Chirino is the executive secretary of the Workers Federation of Carabobo State (FETRAC). He was a textile worker for more than 20 years before becoming full time for the union. An affiliate of the Confederation of Workers of Venezuela (CTV), FETRAC includes most unions in the state of Carabobo, one of the most industrialized in the country. Valencia, Carabobo’s capital, is the country’s largest industrial center.

The union leader’s remarks were indicative of similar opinions expressed by most workers interviewed by the Militant here and in Caracas, the country’s capital, in mid-July. Political discussion and debate over how working people can defend themselves against the increasingly harsh economic and social conditions are widespread in the country today. In addition, protests by peasants, workers, and youth around the need to push ahead with an agrarian reform, for jobs, and against ongoing probes and assaults by the bosses take place on a daily basis.

Tens of thousands of youth and working people are joining the Bolivarian Circles, initiated last November, after a call by Chávez for more popular participation in solving social problems. They are loose formations organized on a voluntary basis at workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, and elsewhere mostly to do social work and organize defense guards. Many, however, assume a more overtly political character.

There are more than 100,000 of these circles around the country, and their number has increased substantially since the April coup, we were told.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, elected with a large popular vote in 1998, was deposed April 11 in a short-lived military coup backed by Washington. This was preceded in March and early April by bosses’ "strikes" and large street cazerolazos, or pot banging protests, made up overwhelmingly of middle and upper classes demanding the president’s resignation.

Fedecámaras, the country’s main business association, called for a nation-wide shutdown of companies April 8–11 to bring down Chávez. The CTV’s officialdom backed the reactionary bosses’ strike, giving popular cover to the employers’ drive to get rid of Chávez. Violence erupted during a demonstration of hundreds of thousands called by the bourgeois opposition April 11, with 18 people killed and dozens wounded, many by gunfire.  
 
Reactionary coup
The top military brass seized on the shootings as a pretext to intervene. The generals who led the coup installed an "interim administration" headed by Pedro Carmona, a wealthy oil man and president of Fedecámaras. The next day, Carmona announced his regime had annulled the country’s constitution--approved with a 71 percent vote in a referendum in December 1999, dissolved the National Assembly, ended oil shipments to Cuba on favorable terms, and revoked 49 laws approved by the government last year.

These overturned measures included a land reform program and limits on the ability of foreign investors to extract profits from superexploitation of Venezuela’s resources and labor. A number of these laws benefited Venezuela’s toilers and were despised by the bourgeoisie. Carmona’s sweeping moves--announced as the businessmen and generals who seized the presidential palace held a celebration with whisky glasses held high--shed a spotlight on the reasons for and character of the reactionary coup.

Within two days divisions in the armed forces and huge popular mobilizations throughout the country demanding Chávez’s reinstatement caused the coup to collapse. Chávez returned to Miraflores, the presidential palace, April 13.

Since then, the Chávez administration has shifted to the right, seeking conciliation with the employers, who still have a firm hold on the country’s economic power. Measures along these lines have included virtual immunity for the coup plotters, appointments of new ministers with ties to the employers, reversal of the previous decision to bring the state oil company under government control, and a halt of oil shipments to Cuba.

Despite this turn by the president, and because Chávez’s term in office has raised expectations and self-confidence among working people, the capitalist class continues to try to find ways to undermine his regime and eventually overthrow him.  
 
How working people fought back
Chirino; Ismael Hernandez, a textile worker in Valencia; Abel Bovada, who is an independent truck driver here; and others explained what they did to resist the drive to oust Chávez in April.

On April 8, the beginning of the bosses’ strike, workers gathered outside MAVESA, a condiment-producing factory, and other nearby plants, Bovada said. "We had signs saying: ‘Chávez, we want to work’ and ‘Down with the bosses’ strike.’" Up to 3,000 workers demonstrated that day, he said. The next day many leaders of FETRAC organized a caravan of 600 vehicles throughout Valencia with the same demands. A similar car caravan April 10 was shot at and dispersed by the police.

"On the morning of April 11, before any news arrived from Caracas, we held a press conference at the union hall stating our belief a coup was in the works and explaining we would fight against it," Chirino said. Next day more than 5,000 people, mostly workers and students, gathered around the local army barracks, defying police blockades and fraternizing with the soldiers. Similar mobilizations took place in nearby Aragua, where 20,000 people poured into the local army garrison. Similar actions took place across the country, we were told.

Meanwhile, up to 200,000 people were protesting in the streets of Caracas, demanding the reinstatement of Chávez. Buses from Valencia and many other cities were stopped by the police from transporting workers from the provinces to the capital to fight the coup, Hernandez said.

Opposition to the coup was strong throughout the working class, including workers who have turned against Chávez. "The government is only words and no action," said Nicolas Contreras, who transports vehicles for Hyundai of Venezuela. "I don’t support Chávez, but I was against the coup. That would have been a big step backwards for us."

"We were elated after we brought Chávez back," said Abner Lopez, an assembly-line worker at the Chrysler auto plant here. "We thought now is the time to take more radical measures against Fedecámaras, the bosses, and all their lieutenants. But that’s not what has happened."  
 
No plotters jailed
None of the coup plotters have gone to jail, Lopez, Chirino, Hernandez, and others said. The Supreme Justice Tribunal held an initial hearing July 18 to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to try four of the 127 military officers involved in the April coup on charges of leading a military rebellion. "No one knows what will happen to these generals," Lopez said. "They should have been in jail already, and all the others, including Carmona, who was allowed to leave the country and move to Miami. Already, people are protesting this."

Hundreds of people protested outside the court hearing in Caracas July 18, hurling cans, eggs, and blunt objects over National Guard cordons and demanding justice against the coup organizers.

Hernandez added that Fedecámaras is now pushing new antilabor measures, with the support of some government ministers, such as increasing job probation from three to nine months.

"Chávez dismissed his former finance minister for repeated acts of corruption, but instead of going to jail he was given another lucrative job at a state bank," Chirino said. "The new finance minister and the minister of planning are now telling us to tighten our belts to deal with the economic crisis. We will pay for this, not these ministers or the bosses. These people are from the oligarchy."

According to the July 19 El Nacional, one of Venezuela’s main dailies, and other press reports, Minister of Planning and Development Felipe Pérez, and Finance Minister Tobías Nóbrega, are pushing the National Assembly to raise value-added-tax from 14.5 percent to 16 percent and to increase interest rates. These tax reforms must be approved immediately, Pérez reportedly told parliamentary deputies, "regardless of the political cost of this decision, and we must all tighten our belts."  
 
Deep economic crisis
Venezuela is the fifth largest oil-producing country in the world. It has many mineral resources and a relatively high level of industrialization for Latin America. At the same time, it is ranked among the top one-fifth of countries in the world on class inequality. While the top 10 percent of the population of 23 million receives half the national income, 40 percent lived in "critical poverty," according to a 1995 estimate. The official poverty level is expected to rise to between 50 percent and 60 percent this year. An estimated 80 percent earned the minimum wage--about $150 per month in today’s figures--or less in the mid-1990s, and this figure has not improved.  
 
Economic crisis deepens
The country’s foreign debt has risen to $35 billion. Capitalists in the United States and other imperialist countries use Venezuela’s debt bondage to suck billions of dollars in wealth out of the country, as they do throughout the semicolonial world. To pay the bondholders and imperialist banks, Venezuela’s rulers have cut wages and social programs. As a number of workers pointed out, there is no unemployment insurance for those laid off.

Over the last year, the country’s economic crisis has deepened considerably, mainly as a result of the normal workings of capitalism accelerated by the efforts of the employers’ drive to oust Chávez. The country’s Gross Domestic Product is expected to drop more than 3 percent this year, partly as a result of the oil industry and other work stoppages organized by the bosses. Investors have spirited more than $80 billion in capital out of the country this year. A continued devaluation of the bolivar, the country’s currency, has dealt further blows to working people by raising prices on many basic goods, since most finished manufactured products are imported. Inflation is running at nearly 25 percent, double the rate in 2001. Nearly one-fifth of all workers are unemployed and many companies are planning additional layoffs.

The bosses at auto assembly plants, for example, laid off 14,000 workers in the first quarter of this year out of a workforce of 93,000. This has dealt serious blows to working people in Valencia, where General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler have large car assembly factories.

The bourgeois opposition that has tried to bring down Chávez has attempted to capitalize on this by blaming the government for the crisis.

This was a theme of the latest anti-Chávez march in Caracas July 11. According to various accounts, more than half-a-million people took part in this action demanding Chávez’s resignation. Juan Pablo Torres, attorney for the Liberator municipality of Caracas and a supporter of the government, said in a July 15 interview that "for the first time it wasn’t just the middle and upper classes marching against Chávez. Some contingents of the humble classes were also visible." It was a typical observation among other defenders of Chávez interviewed by the Militant.

The CTV leadership has also tried to use the economic downturn to put a popular veneer on its reactionary call for organizing a new general strike to bring down the president. "The proposal of the CTV is to call a national civic strike to demand the resignation of President Hugo Chávez," said CTV general secretary Manuel Cova July 15. "We have over 2 million people that are without work. Jobs are being destroyed."  
 
Workers blame bosses and capitalism
Most workers interviewed by the Militant, however, blamed the bosses, not the Chávez government, for the deteriorating recession.

"The problem in this country is that the bosses make millions of bolivars a month in profits and we workers can barely survive," said José Sanchez, who works in a carton manufacturing plant in Valencia. "I support Chávez because even though he hasn’t done everything he promised he has put the breaks on the bosses. They can’t do anything they want against us as they did before."

On May 1, under increasing pressure from workers, Chávez signed a decree prohibiting further layoffs for 60 days. The labor movement succeeded in winning an extension of the decree to July 28. "When that expires, we expect many firings, especially of union militants," said Abner Lopez. "They are already preparing the lists, as they did in June when they posted the layoffs the day before Chávez extended it another month.

"This is true especially of the Yankee bosses," Lopez added, expressing his deep anger at Washington’s intervention in support of the April coup, a view held by many workers Militant reporters spoke to.

"It’s capitalism that’s leaving us and our families on the streets, not Chávez," said Wilmer Mejias, a former auto worker at GM who now works as a truck driver after being laid off. Pointing to the recent closing of Sudantec, a textile company that received subsidies from the government and employed about 5,000 workers, Mejias said the government should take over such companies and ask workers to run them.

Such proposals for nationalizations of companies that shut down are a minority view. "But demands like these will grow," said Chirino.

Workers have increasingly rejected the CTV leadership’s call for another nationwide strike. "The CTV never did anything for workers," said Pedro Jose Rodriguez, a truck driver, in a typical comment. "Now they are somehow concerned about unemployment. I’ve been working for 38 years and the CTV never did anything for workers. It went with the bosses April 11. No worker in their right mind wanted these ‘strikes.’"  
 
Strike call loses steam
Under increasing pressure from workers, the CTV campaign for another nationwide antigovernment strike is rapidly losing steam. Between July 15 and July 19, officials of Fedepetrol, the oil workers union, Fedeunep, the 600,000-strong United Federation of Government Workers, the steelworkers union, and the Union of Workers of the Metro in Caracas denounced the CTV’s call for a strike.

A number of those interviewed said that it was Chávez’s earlier labor policies that gave the CTV tops some legitimacy for a period of time. "The labor policy of Chávez was reactionary, trying to tie the unions to the state and telling workers he would not honor labor contracts," Chirino stated.

Chirino was referring to the December 2000 referendum organized by Chávez to suspend the national leadership of the CTV until elections would be held. The majority of the CTV officialdom supports the social-democratic Democratic Action Party (AD). A minority backs the Social Christian COPEI party, or the Venezuelan Communist Party and smaller groups in the workers movement. That referendum was approved by a 65 percent majority, but only 22 percent of the 11 million eligible workers turned out to the polls. The referendum was opposed by officials of the four established trade union federations. Officials of a fifth, the Bolivarian Workers Force (FBT) founded that year, align themselves with the Chávez regime. Chávez won some support for his attempt to shackle the unions more tightly to the state by taking advantage of widespread hatred for the labor bureaucracy, which he termed "corrupt and rotten."

Opposition to this move, however, by the bosses and most trade union officials, along with many workers, forced the government to shelve implementation of the referendum’s result. Chávez recently recognized the CTV with its current leadership as legitimate.

"We can only overthrow the CTV leadership from within," said Chirino, "while supporting complete independence of the trade union movement from the state."  
 
Bolivarian circles
The CTV’s outright sellout to the bosses has led a number of working people seeking ways to defend their interests to turn to other forms of organization.

As José Bonilla, a truck driver for a large transportation firm in Caracas, put it, "We never succeeded in bringing a union to the company, so a number of us have now organized a Bolivarian circle."

The Bolivarian circles are nationally coordinated out of Caracas, from what is called "the political command of the Bolivarian revolution." While largely organized by the Movement for the Fifth Republic (MVR), Chávez’s party, the circles include a range of political forces and many working people and youth who have no political affiliation.

At the University of Carabobo in Valencia, for example, there are more than 51 Bolivarian circles incorporating a large percentage of the student body. Each focuses on different tasks--from scientific seminars in the evening, to social work in the community, to volunteer labor to repair houses or infrastructure in working-class neighborhoods, to street protests against police repression.

The police in a state whose governor Romer Salas is a prominent figure in the bourgeois opposition, has tried to brand them as "terrorist cells."

Joel Panton, a leader of the Alma Mater student group, has helped initiate several of these circles. He said the authorities organized a provocation June 20 in which four assailants entered a school bus full of students, poured gasoline on the floor, and lit a fire. A number of students, and the bus driver, were seriously injured in the arson attack and are still in the hospital. The bus driver, though, succeeded in capturing one of the arsonists who later confessed that the operation was organized by a paramilitary group financed out of the governor’s office and organized in collaboration with the police, Panton said.

The intent was to blame the attack on the Bolivarian circles, but with the capture of one of the assailants this has backfired on the local authorities. Panton said a number of the Bolivarian circles have organized street protests in recent weeks to demand that all responsible be brought to justice.

Members of these circles have also organized unarmed defense squads around the presidential palace since the April coup and similar activities in working-class neighborhoods.

This is an uneven development, still in its infancy. The almost weekly meetings and swirl of activity of the Bolivarian circles at the University of Carabobo, for example, contrast with a similar group of municipal workers in Caracas that has only met twice since it was founded in April. These circles had a prominent role in mobilizing hundreds of thousands for the June 29 pro-Chávez march in Caracas, the largest pro-government demonstration since the coup.  
 
 
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