Strike spurs major shutdowns
Fears of violence mount as roads, businesses close amid anti-government actions
CARACAS, VENEZUELA » An anti-government strike paralyzed parts of Venezuela on Thursday, as the nation’s crisis risked spiraling ahead of a contentious vote that many fear could move the country further down the path of authoritarian rule.
President Nicolás Maduro played down the strike, and some areas in the capital and elsewhere remained relatively unaffected. But in many districts, a large number of businesses were shuttered and protesters blocked roads as the opposition sought to stage Venezuela’s largest general strike since 2002.
In Caracas, the strike was most pronounced in the eastern neighborhoods, a middle- and upper-middleclass bastion. There were also reports of government troops firing tear gas at demonstrators and strikers. In the western city of Maracaibo, witnesses reported closures and said National Guard forces lobbed tear gas at protesters.
“We put up the barricade early, around 5 a.m. ... The objective is that no one goes to work, that people stay home for 24 hours,” said Caracas resident Edmond Fakrhi, 55. “We want liberty, we want democracy, we want everyone to have access to food.”
The effort unfolded as Maduro’s unpopular socialist government faced escalating international pressure to back off the special election on July 30. The vote would elect a body to rewrite the 1999 constitution and further squelch the opposition- controlled National Assembly in a move widely viewed by critics as a power grab.
The Trump administration, pressed by prominent U. S. lawmakers, is weighing sanctions up to and including bans on Venezuela’s all-important oil exports if the vote is not called off. In an official report, Luis Almagro, secretary general of the Organization of American States, said Wednesday that there are fears that the situation in Venezuela “will escalate into a bloodbath.”
“The reluctance of the international community to act in defense of democracy has allowed the situation to deteriorate incrementally but consistently, to the point where today it has become a full-blown humanitarian and security crisis,” Almagro later said at a U. S. Senate hearing. “Every step of the way it has been too little and too late.”
Pressure was building inside Venezuela, too. The last time the opposition called for a general strike was in October, but that effort did not elicit the widespread street closures seen Thursday. In 2002, a prolonged national strike failed to oust President Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013 and had anointed Maduro as his successor.
Unlike the wide popularity enjoyed by Chávez, support for Maduro is fast eroding amid food and medical shortages and runway inflation. On Sunday, the opposition carried out an unofficial referendum in which more than 7 million voters rejected the government’s bid to draw up a new constitution and demanded new national elections. This week, the op- position pledged to form a transitional government as part of its effort to force new elections.
On the streets of Caracas, Alfredo, a 17-year- old who did not give his last name for fear of reprisals, put up a barricade with his friends, all around his age, at 6 a.m.
“We’re tired,” he said. “We have to take to the streets. And people should do it even if leaders don’t do it. I’m here every day, and I’ll be here today, all day.”
Government officials, remained defiant and deemed the strike a failure. “The 700 most important businesses in the country are 100 percent working,” Maduro said Thursday on national TV. “Today, work triumphed.”
The president of the national federation of transportation workers, however, called the strike “an absolute success.”