Venezuela Labor

Sporadic armed clashes in the shantytown slums of this modern but wreckage-strewn city took another dozen lives Wednesday as the government of President Carlos Andres Perez, already in a state of virtual martial law, announced pay raises and other economic measures to end three days of bloody riots. Since the rioting and looting erupted Monday in response to sharp increases in gasoline prices and bus fares, at least 200 people have died in eight Venezuelan cities, unofficial surveys showed.

Sporadic armed clashes in the shantytown slums of this modern but wreckage-strewn city took another dozen lives Wednesday as the government of President Carlos Andres Perez, already in a state of virtual martial law, announced pay raises and other economic measures to end three days of bloody riots. Since the rioting and looting erupted Monday in response to sharp increases in gasoline prices and bus fares, at least 200 people have died in eight Venezuelan cities, unofficial surveys showed.

About 1 million Venezuelans marched here Thursday to demand that President Hugo Chavez call early elections or a referendum on his rule--threatening a general strike if he didn't do so by Wednesday. Venezuela's biggest labor and business groups responded to the clamor immediately, announcing an Oct. 21 strike if Chavez didn't meet Wednesday's deadline. Chavez, whose term ends in 2007, will respond to the threat during a rally Sunday, said Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel.

Thousands of Venezuelan businesses closed Monday and millions of people stayed home from work in a nationwide strike against new laws that critics say stifle investment. President Hugo Chavez responded by calling out troops and police to patrol the tense streets, and he accused "corrupt economic elites" of conspiring against his government. He blamed the media for promoting the strike and threatened to decree legislation regulating the content of news reporting.

Police detained a dissident general Monday as a nationwide strike against President Hugo Chavez marked its 29th day. The strike has shut off shipments from the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, and police used tear gas Monday to separate opponents and supporters of Chavez outside the state oil monopoly's headquarters in Maracaibo, the hub of the country's oil-producing west.

Oil prices resumed their upward march Monday, boosted by a pledge from Iraq to cut off oil exports for a month and labor problems in Venezuela. Meanwhile, retail gasoline prices continued to creep higher, although motorists can look forward to a slightly cheaper fuel bill this summer driving season than during the previous two summers, the Energy Department said Monday. Another day of Middle East unrest pushed the price of West Texas intermediate, the U.S.

The shelves in Miguel Blanco's small general store have been empty for eight months--since looters went on a rampage in February. Since then Blanco has eked out a living selling meat at his store in Pinto Salinas, a tough neighborhood of shanties and public housing perched in the foothills overlooking Caracas. "I hope to build my stock back up little by little," Blanco, in a white butcher's apron, said from behind the meat counter of his otherwise empty store.

The decline in retail gasoline prices continued in California and the nation over the last week, a federal report showed Monday. But the good news for motorists was tempered as crude oil futures shot past $69 a barrel because of international labor strife and violence in Nigeria and the Middle East. In Nigeria, an important source of light sweet crude for U.S. refineries, hundreds of villagers chased workers away from a Niger Delta oil transfer facility run by Chevron on Monday.

Oil prices rose as Venezuela's worst labor strife in 30 years began to disrupt supplies from the fourth-largest exporter of crude to the U.S., highlighting the importance of the sometimes overlooked Latin country to the world market. Benchmark crude prices rose 31 cents Wednesday to $26.13 a barrel in New York as Venezuela was paralyzed for a second day by a general strike called to protest the policies of President Hugo Chavez.

The president bade farewell to his honor guard, young men armed with semiautomatic rifles who wept because Hugo Chavez was leaving, seemingly forever. The soldiers wanted to fight, to turn the Miraflores palace into a bunker against their enemies, but the president wouldn't let them. "Your lives are just beginning," Chavez said, according to his later account. At that moment on the night of April 11, it appeared that Chavez's three-year reign as Venezuela's strongman president was over.