for Chavez, who has the staunch backing of at least one-fourth of the electorate, according to most opinion polls, was staged on the eve of the first meeting in Washington Friday of the foreign ministers of the "Group of Friends" of Venezuela.

The group, which was set up on Jan. 15, is comprised of Brazil, Chile, Portugal, Spain and the United States, and its mission is to help come up with a solution to the crisis in Venezuela.

The ministers will discuss a proposal set forth this week by Nobel Peace laureate Jimmy Carter for an "electoral solution" this year, which could be either an August referendum to revoke Chavez's mandate or a constitutional amendment that would allow early elections to be called.

The governing coalition also received backing from a Constitutional Court decision that ruled that the people can only rebel against the government during a dictatorship, and not against their democratically elected representatives.

Since October, dozens of officers without troops at their command, who were involved in a brief coup d'etat against Chavez in April last year, have declared themselves in "civil disobedience" in a public square in Caracas.

However, most members of the armed forces support the president.

The strike has led to severe shortages in basic goods and fuel, many schools are closed, and sectors like industry, agribusiness, shopping malls, department stores, international franchises, the media, construction and advertising have lost billions of dollars.

"Venezuela is experiencing the greatest economic contraction in its history, of at least 20 percent," said businessman Robert Bottome, with the Veneconom’a thinktank.

On Wednesday, the Central Bank, which holds more than 80 percent of the foreign currency that enters the country, mainly the product of oil exports, suspended foreign exchange trading until Jan 29.

"We are establishing foreign exchange controls to strengthen the international reserves, defend the bolivar and fuel economic and social recovery," said Chavez in a message to the nation late Wednesday.

The measure is "a temporary one, aimed at resolving short-term problems, in response to the effects of the irrational and absurd action taken by the oil industry since December," said Finance Minister Tob’as N—brega.

The ministry of Energy and Mines reported earlier this month that the losses to the oil industry caused by the strike already totalled four billion dollars.

But sources with the ministry told IPS Thursday that "the figure may be twice that, if we don't only count the revenues we have stopped receiving, but also the costs of getting, at least partially, the industry's infrastructure operating again."