--------- Forwarded message ---------- Reuters 13 April 2002 Venezuelan Slums Seethe at Chavez's Overthrow. CARACAS -- The sprawling slums of Venezuela's capital seethed with rage on Saturday at the military coup that toppled populist President Hugo Chavez as his political backers struggled to regroup and organize protests. A wildly gesticulating group surrounded a Reuters crew at a market in the grimy working-class neighborhood of Petare, shouting that they would fight back. "There's going to be a civil war here. The people are going to rise up," yelled Antonio Orellana, 65. With the fiery former paratrooper in military custody, his supporters said they would try to take their seats in the National Assembly for a scheduled session on Monday even though the new military-backed interim government has decreed the parliament's abolition. "We say this is a coup d'etat and that it is a lie that Chavez has resigned," said Willian Lara, who had been president of the National Assembly, talking to Reuters by telephone from a hiding place. He said he feared for his safety and that he had narrowly escaped arrest. There has been no word whether Chavez has been charged with a crime, but he was arrested and taken to a Caracas military base on Friday and has been kept incommunicado. Lara said he had since been transferred to the Caribbean island of La Orchila, but no military spokesman confirmed this. The United States, which had long been irritated by Chavez's friendship with Cuba and worried about his control of the world's fourth-largest oil-exporting nation, has said that it does not consider his overthrow a coup. Instead it blamed his government for triggering its own downfall by ordering gunmen to fire on Thursday's protest. Venezuela is now a deeply divided country. "Those who toppled him are thinking, decent people. It's the will of the people which was legitimized by the military action," said Adolfo Freites, a 49-year-old lawyer, speaking to Reuters in an elegant square in Caracas' upscale Altamira district, an anti-Chavez bastion. But in the slums surrounding Caracas, spreading over dusty hillsides, Chavez is more of a hero than ever. Local news media, which are passionately anti-Chavez, have largely ignored the reaction of Venezuela's poor majority. "What's going to happen to us humble, poor people? President Chavez helped us. The country is divided between rich and poor," said Jose Delgado, a 45-year-old cobbler. ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
