Venezuelan politics get personal, divide families

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A portrait of Hugo Chavez stared down from a black metal frame as Jose Pastano sipped coffee after dinner with his sons in the slum house he shares with 17 relatives on the western edge of the capital.

Leaning forward in his chair, the retired bus mechanic chided his children for backing Venezuela's opposition, calling them ungrateful for all that the late president had done for the country during his 14 years in power. The ruling party's narrow win in last month's presidential vote, Pastano declared, was the only thing keeping U.S. firms from taking over Venezuela's state oil company.

"You are blind and deaf, you simply do not want to accept the truth," Pastano fumed. "The truth is that Chavez lifted millions of our countrymen out of poverty."

In a country evenly split between the ruling party and opposition, countless families have been torn apart by political divisions, mirroring tensions that have spilled out into in the street in sometimes bloody fashion.

Husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, parents and children find themselves on opposite sides of the bitter fight between Nicolas Maduro, whom the dying Chavez picked to succeed him, and an opposition that accuses the socialist government of using fraud and intimidation to win the presidency by a slim 1.49 percentage point margin.

Even the country's legislature broke down in violence last month, when pro-government lawmakers and their aides beat opponents who refused to recognize Maduro's electoral win.

To be sure, Venezuelans have long been obsessed by politics, especially during the Chavez years, as the populist leader denounced his opponents as "the squalid ones" and the opposition tried vainly to oust him through a coup and a referendum. Many, however, say the tensions have reached a pitch not seen here since that 2002 coup, which briefly pushed Chavez from office.

Throw in a postelection government crackdown on the opposition and, for many, daily life has become a balancing act between personal relationships and fiercely held political convictions.

"In every Chavista family you can always find a member of the opposition, and that relationship leads to conflict," said Mirla Perez, a professor of social work who studies family relations at the Central University of Venezuela. "It's a permanent tension that only gets relieved by not talking."

Many families are splitting along generational lines.

On one side: parents who vividly remember Venezuela's pre-Chavez struggles with inflation, currency devaluation, crime and political instability. While those problems have remained, and may have even worsened during Chavez's reign, his supporters point to the social programs Chavez started and take pride in the nationalistic rhetoric Chavez loved spinning.

On the other side of the familial divide: better-educated, more upwardly mobile adult children who spent their formative years exposed to Chavez's failings.

Jose Pastano's 43-year-old son Edwin, for example, is a transportation safety consultant, while his other son, Mauri, 47, works in a government medical lab.

"What is the socialism they are talking about?" Mauri cried out on a recent night after dinner. "They call themselves socialists, but they don't go up into the barrios to help the community!"

Edwin joined in on the attack. The government does nothing about the high crime, buckling roads and piles of trash choking the drains, he argued.

All the while, Jose Pastano's right eye twitched furiously as he tried to interrupt.

The 71-year-old father suddenly began breathing heavily, then slumped back in his chair and grabbed his chest, trembling.

"I need to calm down," Pastano said as his wife helped him to his bedroom. The debate was over, at least for that night.

Variations of that scene have played out even among many of Venezuela's best-known families.

Information Minister Ernesto Villegas frequently goes after government critics as the head of the state's media operation, while his brother Vladimir is a well-known journalist and prominent government critic.

Vladimir Villegas announced Thursday that he would be taking over as director of Globovision, the country's last opposition television channel.

"It's a question of navigating in the middle of a country that's very polarized and divided, a really complicated situation of political animosity," he said, stressing that he has always maintained good relations with his brother.

"Now, with the minister, I hope to have the best relations," he said.

In another high-profile case, one of the most important youth organizers for opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles is the daughter of former state governor Didalco Bolivar, who heads a party in the government's coalition.

"I love my father but I share Capriles' vision of the country," said Manuela Bolivar.

Injecting heat into the equation is the closeness many felt for the folksy, charismatic Chavez, who became a virtual member of many families. Since his death, government officials have been even proclaiming that Venezuelans remain all of Chavez's children.

"The relationship that ordinary Venezuelans had with the president wasn't a pragmatic relationship, a relationship of power," Perez said. "It's a family relationship."

Perez said she herself has seen her family divided along political lines.

"I had a tremendous argument with my mother" over the Easter holidays, Perez said. "She compared the feelings that she had after the death of Chavez with the feelings she had after my brother's death."

Angelica Ramirez, a 22-year-old university student from the eastern Venezuelan state of Bolivar, said she's stopped talking to her Chavista cousin and avoided visiting her grandparents the day after last month's vote for fear that political arguments would break out.

"Of course this affects emotions, it creates tension in the family," Ramirez said.

Her relatives declined interview requests.

In such an environment, 68-year-old Ines Pastano is indeed a rarity: a middle-of-the-road political agnostic.

She explained that her husband suffers from hypertension and heart palpitations and often can't stand the stress of the family's political discussions.

Then, she trudged to the center of the living room, and moved to one side.

"The Chavistas are over here," she said.

She motioned across the room. "And the opposition supporters are over here."

Finally, she moved back to the center, planting herself squarely between the two halves.

"And I'm here, right in the middle."

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Christopher Toothaker on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ctoothaker

Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mweissenstein

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Obama: US not interfering in Venezuelan election

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) — President Barack Obama says the idea that an American filmmaker detained by Venezuela's government is a spy is, in his words, "ridiculous."

Thirty-five-year-old Timothy Tracy, of West Hollywood, California, was formally charged last week with crimes including conspiracy, association for criminal purposes and use of a false document.

Obama says Tracy's case will be handled like every other in which a U.S. citizen gets into a "legal tangle" while abroad.

The president also said the U.S. hasn't tried "in any way" to interfere with Venezuela's recent election of Nicolas Maduro as president. Maduro is the hand-picked successor to the late Hugo Chavez. Opposition leader Henrique Capriles narrowly lost to Maduro and claims the election was stolen.

Obama commented in an interview with Spanish-language network Telemundo that's set to air Sunday.

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US man detained in Venezuelan post-vote crackdown

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A 35-year-old filmmaker from California has been arrested by Venezuelan authorities who are accusing him of fomenting postelection violence on behalf of the U.S. government.

President Nicolas Maduro said Thursday that he personally ordered Timothy Tracy's arrest on suspicion of "creating violence in the cities of this country." Venezuela's interior minister said Tracy was working for U.S. intelligence, paying right-wing youth groups to hold violent demonstrations in order to destabilize the country after Maduro's narrow election win last week.

Friends and family of Tracy told The Associated Press that he had been in Venezuela since last year making a documentary about the country, which is bitterly divided politically as the socialist heirs of the late President Hugo Chavez struggle to maintain control of a country beset by economic and political turmoil

The Georgetown University English graduate was a story consultant on the 2009 documentary "American Harmony," about competitive barbershop quartet singing, and produced the recent Discovery Channel program "Under Siege," about terrorism and smuggling across the U.S./Canada border.

"They don't have CIA in custody. They don't have a journalist in custody. They have a kid with a camera," said Aengus James, a friend and associate of Tracy's in Hollywood, California, and director of "American Harmony." ''He does not really know what he's doing."

James described Tracy as "fearless" but also somewhat quixotic.

"This whole thing came about with him at a party in South Florida," he said. "He met this cute girl who says, 'If you really are a documentary filmmaker you'll come tell the story of what is happening in Venezuela,' and if you say something like that to Tim he goes, whether or not he knows a single person there or knows anything about the political situation or the consequences."

Tracy had been detained at least twice before by Venezuela's SEBIN intelligence police. The last time was five days before the April 14 presidential election when he was taking video of a pro-government rally in the port city of Puerto Cabello, said an associate who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to endanger people inside Venezuela.

The U.S. Embassy in Caracas declined immediate comment, citing citizen privacy.

Prosecutors said Tracy was arrested Wednesday evening as he tried to fly out of Simon Bolivar International Airport outside the capital, Caracas.

Tracy's father Emmet, of Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, said that in his last email his son had asked for some airline miles so he could fly to the United States so they could be together for the father's 80th birthday.

The prosecution said he would be brought to a court hearing Thursday to be formally charged under Venezuela's anti-terrorism laws.

The police had been friendly to Tracy during the previous incidents, with some even agreeing to appear in his documentary, the filmmaker's father said. Emmet Tracy said, however, that the family had begun urging his son to leave the country in light of the volatile political situation.

"Frankly it's the kind of scenario that we were concerned about and kept telling him," Emmet Tracy said.

Tensions in the country have been rising since Maduro beat opposition candidate Henrique Capriles in the April 14 election by less than 2 percentage points. The government insists the opposition fomented violence directed at ruling party supporters and official buildings in the days after the election. The opposition is demanding an audit of the vote, which it says was stolen.

Venezuela's government has long accused the United States of trying to undermine it, moving closer to Cuba, Iran and Russia after a failed 2002 coup attempt against Chavez that the George W. Bush administration initially recognized.

Tracy is the first American in recent memory to be detained in Venezuela on politically related charges, however.

"I gave the order that they detain him immediately, hand him to prosecutors with the proof that there is because nobody can be destabilizing this country, whatever they believe, because they're on the side of the bourgeoisie, no," Maduro said.

James said Tracy's Spanish is passable but not great.

He said Tracy "literally has no political agenda. He is very sympathetic to all sides. He's telling stories about people and what their life is like there."

"He has been involved in telling stories that told that international component. But he certainly never worked for the government," said James.

"He's trying to tell a human story," said James. "My fear is that he's gone in deeper than he should have."

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Bajak contributed from Lima, Peru.

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Frank Bajak on Twitter: http://twitter.com/fbajak

Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mweissenstein

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Options narrow for Venezuelan opposition

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela's opposition watched its options dwindle Wednesday after the head of the Supreme Court said there could be no recount of the razor-thin presidential election victory by Hugo Chavez's heir, leaving many government foes feeling the only chance at power is to wait for the ruling socialists to stumble.

Opposition activists and independent observers called the judge's declaration blatant and legally unfounded favoritism from a purportedly independent body that is packed with confederates of President-elect Nicolas Maduro, Chavez's hand-picked successor.

The recount issue isn't before the court, but its president, Luisa Morales, appeared on television at midday to declare that the opposition call for an examination of each and every paper vote receipt had "angered many Venezuelans."

It was an unsubtle reminder that virtually every lever of power in Venezuela sits in the hands of a ruling party unafraid to use almost all means at its disposal to marginalize its opponents.

"In Venezuela the system is absolutely automatic, in such a way that manual recounts don't exist," Morales said.

Opposition candidate Henrique Capriles kept silent, shying away from what experts called his only remaining option: public protest. By late afternoon, the normally vociferous state governor had simply called on Twitter for his followers to remain calm and resist provocations to violence from the government.

A day earlier, Capriles canceled a march in the capital planned for Wednesday, saying the government planned to react with violence. That decision came after Maduro urged his own supporters to take to the streets Wednesday. With the Capriles march called off, only a small crowd of Chavistas rallied outside the electoral council's offices.

Maduro hectored the opposition during a 45-minute live appearance on state television Wednesday, calling his opponents "fascists" who are plotting to overthrow the government.

"Superman could not win an election here," Diego Arria, a former U.N. ambassador and conservative member of the opposition coalition, said resignedly.

"We're left with the option of calling the United Nations, the Organization of American States and the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, but that won't have any impact here," Arria told The Associated Press. "If the population stands down, we lose."

Political scientist Jorge Restrepo of the CERAC think tank in Bogota, Colombia, said Maduro's problem isn't institutional power but "the fragility that will come from the economic side."

The government's strength is in its absolute control of the world's largest oil reserves, Restrepo said. Yet Chavez's diversion of tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues to finance one of the world's most generous welfares states has not brought prosperity.

The PDVSA state oil company is saddled with mounting debt and declining profits while price and currency controls imposed under Chavez have failed to stem inflation or the flight of dollars and are strangling private firms and contributing to shortages of food and medicines.

Venezuela is also afflicted with one of the world's highest homicide and kidnapping rates and chronic power outages that have worsened since Maduro took over from Chavez.

For the short term, however, the government appears politically strong and even the United States appeared to soften its insistence on a recount, with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry leaving open the possibility of recognizing Maduro as president even the votes aren't reviewed.

The Obama administration has stood almost alone, along with Paraguay and Panama, in insisting on a recount as other governments congratulated Maduro, who is scheduled to be formally sworn in Friday. Maduro's government said 15 countries had confirmed they were sending high-level delegations, among them Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Haiti, Uruguay and Argentina.

Kerry said there was no plan to send a U.S. diplomat, but when asked about whether the U.S. would recognize Maduro as legitimate, he said, "I can't give you a yes-or-no answer on that."

"If there are huge irregularities, we're going to have serious questions about the viability of that government. But that evaluation has to be made, and I haven't made it yet," Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Capriles has not formally filed a request for a recount with the National Electoral Council, which on Monday ratified Maduro as the winner with 50.8 percent of the vote to Capriles' 49 percent.

Capriles has, however, presented a series of allegations of vote fraud and other irregularities that he contends easily add up to more than Maduro's 262,000-vote winning margin out of about 14.9 million votes cast. In addition, the electoral council says about 100,000 votes from abroad had not been counted by Wednesday, and Capriles got about 90 percent of such overseas ballots in the October presidential election won by Chavez.

The list of alleged problems includes:

— Government backers forced pro-Capriles observers out of 283 polling places at which 722,983 votes were cast, and the lack of witnesses raises the possibility of fraud, including double voting.

— Menacing bands of government supporters turned pro-Capriles voters away from the polls.

— There were 3,535 damaged voting machines, representing 189,982 votes.

— Voting rolls included 600,000 dead people.

Morales, the Supreme Court chief, said Venezuela's voting system is so automated that a manual count doesn't exist. Technically, however, a recount is possible as paper receipts are issued for every vote cast and can be checked against tallies done by each voting machine, voter registries and centralized records.

The non-partisan Academy of Political and Social Sciences at the Central University of Venezuela said paper ballots are explicitly described in Venezuela's election law as a tool for investigating vote irregularities. "Recounting votes, along with protests and peaceful demonstrations, is one of the legitimate means of democratic co-existence," it said.

Maduro and his ruling circle have accused Capriles of inciting post-election violence by "neo-Nazi gangs" that the government said claimed seven lives and injured 61.

Maduro has further charged that the violence was being bankrolled and directed by the United States.

On Wednesday, he took another dig at the United States, which he last month accused of somehow being responsible for Chavez's cancer.

"Enough interventionism!" he boomed. "Take your eyes off Venezuela, John Kerry! Get out of here!

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Associated Press writers E. Eduardo Castillo, Frank Bajak, Fabiola Sanchez and Michael Weissenstein contributed to this report.

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Vivian Sequera on Twitter: http://twitter.com/VivianSequera

Christopher Toothaker on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ctoothaker

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Say again? Some zingers from Venezuelan campaign

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela's animated campaign ahead of its April 14 presidential election has seen its share of shake-your-head remarks by both candidates: Interim President Nicolas Maduro of the ruling party, and opposition candidate Henrique Capriles. Here's a sampling:

ON CHAVEZ:

Maduro, talking about Chavez's apparition as a "little bird" as Maduro was praying:

"It sang, and I responded with a song and the bird took flight, circled around once and then flew away, and I felt the spirit and blessings of Commander Hugo Chavez for this battle." (Maduro added sounds of wings flapping and bird chirps.)

Capriles' response:

"I believe he ate a little bird, because that's what he's got inside his head."

Maduro:

"Now the bourgeoisie and the right are talking about Maduro's little bird. What do they think? That we're ridiculous? Show some respect, gentlemen."

ON WHY PEOPLE VOTE:

Capriles:

"The act of voting is a rational, and emotional, act."

ON CHAVEZ (II):

Maduro:

"I don't have any doubt that if any man who walked this earth did what was needed so that Christ the redeemer would give him a seat at his side, it was our redeemer liberator of the 21st century, the comandante Hugo Chavez."

ON THE POLLS:

Capriles, on polls showing him trailing:

"I don't think there is any poll that can take a snapshot of what is happening in Venezuela."

ON CONSPIRACY:

Maduro:

"In homage and in honor of our commander there is but one destiny: Victory, the victory of the Venezuelan people against the forces of evil, against the forces of darkness."

ON THE NUMBERS:

Capriles, who lost an October election to Chavez by 8 million to 6.5 million votes, or 55-45 percent:

"For them to get the same amount of votes as the president (Chavez), to me would be fraud. ... I'm not sure anyone would believe it."

ON MY OPPONENT:

Capriles, on Maduro:

"I tell you clearly, Nicolas, I am not going to speak of the times you lied to the country, shamelessly. ...The people have not voted for you, boy."

Maduro, on Capriles:

"He's become crazy. His eyes are popping out of his head. Why are they popping out? Whatever the reason, he's obsessed with me."

ON RELATIONSHIPS:

Capriles, who is single, responding to Maduro's public suggestions that he is gay:

"I'm like a captain of a ship: I have a woman in every port."

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Venezuelan leader warns of sabotage plans

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro claims government opponents are planning to sabotage the country's power grid and interrupt food distribution ahead of the April 14 presidential election.

Maduro's comments come amid growing concerns about sporadic shortages of some basic foods and occasional power outages in several regions of Venezuela.

Government foes have rejected similar allegations about planned sabotage in the past.

Opposition politicians argue that the government is to blame for shortages because it has not allotted sufficient U.S. dollars to businesses that import food. They also say the government is responsible for the blackouts because it has not made investments required to maintain the power grid.

Maduro made the allegations during a televised speech on Monday.

He did not provide details of the alleged plans.

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Source: Venezuelan opposition leader to run

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles is set to announce he will run in elections to replace Hugo Chavez, setting up a make-or-break encounter against the dead president's hand-picked successor, a close adviser to the candidate says.

"He will accept" the nomination, the adviser told The Associated Press. He spoke Sunday on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the decision publicly ahead of a formal announcement scheduled for later in the day.

Other opposition sources refused to comment, but a political consultant at ORC Consultores, which advises Capriles, also said he would run.

"He will put himself forward," said Oswaldo Ramirez. "History is giving Capriles Radonski an important role."

Venezuela's election commission has set April 14 as the date of the vote, with formal campaigning to start just 12 days earlier. Ramirez said the 40-year-old opposition leader would demand that officials extend the campaign period by moving up the start date by more than a week, and that acting president Nicolas Maduro not be allowed to abuse state resources to boost his chances during the campaign.

Maduro has already announced his intention to run as the candidate of Chavez's socialist party. On Sunday he picked up the support of Venezuela's small communist party as well.

Capriles faced a stark choice in deciding whether to compete in the vote, which most analysts say he is sure to lose amid a frenzy of sympathy and mourning for the dead president.

Some say a second defeat for Capriles just six months after he lost last year's presidential vote to Chavez could derail his political career. If he waits, a Chavista government led by Nicolas Maduro, the acting president, might prove inept and give him a better shot down the road. But staying on the sidelines also would have put his leadership of the opposition.

"If he says he doesn't want to run I could totally understand that," said David Smilde, an analyst with the U.S.-based think tank the Washington Office on Latin America. "He is likely going to lose and if he loses this election he's probably going to be done."

On a personal Twitter page that bore all the rah-rah adornments of a campaign site, Capriles wrote Saturday afternoon: "I am analyzing the declaration of the (electoral commission setting the date) and in the next hours I will talk to the country about my decision." A spokesman said Capriles would make an announcement in the early evening.

Analysts predict the next five weeks will increase the nasty, heated rhetoric that began even before Chavez's death Tuesday after a nearly two-year fight with cancer.

Maduro, who was named Chavez's vice president after the October election, was sworn in as this oil-rich country's acting leader Friday night. He is expected to file election papers on Monday

Opposition critics have called Maduro's ascension unconstitutional, noting the charter designates the National Assembly president as acting leader if a president-elect cannot be sworn in.

On the streets of Caracas on Sunday, opinion was as divided as always in a country that became dramatically more polarized during Chavez's 14-year rule.

"It's not fair," said Jose Mendez, a 54-year-old businessman of the choice the opposition leader faces. "(Maduro) has an advantage, because of everything they have done since Chavez's death, all the sentiment they've created ... But the guy has nothing. He can't hold a candle to Chavez."

But Ramon Romero said the opposition was just making excuses, and had no chance of victory in any case.

"Now their odds are even worse," said the 64-year-old waiter and staunch Chavez supporter. "They don't care about anyone, and we (the voters) have been lifted out of darkness."

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Associated Press writers Paul Haven, E. Eduardo Castillo and Jack Chang contributed to this report.

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All eyes on Venezuelan hospital, no sign of Chavez

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — In Caracas' military hospital, there is no outward sign that President Hugo Chavez is a patient other than the motorcades that come and go, and the troops in red berets standing guard.

Atop the Dr. Carlos Arvelo Military Hospital, a sign with a large photo of Chavez smiling pays tribute to the socialist leader.

Some of his supporters shout "He's back!" as they drive past. And journalists have been crowding around the entrance of the hospital where the government says Chavez has been receiving more cancer treatment.

The government hasn't released a single photo of Chavez since his return from Cuba on Monday, and that has some Venezuelans doubting whether he's in the hospital. Others insist he is there, just out of sight while undergoing treatment.

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