[Nettime-bold] More on Venezuela

[Gita Hashemi <gita@yorku.ca>]

Article by: Reuters via ProletarianNews
Saturday 13 Apr 2002

Summary:Reuters. 13 April 2002. Venezuelan Slums Seethe at Chavez\'s Overthrow.

Weblink: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews

Reference at indymedia website: 
http://www.indymedia.org:8081//front.php3?article_id=170967

Article:

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.

======================

Article by: luther blissett
Saturday 13 Apr 2002

Summary:communication with Canadian IMC from Venezuelan on the ground 
in caracas.

Reference at indymedia website: 
http://www.indymedia.org:8081//front.php3?article_id=170959

Article:
>Good morning, I\'m still Ok.
>
>Thanks for your support, as you recommend I\'ll try to get as much
>information as I can. Until now there\'s only me but i\'m getting in touch
>with some other people that where in that march and saw the same stuff that
>I did. I\'m also going to try to take some pictures it\'s a difficult task but
>I think I can accomplish it. I\'m trying to get some different pictures from
>the march, different of the one the medias are showing. I don\'t know how to
>program computers but I can find someone to do it, why is that important?
>How will that help? I do have technical skills though... I can write to you
>in spanish, english and french, what ever you like...
>
>This is the last news I got:
>
>According to some sources I got yesterday night and this morning there have
>been some revoltes around the country, people have taken the streets of the
>poverty areas and thousand and thousand of people went to Fuerte Tiuna,
>where they are holding Chavez, to manifest their support to him and the
>National Guard repress them they force them to move away, some gun shoots
>where heard but I my source couldn\'t get an accurated information about it.
>This is the same National Guard that said they are against repressing the
>citizens and take sides in favor of some group of people. Clearly the
>National Guard it\'s taking somebody\'s side here now.
>
>The media still without showing any of this information they haven\'t even
>show this march. Now I\'m thinking, Is this a fair way of inform??? I\'m still
>saying this is a media strike...
>
>I just got a last minute rumor, according to someone that call me, they are
>holding all of the ministers in the Supreme Court House and they are
>supposed to be running their trials and pressing charges agaisnt them
>without anybodys presence or any TV or radio coverage. Now I think isn\'t the
>citizens supposed to press the charges agaisnt them and find them guilty or
>not of those charges??? Remember this last paragraph it\'s just a rumor...
>

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