The same day thousands of protesters marched in an affluent section of eastern Caracas in a quieter demonstration, demanding Chávez’s resignation. Fedecámaras, the country’s main business association, and officials of the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV) called a work stoppage December 2 demanding a rapid referendum on whether Chávez should remain in office. The strike had limited success and seemed to wane two days later. Opposition forces then attempted to shut down oil production and distribution. By December 7, oil exports from Venezuela, the world’s fifth-largest petroleum producer, slowed. Gasoline shortages began inside the country.

On the evening of December 6, gunmen opened fire at an opposition rally of hundreds at Plaza Francia in the Altamira neighborhood of Caracas. More than 10 military officers who took part in the April coup that failed to unseat Chávez have been staging a sit-in there for months. The site has become an organizing center for opposition forces.

Three people were killed in the shooting and 28 wounded. Security forces arrested seven people. One of them, a Portuguese citizen, reportedly admitted to pulling the trigger with a handgun.

Leaders of the pro-imperialist opposition used the incident to blame the government for the killings and demand Chávez’s resignation. Government officials denounced these claims, condemned the assault, and pledged to bring those responsible to justice. Vice president José Vicente Rangel called the shootings a "provocation" to prompt further instability.  
 
Massive turnout at pro-Chávez march
"About 30,000 people are coming to Caracas from Valencia," said Orlando Chirino, a leader of the textile workers union in the country’s main industrial center in a December 7 telephone interview. "Most are workers." He was in a bus at the time on his way to Caracas for the march against the opposition strike. "The more the capitalists attack the poor, the more they are attacking Chávez, the more we are determined to fight," said Nellie Yaerte in another interview.

A health-care worker from Valencia, Yaerte spoke to the Militant as she was getting ready to leave for the same march in Caracas that morning. Yhonny García from Maracaibo said 3,000 people made the nine-hour trip to the march from that city, the country’s second largest and the capital of Zulia state, where much of the oil drilling and production is concentrated. "Most of the media here and internationally claim that people in Maracaibo are banging pots and pans at the port to support the few pirates who grounded some oil tankers to back the reactionary strike," he said. "But that’s a very small part of the picture."

Mari Pérez from San Carlos, the capital of Cojedes, a largely agricultural state, said hundreds of farmers and others went to Caracas "to stand up for our rights." Among them was her husband, Angel Sarmiento, a peasant. Sarmiento toured visiting Militant reporters in July to land taken over by dozens of peasant families from Compania Inglesa.

A number of those interviewed pointed out that at the heart of the brewing class conflict are measures the government passed a year earlier cutting into the prerogatives of big capital. Significant among them is the Law on Land and Agricultural Development, which legalized government takeovers of some large estates and their distribution to landless families. The opposition has also railed against provisions of the Law on Fishing and Aquaculture favoring small fishermen over large monopolies.

Participation was lower than expected, said Antonio Aguillón, in a telephone interview while the pro-Chávez rally was going on. "Because of the killings last night and the last-minute change of date [for the march], there was some fear and confusion and many buses did not make it to Caracas," stated Aguillón, a member of the Bolivarian Workers Force, a pro-Chávez union federation. "Dozens of buses from the state of Medina, for example, were turned back by police last night."

Alfonso Rodríguez, a leader of the Fifth Republic Revolutionary Youth, said Chávez, in his speech to the rally, was responding to growing demands by the toilers for firm measures against those responsible for sabotage in the state-owned oil industry, which is run by the PVDSA.

Chávez reportedly said the government will fire striking tanker captains and replace managers responsible for sabotaging oil production. He also announced his cabinet will restructure the board of directors at the PVDSA oil company, saying he is considering whether to accept the offer of most board members to resign made the day before.  
 
Developments in oil industry
On December 5 the Venezuelan navy seized a tanker filled with 280,000 tons of gasoline. The tanker, Pilin Leon, had been anchored a day earlier off Maracaibo by its captain, Daniel Alfaro, a PVDSA employee, in support of the bosses’ strike to oust Chávez. The president called this "an act of piracy."

Officers backing the pro-imperialist opposition had grounded another five oil tankers, most of them empty, from the state fleet of more than 100, according to telephone interviews and press accounts. Zulia Towing, the largest private tugboat company on Lake Maracaibo, yanked all 13 of its tugs from service to join the strike, AP reported December 5. Protesters on tug boats had circled the Pilin Leon blowing whistles to back its grounding. "Assaulting the PDVSA is like assaulting the heart of Venezuela," Chávez said in a televised speech that day. By December 7, the captain and most of the crew of Pilin Leon had been replaced.

During the first week of December the National Guard also arrested several PVDSA managers who tried to lock and weld shut the gates of refineries to prevent production workers from entering. According to several phone interviews and Venezuelan TV reports, about 40 percent of the oil giant’s employees heeded the strike call, largely technicians and administrative personnel. That halted issuing the necessary paperwork for export cargo. For this reason, 23 tankers were unable to load cargo and depart by December 5, bringing most exports to a standstill. In a number of cases, technicians shut off computerized controls in refineries as they left.  
 
Most workers oppose bosses’ strike
"The National Guard and many production workers have been waging guerrilla warfare, by restarting operations through manual controls until other technicians can be found," said Yhonny García from Maracaibo. "Most production workers in oil extraction and refining have not left their posts. The managers and many in the administration are part of a caste who don’t want their privileges touched if the Bolivarian revolution moves forward." Bolivarian is the term used by backers of the president to describe the process unleashed since his election.

By December 6, gasoline shortages began to be felt in several states. "Here in Valencia the reason is that a number of gas station owners shut down to support the strike, or pump only part of the gas they have," said Nellie Yaerte December 7. "The workers are not behind this. The owners are the big capitalists, and like many bankers they have shut down. We are against them, and they are against us." It was a typical view expressed by workers in other interviews.

The bosses’ strike began after the government rejected a November 28 decision by the National Electoral Council (CEN) to call a referendum February 2 on whether Chávez should remain in office. The opposition had turned in 1.5 million signatures of Venezuelans backing such a referendum in early November. Even though the results would be nonbinding, opposition figures hoped a poor showing for the president would force him to resign. The government argued that the country’s constitution provides for a binding referendum of this kind in August 2003, midway through Chávez’s term.

The country’s Supreme Court declared the November 28 CEN decision not valid because it was taken by a 3-1 vote with one of its members absent, where a law requires a four-vote majority for this kind of ruling. The strike was preceded by other clashes. Alfredo Peña, the mayor of Caracas and one of the most prominent figures in the pro-imperialist opposition coalition, used the metropolitan police under his control to fire on pro-Chávez demonstrators in Caracas November 12, killing one and wounding 20. This was one of many such instances in the country’s capital in recent months.

Peña has also refused to budge in a labor dispute with nearly a third of the police and attempted to force into early retirement pro-Chávez officers. After an armed confrontation between police officers on opposing sides, the president deployed the National Guard November 16 in armored personnel carriers who took control of the city’s 10 cop stations. Chávez also replaced the police chief.

Many workers and the majority of trade unions in basic industry opposed the reactionary work stoppage. "Fedepetrol [the oil workers union], the electrical workers, Sidor that organizes employees in steel and aluminum, the metro workers union in Caracas, and many others came out against the strike," said Orlando Chirino. "The textile and auto plants run full shifts in Valencia, for example. Even chambers of commerce in at least three states broke with Fedecámaras and said no to the strike."

According to Chirino and others interviewed across the country, a number of businesses--McDonald’s and Wendy’s restaurants, a number of large shopping centers mostly in well-off areas, several banks, and a few other businesses--closed the first days of the strike in Caracas, Valencia, and other large urban centers. At best, the strike succeeded in closing 40 percent of such establishments in these areas. Even the Associated Press reported December 2 that "while many shops were shuttered, Caracas’ streets bustled with pedestrians, cars crawled through traffic, and cafeterias, shoe stores and video shops were open for business." In most rural areas of the country, however, the strike was a non-event."

In short, their strike was a failure, that’s why they stepped up their disruptions in the oil industry," Nellie Yaerte said.

Faced with this situation, and divisions within the opposition, Washington has not taken as openly aggressive a stance against the Chávez government as it did in April when a similar strike preceded the U.S.-backed coup. "We call on all sides to reject violence, act responsibly, continue to support the dialogue process, and respect constitutional processes," said U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher December 6.  
 
Aspirations of working people
The economic downturn in Venezuela, which the opposition has tried to blame on the government, has continued to take its toll on working people. The country’s gross national product contracted by 6.4 percent the first nine months of this year, unemployment stands at 17 percent, and inflation at 30 percent. Despite this, opposition among working people to efforts to oust the president has stiffened. "They can carry a coup against Chávez. But then we come: those of us who are with Chávez," Alexander Carrizo, a shoe repairman, told the Associated Press November 30. "There is going to be a civil war here if they topple Chávez." Nellie Yaerte pointed out that "with all the problems, going back to what we had before 1998 will take away any hope for a better future, any hope to get rid of the slavery to the rich."

In a December 1 telephone interview, Armando Serpa, a farmer in San Carlos, pointed to some of the problems Yaerte referred to. "The Supreme Court declared four articles of the Law of Land unconstitutional about two weeks ago," he said. "One of them is Article 90, which allows expropriation of large idle estates and distribution of those lands to farmers like us. The government is appealing it. But this shows that the courts and many institutions are filled with the ‘squalid ones,’" the term often used in Venezuela to describe the pro-imperialist opposition. "We need a radical change."

Tomás Blanca, a fisherman in Cumaná, the capital of Sucre state, made a similar point in a December 3 telephone interview. "The credits to small fishermen laid out in the Law on Fishing and promised by the government have not materialized a year later," he said. "The big companies still hold economic power and have their people everywhere in the government. We support Chávez because he took our side, but we need action."

Blanca’s organization, the National Bolivarian Command of Artisan Fishermen, is planning a nationwide meeting in Caracas in January to press their demands, he said.  
 
 
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