Week Five: "He's a crazy person. Any other president would have resigned by now."

The month-long strike aimed at ousting President Hugo Chávez has all but shut down Caracas's wealthier east side, home to most of the president's opponents. On the west side, however, where Mr. Chávez's support is strong among the city's poor, there's an equal determination to conduct business as usual.

Milagros Corales's home on the east side, for instance, has never been cleaner. She's been baking up a storm and ironing every last T-shirt. She's no wonder woman, just a bored housewife. Ms. Corales says she mostly cleans, watches television, or talks on the phone with family and friends.

Her son Andres has been home from school for a month, and while he's a good little guy, she doesn't know how much more of him she can stand.

"The teachers are on strike so there are no classes. And nobody knows when school is going to start again," she says as her son punches the air with his purple action figure's tiny fists, oblivious to his country's current political problems.

At the Gramma supermarket, one of the few places on the east side that is open, Luisa Mercedes González Castro is looking at the empty shelf that used to contain corn flour - a staple in the Venezuelan diet and one of the first grocery items to become scarce.

She is against the strike because she doesn't believe it's working. "You can't link a political problem with an economic problem," says this retired economist, who also says that Chávez has a lot of good ideas but took over a very difficult situation.

Food is becoming scarce on the east side. So if Ms. González needs something, she just hops on the subway and finds it out west, where few are striking. She won't use her car for anything so mundane. The state-owned oil company is also on strike and gasoline is hard to come by all over the city. Some people wait in line overnight to fill up. She says she is saving her gas for something fun with friends - but even there the options are limited.

Movie theaters, discos, and sports centers are all closed, giving people few means for taking their minds off politics.

Carlos Flores, the owner of the east side's Macaracuay Fitness Center, says he decided to stay open because people need a way to relieve stress. He feels he is contributing to the country by staying open, and has been getting notes and messages thanking him for doing so.

"This is a way for people to relax and work their bodies instead of their minds," says the muscle man.

Lots of Caracans say they are plowing through books, becoming card sharks, and watching way too much TV. Even baseball in this ball-and-bat-crazed country has been suspended indefinitely.

"Baseball was all we had left," says José Manuel Benitez, a despondent fan staring up at the locked stadium in the center of the city.

This season was supposed to spotlight Francisco "K-Rod" Rodriguez, the right- handed pitcher whose performance with the Anaheim Angels in the 2002 World Series made him a national hero in his native Venezuela. He, along with US players who came down for the winter season, left the country upon the advice of the US Embassy.

For some, the strike has been a lesson in politics. Jack Barrios, who says he never really cared about Venezuelan politics before, and never watched the news or read the papers, was one of the hundreds of thousands who waited up to 10 hours in line to register to vote or update their voting information before last week's deadline.

"I haven't really gone on the marches or banged pots at night. I feel voting is where I can make a difference," he says, admitting that he still does not watch a lot of TV. "It gets me really stressed out."

Mr. Barrios, an interior designer, has been out of work since the strike began - and it's starting to hurt.

"I used to never think twice about going into a store and buying a pair of pants or shoes, never thought about inviting a friend for dinner. Now, forget it," he says. "I'm being very conservative with money because I don't know when work is going to start again."

Just two blocks from the heart of the opposition's activities in Plaza Alta Mira, Super Hollywood Cleaners is one of the few busi- nesses that remain open. Owner Francesco Merola says he shut his doors the first day of the strike, but has been open ever since "because I have a lot of bills."

He says the strike is especially hard on small businesses that still have to pay rent, electricity, and taxes. "I think it's a political problem, and the economy shouldn't suffer for a political problem," he says.

But even though he is open, says Mr. Merola, leaning across the counter, business is bad. Everyone is out marching in T-shirts and jeans and not dressing up for work, thus not needing dry-cleaning services.

Across town, just steps from the presidential palace at Mira Flores, things look relatively normal. People buzz about, heading to work and doing business on the streets. This is one of Chávez's biggest enclaves of support, and not many people are on strike. In fact, many who live here couldn't afford to go one day without work.

"The opposition is hitting Chávez hard, but things here are still normal," says Larry Bonilla, an ice cream salesman, walking home with his daughter.

Mr. Bonilla's daughter will be starting classes, as usual, in January, because her teachers aren't on strike. He will continue to work, as usual, because his boss is not on strike. He takes the bus and subway, as usual, because he doesn't have a car.

He believes that if Chávez were to call early elections, which even two-thirds of Chávez's supporters say they want, he would win, because "he's different from the others. He's a crazy person. Any other president would have resigned by now."

Guido Manfredi owns a tailor shop in the heart of the city's old center. He says he's been open since the strike began, but because many of his customers come from the east side for alterations, his business has been struggling.

Still, he says as he looks around at the daily activity surrounding him, nothing much has changed here.

"You wouldn't think anything was going on in the country if you came here," he says.

YEAREND PICTURES 2002 - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez cheers while holding up a parrot wearing one of Chavez' trademark red berets, in Caracas October 13, 2002. Chavez, ignoring renewed opposition pressure for him to resign six months after surviving a coup, led hundreds of thousands of supporters in a big show of strength for his self-proclaimed revolution. REUTERS/Kimberly White

Venezuela Strikers Declare Economic War on Chavez***Overall national support for the strike that started Dec 2 has showed some signs of fraying, especially in the commercial sector where some owners of small businesses and shops have reopened to try to recoup massive sales losses over Christmas. But opposition leaders said most major private companies, big shopping malls and franchise owners were maintaining the shutdown along with the strategic oil industry. Zambrano said the government would begin to really feel the full economic impact of the strike this month. "This government has no base with which to sustain itself, this country is ungovernable under this administration," he said. "Its cash flow has been badly hit ... they won't have enough to pay the public sector unless they eat up their reserves," he said, adding "It's not possible for Chavez to rule without oil."

The disruption to oil sales, which account for half of government revenues and 80 percent of the country's total export revenues, has badly mauled an economy already shuddering under the effects of a severe recession. The oil-reliant economy, battered by political turmoil, contracted sharply in 2002 and inflation ended the year at a five-year-high of 31.2 percent, the Central Bank said. Economists say the oil industry strike has cost the government well over $1 billion in lost income. This means it may have to delay payments of public debt or public sector salaries. "The government has its back against the wall from the fiscal point of view," Francisco Rodriguez, the top economic adviser to the National Assembly, told local radio.***

Members of the opposition wave national flags during a protest march in Caracas, Venezuela, Sunday, Dec 29, 2002. Tens of thousands of opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez marched Sunday to demand the president resign and to mark the 28th day of a nationwide strike that has virtually halted oil exports and evaporated domestic gasoline supplies.(AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

Brazil Sees Coalition With Venezuela, Cuba***"We will form an 'axis of good,' good for the people, good for the future," Chavez said at the time. But Brazilian political scientists dismissed the possibility of an "Axis of Good" being created by the meetings between Silva, Castro and Chavez. "There is no way this represents the beginning of Chavez' 'Axis of Good' and much less the 'Axis of Evil' imagined by right-wing Americans," said Luciano Dias, a political scientist at the Brasilia-based Brazilian Institute of Political Studies. Silva, who is popularly known as Lula, "would never even consider creating a nucleus of leftists in Latin America, he is too smart for that," Dias said. U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher would not comment Thursday on the possibility of the alliance.

Chavez left his strikebound and politically riven country despite the crippling work stoppage aimed at toppling him from the presidency of the world's fifth largest oil producer. Silva also has a compelling reason for staying on friendly terms with Chavez: The long border the two countries share. "Brazil worries very much about violence in Venezuela spilling over into Brazil," Haber said. "So you want to have peaceful relations with the Venezuelan, regardless of who is in charge."

During his breakfast with Silva, Chavez also brought up the idea of increasing cooperation among Latin American state-owned oil industries and set up a company called Petro-America. "It would become a sort of Latin American OPEC," Chavez said. "It would start with Venezuela's PDVSA and Brazil's Petrobras," and could come to include Ecopetrol from Colombia, PetroEcuador from Ecuador, and PetroTrinidad from Trinidad and Tobago." Last week, Cardoso's outgoing administration sent a tanker to Venezuela carrying 520,000 barrels of gasoline, but that barely dented shortages around the country. If Silva decides to help Chavez with Brazilian oil workers, it probably won't accomplish much either, said Albert Fishlow, who heads Columbia University's Brazilian studies program. "If he does it will be minimal and not enough to affect the situation," Fishlow said.***

Venezuela's opposition comes together to try ousting Chavez - but what next? *** CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela's diverse opposition has closed ranks for a formidable campaign to oust President Hugo Chavez. But its leaders have yet to consider what happens next or who would run as a candidate should Chavez step aside or agree to new elections. Take Enrique Mendoza, the folksy conservative governor of Miranda State who is considered a potential challenger. He's holed up in a hotel conference room juggling three cell phones, strategizing and nervously watching the television news amid a general strike that has brought Venezuela's economy to a virtual standstill. "Look at all of those people!" he says, popping out of his seat. He watches an attempt by Chavez supporters to break through an opposition roadblock: "That'll teach them to be respectful." His candidacy? His platform? "We can't talk about that until we know there will be elections," he says, reaching to answer another call.

A recent survey by the Caracas-based Datanalisis polling firm gives Mendoza 63 percent of the vote in a hypothetical race against Chavez. Pollsters interviewed 1,000 people in two major cities Nov. 11-19. The survey had a margin of error of 3 percentage points. Mendoza is an independent aligned with the new Justice First party, which has placed itself at the forefront of the anti-Chavez campaign. The party is popular among young, middle-class Venezuelans because its leaders are mostly under 40 and unassociated with corrupt governments of the past.

Another serious contender is Julio Borges, an Oxford-educated legislator and head of Justice First. He's the exact opposite of Chavez, a former army paratrooper from humble origins who spent two years in jail for leading a failed coup in 1992 before sweeping the 1998 election with tough talk against a corrupt political establishment. Borges, 33, won converts by personally leading a march through a band of rock-throwing Chavez supporters to deliver 2 million signatures demanding a referendum on the president's administration. *** Borges' party once drafted a proposal for an entire new constitution, based on decentralized government and more private participation in the economy. But such efforts have been sidelined by the push to oust Chavez.

There's also Carlos Ortega, the gruff president of the 1 million-member Venezuelan Workers Confederation who, as former head of the largest oil workers union, has dealt a serious blow to the Chavez government by leading a strike for higher pay. Ortega stunned fellow opposition leaders by announcing at a rally that the strike would begin Dec. 2. He also sent thousands on a march during an April strike to the presidential palace, which led to 19 people being killed by gunfire and a coup that briefly ousted Chavez. ***

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