From: Barry Stoller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Peoples War] Class struggle in Venezuela
AFP (with additional material by AP and Reuters). 10 December 2001.
National strike paralyzes Venezuela.
CARACAS -- Venezuela woke up Monday to silence as a national strike went
into effect, closing down businesses and leaving few people and cars on
the streets.
Business and labor leaders called for the unprecedented joint 12-hour
national strike against the government's unilateral policies that
supporters of President Hugo Chavez vowed to oppose in dueling protests.
The strike, which began at 6 a.m. (1000 GMT), was organized by
Fedecamaras, the country's main business association, to protest a
series of presidential decrees dealing with economic policy. Venezuela's
main labor union, the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV), quickly
joined in.
Chavez quickly deployed thousands of regular and military police to make
sure public transportation, including the Caracas underground system,
gas stations and bakeries in the capital continued to operate normally.
Airport officials said airports were working normally.
Fedecamaras leader Pedro Carmona told local radio and television:
"Eighty percent of the bakeries, 100 percent of the wholesale markets,
100 percent of the banks, 100 of the schools and private universities
and 80 percent of the state schools" had closed.
As Carmona was speaking, some 2,000 rural workers were gathering in the
city's central Caracas square where Chavez was due to make a speech at
midday on his controversial land reform law.
Peasants from the countryside gathered to protest the stoppage and to
rally in support of a disputed agrarian reform law.
That law is one of a package of 49 laws the popular Chavez approved
November 13 by presidential decree, bypassing the country's parliament
and ignoring its business community.
Chavez angrily condemned the "immoral" and "anarchic" work stoppage,
accusing its organizers of conspiring to destabilize the country.
"The strike, to me, doesn't bother me at all. Absolutely not at all,"
Chavez said. "Nobody, and nothing, will stop this revolution."
Chavez, who says his "revolutionary" reforms will help the majority of
poor Venezuelans, planned later in the day to formally launch the Land
Law, which aims to break up unproductive, large private estates and
distribute idle land to poor peasants.
Chavez says his land reform law will correct the injustice of only 1
percent of the population owning more than 60 percent of the country's
arable land.
Chavez dismissed the strike promoters as a rich, resentful minority of
"oligarchs."
He alleges they fear their interests will be affected by the reforms he
says are needed to close the gap between rich and poor in Venezuela.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Barry Stoller
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews
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