Venezuela Coverage

4-12-2002 ^Protesters besiege Cuban Embassy in Venezuela< ^By ANDREW SELSKY= ^Associated Press Writer=    CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) _ About 500 Venezuelans, chanting and blowing whistles, demonstrated outside the Cuban Embassy on Friday, angered by Cuban leader Fidel Castro's support of ousted President Hugo Chavez and claiming four of Chavez's lieutenants were hiding inside.    Riot police stood between the protesters and the embassy, its turquoise walls spattered with eggs. Demonstrators vandalized at least three cars in front of the embassy _ breaking windows, puncturing tires and pouring white paint inside _ thinking the vehicles belonged to the former members of Chavez's government.    The protesters also reportedly cut telephone and electrical wires leading to the embassy.    In Havana, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told journalists the Cuban diplomats had been instructed to protect the mission "with their very lives." H...

4-14-2002 ^Interim president resigns in Venezuela after thousands protest to restore Chavez to power< ^By ANDREW SELSKY= ^Associated Press Writer=    CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) _ Venezuela's interim leader resigned Saturday after a single day in office as thousands of supporters of ousted President Hugo Chavez protested for his return.    Throngs crowded around the presidential palace in Caracas early Sunday after the announcement, setting off fire crackers as they waited in excitement for Chavez's anticipated return from military custody.    "Chavez is coming! Chavez is coming," said Dario Fereira, an unemployed man wearing a tattered shirt.    Just hours before, Interim President Pedro Carmona said over the radio: "Before the nation, before the Venezuelan people, I present this resignation."    As Carmona made the announcement, gunfire rang in the streets in a third bloody day of upheaval that officials said left at least nine...

4-13-2002 ^Interim leader replaces ousted Venezuelan President Chavez, but move draws criticism< ^By ANDREW SELSKY= ^Associated Press Writer=    CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) _ As businessman Pedro Carmona took control of Venezuela's interim government, police clashed with hundreds of protesters in the capital and elsewhere demanding the return of ousted leader Hugo Chavez. Several Latin American leaders called the new administration illegitimate.    In downtown Caracas, hundreds of people chanted "Chavez will be back!" and "Democracy, not dictatorship!" Police fired tear gas as police cars raced back and forth after reports of looting and disturbances.    Several hundred others protested outside Caracas' Fort Tiuna, the military base where Chavez was taken into detention early Friday. Police dispersed the crowd by firing plastic bullets.    Chavez's supporters reject the military's claims that he resigned after being confronted by top comman...

4-13-2002 ^Thousands protest to restore Chavez to power in Venezuala; control of military unraveling< ^By ANDREW SELSKY= ^Associated Press Writer=    CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) _ Thousands protested in several cities for the return of ousted President Hugo Chavez as control over the military began unraveling Saturday, forcing Venezuela's interim leader to postpone inaugurating his Cabinet.    The military of oil-rich Venezuela forced Chavez out on Friday. Some commanders refused to accept the military's appointed successor, Pedro Carmona, but there have been no reports of fighting between members of Venezuela's security forces. Meanwhile, the country was left without a working government.    Tens of thousands of Chavez supporters surged toward the presidential palace as night fell Saturday, demanding Chavez's return. Earlier in the day, police drove back smaller groups of protesters with tear gas, and gunfire was heard in the nearby Catia slum, a Cha...

4-14-2002 ^Two days after ouster, Chavez triumphantly returns to power on wings of popular uprising< ^By ANDREW SELSKY= ^Associated Press Writer=    CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) _ President Hugo Chavez returned triumphantly to office two days after he was ousted and arrested by Venezuela's military, raising his fist in the air as he greeted supporters and reclaimed the presidential palace Sunday.    "I'm still stupefied. I'm still assimilating," Chavez said in a live TV address to the nation after flying by helicopter to the palace in Caracas from captivity on a Venezuelan island in the Caribbean, the last of five places where he was held.    Chavez appealed for calm as thousands of Venezuelans thronged the streets outside the gates, singing the national anthem and setting off firecrackers to celebrate his return.    "I do not come with hate or rancor in my heart, but we must make decisions and adjust things," said Chavez, who appeared in go...

11-9-2002 ^Venezuelan government fights on two fronts: the opposition, its radical supporters< ^By ANDREW SELSKY= ^Associated Press Writer=    CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) _ Mayor Alfredo Pena's building looks more like a besieged fortress than a city hall, with bullet-pocked windows and doors barricaded against radicals loyal to President Hugo Chavez.    "If the world wants proof that Chavez doesn't want dialogue, here it is," Pena said in his office, daylight peeking through a bullet hole in a red curtain.    Seven months after a coup briefly toppled the leftist president, Venezuela is descending into political chaos again. Chavez must not only contend with opposition forces, but also admits he is losing control of his radical street fighters.    On Monday, a pro-Chavez mob led by Lina Ron, a former activist for the homeless, ignored pleas by Chavez officials and attacked an opposition march demanding an early referendum on Chavez's presid...

12-20-2002 ^Huge protests in Venezuela seek to force president from office; strike dries up gas pumps< ^By ANDREW SELSKY= ^Associated Press Writer=    CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) _ Hundreds of thousands of whistle-blowing demonstrators demanding President Hugo Chavez's resignation took to Venezuela's streets Friday, the 19th day of a general strike that has crippled the oil-rich nation's economy.    Some protesters waved Venezuelan flags while others painted their faces in the national colors of red, yellow and blue. Traffic lightened to a minimum on Caracas's normally jammed streets because of the protests _ and because many cars were out of gas with most filling stations closed.    Strike leaders called Friday's demonstrations, converging at the Plaza Venezuela in the heart of the capital, a "mega-march" and a "takeover of Caracas."    Gina Gonzalez, a 21-year-old law student, said she was protesting "because I want Chavez out. He h...

12-23-2002 ^Strike fault line divides Venezuelan capital into haves and have-nots< ^By ANDREW SELSKY= ^Associated Press Writer=    CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) _ Thousands of holiday shoppers throng the streets of working-class western Caracas, where a general strike designed to oust President Hugo Chavez seems a figment of the imagination.    Meanwhile, in well-to-do eastern Caracas, the work stoppage is very much real, with shops and restaurants closed, the sidewalks mostly devoid of pedestrians.    Entering its fourth week on Monday, the strike has cut a fault line through the center of the capital, creating two cities that look nothing alike and underscoring political divisions.    Western Caracas is a Chavez stronghold, and its bustling streets help explain why Chavez is certain the strike will fail. Merchants here gave up the strike within days after it began Dec. 2 _ if they heeded it at all.    Many shop managers and stree...

8-16-2004 ^Venezuelan president claims victory in recall referendum; opposition claims fraud< ^By ANDREW SELSKY= ^Associated Press Writer= ¶   CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) _ President Hugo Chavez survived a referendum to oust him, according to results Monday, and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and other election observers urged the opposition to accept the vote, deflating claims of fraud. ¶   The victory stunned opposition figures who have fought for years to oust and will likely give Chavez an even broader mandate for his "revolution for the poor." Chavez is seen as a hero by Venezuela's majority poor but as an authoritarian by his critics, particularly among the wealthy. ¶   Though the opposition swiftly rejected the results, saying they were fraudulent, Carter and the head of the Organization of American States, who led observer teams, said the voting appeared clean. ¶   Carter said the partial results announced Monday morning by election officials showi...

8-19-2004 ^BC-Venezuela-Recall, 2nd Ld-Writethru,0604< ^U.S. firm embroiled in Venezuela referendum controversy defends its exit poll< ^By ANDREW SELSKY= ^Associated Press Writer=    CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) _ A U.S. pollster whose firm wrongly predicted President Hugo Chavez would lose a recall referendum on Thursday defended the exit poll, which has landed in the center of a national controversy.    The poll by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates has become such a hot issue because the opposition, which spent more than a year mounting the drive to force Chavez from office, insists it shows the results from Sunday's referendum itself were fraudulent.    Former President Carter and the secretary general of the Organization of American States, Cesar Gaviria, both monitored the vote and endorsed the referendum results.    The exit poll, released 4 1/2 hours before voting stations closed, said 59 percent would vote Chavez out of offic...

11-20-2004 Venezuela's president vows to track down killers of top prosecutor< ^By ANDREW SELSKY= ^Associated Press Writer=    CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) _ President Hugo Chavez vowed to track down the killers of a state attorney whose death in a car bomb has shaken the oil-rich South American nation and renewed the specter of violence.    However he appeared to back away from a claim by his spokesman that "terrorists" training in Florida were responsible for the assassination of Danilo Anderson.    Anderson, known to many Venezuelans as the "super prosecutor," was preparing a case against nearly 400 people who backed Venezuela's 2002 coup. He was killed when two explosions ripped through his SUV as he drove through the capital around midnight Thursday.    "The attack against Danilo Anderson is an attack against all of us," Chavez said in a televised address to the nation late Friday, adding that it was also an attack on Venezuelans' dr...

11-21-2004 ^Political opposition in shambles in Venezuela as Chavez consolidates power< ^By ANDREW SELSKY= ^Associated Press Writer=    CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) _ Shoppers now crowd Venezuela's shopping malls, two years after they were padlocked during a national strike against President Hugo Chavez. The economy is robust once again. The mass demonstrations that paralyzed the capital are no more.    But underneath the veneer of normalcy in this oil-rich nation is deep frustration felt by Chavez's opponents after three efforts to unseat him failed: a coup, a national strike and a referendum. They are in disarray and unable to challenge a president they accuse of steering Venezuela into a Cuba-style dictatorship.    As Chavez moves to further centralize power and advance what he calls his revolution for the poor, the risk that extremists will turn to violence was underscored by the assassination Thursday of a state attorney who was intending to prose...