Riots Abate in Venezuela; Pay Increases Announced

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. Authorities and independent observers said the worst of the rioting is over, however.

Caracas city morgue officials confirmed that at least 119, including 12 on Wednesday, had been killed in the capital city alone. About 1,000 have been wounded and 2,000 were jailed, Caracas press reports said.

Severe rioting was halted by combat-equipped troops and heavily armed police who were called out Tuesday when Perez suspended civil rights and imposed an indefinite 6 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew on the cities.

“The situation is under control, although there are still some small pockets of disturbance,” said Defense Minister Italo Valle del Alliegro in a nationally televised statement Wednesday night.

He spoke moments after Interior Minister Alejandro Izaguirre announced a set of economic measures, including public- and private-sector pay increases, that apparently were intended to cool public anger over the transportation and gasoline price rises. He also announced that price controls will be established over certain basic foods, including milk.

32% Pay Boost

Under the new decrees, which were first promised but not implemented 12 days ago, government workers will get an immediate 32% increase, and private-sector employees, no matter what their pay level, an across-the-board wage increase of 2,000 bolivars (about $57) a month.

The timing of the wage increases brought immediate criticism.

“The government made a crucial mistake,” said political economist Dr. Jose Gil Yepes, explaining the outbreak of rioting among the normally patient Venezuelans. “Instead of first raising salaries and then raising prices, they did the reverse, and everywhere it touched a spark.”

Gil said Venezuelan tempers were near the flash point “because after nearly 15 years of improvement and growth in the middle class following the beginning of democracy here, there have been 15 years in which income distribution has been regressing. With 90%-to-100% inflation in the past five years, people felt the situation was getting worse.”

“We have been playing with fire, and this is the responsibility of all of the elite of Venezuela,” Gil said.

The price rises that inflamed the rioters were an increase of as much as 80% in public transportation fares and a 90% jump in gasoline prices.

Used to Subsidies

Oil-producing Venezuela has long subsidized domestic fuel prices. Gasoline before the price boost cost about 15 cents a gallon. With the 90% boost, it jumped to 25.5 cents, prompting some here to say that the difference would seem laughable to Europeans and North Americans.

The fury of the rioting, which according to a local journalist led a few poverty-stricken residents of the Caracas slums to bare their chests and demand violent death as preferable to starvation, appeared to have abated by noontime Wednesday.

Although some gunfire could be heard Wednesday from shantytowns on the edge of Caracas, it was calm in the elegant Parque Central downtown business district, which was all but sealed off by burning cars and blockades Tuesday. Combat-ready army troops brandishing Belgian-made automatic assault rifles guarded the ultramodern performing arts center and the major hotels.

In the nearby San Augustin del Sur residential district, police and army patrols conducted house-to-house searches, looking for goods looted from shops throughout the city Monday and Tuesday.

Pulled-Away Screens

Shop display windows gaped forlornly through spears of broken glass, and many looted stores appeared stripped behind security screens that had been peeled away like the tops of sardine cans.

Near the partially razed security screens of some grocery stores and pharmacies, long lines of hopeful buyers formed, to be admitted one at a time as the few shopkeepers willing to do business carefully watched their customers. Classes at lower schools and the university were suspended indefinitely.

Hundreds of hitchhikers, deprived by the disturbances of public transportation, lined the roads and highways of the city, and many more walked from their workplaces to home, hurrying in some places to beat the 6 o’clock curfew.

Among the economic measures announced by Izaguirre was an order to government officials to release employees at 2 p.m. today so that they can get home before the deadline. He asked private employers to match the same hours.

Late Wednesday night, the city appeared to be calm, and reports from the country’s other major population centers indicated that the rioting had ended.

TRAVEL ADVISORY

Americans should defer trips to Venezuela “due to a situation of unrest, including street riots, loss of life, looting and destruction of property,” the State Department advised Wednesday.