Venezuela Imports Gasoline

Venezuela imported Brazilian gasoline Saturday in a role reversal for the oil-rich nation whose government is struggling with a strike that has made fuel scarce.

Officials said the gasoline being unloaded by the Brazilian tanker Amazon Explorer at the eastern port of Puerto la Cruz would help undermine the 27-day-old opposition strike aimed at driving President Hugo Chavez from office.

Chavez, who has sacked striking executives, sent troops aboard idled tankers and replaced some crew members with foreigners in a bid to kick-start crippled state oil firm PDVSA, and decorated loyal workers at Puerto la Cruz with medals.

“We haven’t yet obtained victory, but we are going to win the battle for PDVSA, the battle for Venezuela,” he roared in a typically colorful speech spiced with references to South American independence hero Simon Bolivar.

Blasting strikers as “criminals” and “traitors,” he said that the opposition, which is led by business and unions, would be defeated and oil production would soon return to normal.

The strike has almost completely choked off fuel shipments from the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter, and started a gasoline drought in a country where people are accustomed to filling their gas tanks for the price of a hamburger.

The protest also has caused headaches in the United States, which usually buys about 14% of its oil imports from Venezuela and is facing possible disruptions to Middle Eastern oil supplies if it goes to war with Iraq.

The Amazon Explorer’s 521,900 barrels will cover fuel needs in this gasoline-guzzling nation for only about a day. One strike leader, former PDVSA executive Juan Fernandez, compared the ship’s arrival to “emptying a bottle of water in the desert.”

Chavez’s opponents say the former paratrooper, who was jailed after an unsuccessful coup attempt in 1992 but won an election in 1998, is trying to found a communist dictatorship modeled on the rule of his Cuban friend Fidel Castro.

Demanding immediate elections, his opponents refuse to wait until August, when Chavez says the constitution will allow a referendum on his government, due to continue until 2007.

His rule has been marred by allegations of corruption and authoritarianism, and the country was in deep recession even before the strike hamstrung the economy.

But Chavez retains significant support among the poor, grateful for anti-poverty policies such as easy loans.

Polls show he is still more popular than any single figure from the opposition, which has staged huge street rallies.

In a fresh sign of the divisions cleaving Venezuela, opposition demonstrators clashed with Chavez supporters in the western city of Barquisimeto before riot police broke up the disturbances with tear gas.

Lines hundreds of cars long outside Caracas filling stations have become a common sight.