HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ----- Original Message -----
From: Jose G. Perez
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2001 5:25 PM
Subject: [CubaNews] Venezuela: so clearly a class struggle even
Reuters can't miss it Venezuela land law dispute pitting rich vs
poor
By Daniel Flynn CARACAS, Venezuela, Dec 10 (Reuters) - As Venezuelan businesses shut their doors
Monday in outrage at President Hugo Chavez's
'revolution,' peasant farmer Jose Caceres
said the leftist leader's plans to
redistribute
land was bolstering his support among the
poor.
Amid a sea of placards reading 'Down With Rich Landowners' at a pro-government rally in Caracas,
Caceres complained that wealthy Venezuelans had
long abused the impoverished masses until the
election of former paratrooper Chavez.
'We support the 'Commander' Hugo Chavez Frias because he is the only president in the last
40 years to give the people some hope. Before
that we just had humiliation, poverty, hunger
and death,' said the sun-baked Caceres.
As the biggest anti-government protest during Chavez's three-year-old rule brought Caracas
to a virtual halt, over five-thousand loyal
'Chavistas' gathered in the midday heat.
They applauded wildly as their hero pledged to defy opposition from the 'elites' of
business group Fedecamaras to the new Land
Law, which allows the state to reduce large
estates and redistribute idle property.
Now, with the land law, people in the countryside support Chavez with even more
force,' said Caceres, near a poster of
Argentine Cuban guerrilla icon Che Guevara. 'His popularity remains intact.'
Outside the square where the rally was taking place, normally-bustling Caracas had a Sunday
atmosphere as shops, banks and businesses
closed their doors. Fedecamaras convened the
one-day stoppage to protest the Land Law and
seven other reforms decreed by Chavez using
special legislative powers.
ENEMIES OF THE REVOLUTION Although Venezuela has one of the most uneven land distributions in the Americas,
businessmen say the legislation threatens
constitutional property rights.
Chavez has billed the legislation as an essential step to alleviate the poverty
which afflicts more than half Venezuela's
24 million inhabitants. Government loyalists at the rally borrowed from Chavez's class-orientated rhetoric,
depicting Monday's political action as a
dispute between rich elites and the poor
masses.
Terror to the oligarchs,' shouted Chavez, a former coup leader, as he whipped the
crowd into a frenzy.
Meanwhile, pamphlets circulated in the crowd with an offensive picture of
Fedecamaras chiefs sitting on a toilet
with sweat dripping off their faces. Fedecamaras are all enemies of the revolution because it harms their personal interests,'
said Roque Gonzalez, 54, dressed in Chavez's
trademark paratrooper's beret. 'The peasants
and people of Venezuela have never wanted a war
between rich and poor. What we want is justice.' Many Chavez supporters complained that they had been locked out of their workplaces on Monday by
the owners. While Monday's stoppage remained
largely nonviolent, some scuffles broke out
in downtown Caracas, near the Fedecamaras headquarters.
'This is a peaceful revolution. What we want is the happiness of the people, we do not want
conflict with these elites,' said Gonzalez.
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