Venezuelan Emigres Find Common Ground in Anger

Virginia Contreras, a former Venezuelan diplomat for Hugo Chavez's government who now lives in Germantown, straightens a Venezuelan flag in her window. Now a critic of Chavez, she says he has eroded democracy. (By Michael Williamson -- The Washington Post)

It was a tiny gesture of protest: a dozen college students flagging down cars for an hour on Embassy Row this month, wearing symbolic white gags across their mouths and holding up posters that quoted Albert Camus and Walt Whitman on the importance of free speech.

But the anger of these Venezuela-born young people -- furious at the shutdown of a popular private TV channel in Caracas -- reflected the fast-rising political fervor that is gripping Venezuelan immigrants in the United States after years of private frustration over the tightening revolutionary grip of President Hugo Chavez.

"I want to go back to a country where I am free to criticize and express my thoughts, but the government is trying to change the laws and indoctrinate the population," said Merquit Garcia, 21, an American University student who attended the protest. "Venezuela is divided now. Half the people see Cuba as a model, and half see it as a threat," she said. "The future is very unclear."

In Venezuela, the recent forced closure of Radio Caracas Television has convulsed the oil-rich South American nation, leading to massive street protests and sharpening the class divisions that Chavez's socialist policies and defiant anti-Americanism have been creating since he came to power in 1999.

In the Washington region, where a few thousand Venezuelan immigrants have long blended into quiet suburbs and professional settings, dozens of prominent refugees from the Chavez era have joined the community. In Miami, where tens of thousands of Venezuelans have built an active and influential enclave, the crisis in Caracas, the country's capital, has unleashed a parallel frenzy of meetings, protests and preparations to receive a small but growing wave of political refugees.

Virginia Contreras, a resident of Germantown, is a former Venezuelan judge and diplomat for the Chavez government. In 2001, she quit as Venezuela's representative to the Organization of American States and has become an outspoken critic of Chavez's rule, which she says has steadily eroded democratic freedoms while proclaiming itself to be a champion of the poor and a prototype of modern socialism.

"It is not just a bad government; it is a totalitarian government," said Contreras, 49, who often visits Miami and Caracas to work with opposition groups.

She called Chavez a "snake charmer" who is trying to create a "constitutional dictatorship" but is increasingly alienating the public. The closure of Radio Caracas Television, she said, "touched something vital. Now everyone can see what he is trying to do."

Venezuela's ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, said that the TV station's closure has been misunderstood and that freedom of expression is a "pillar" of Venezuelan democracy. Venezuelan officials accused the TV station of collaborating with Chavez opponents during a short-lived coup in 2002.

"There is clearly a debate in Venezuela, but the media should not abuse public space for anti-democratic actions or to work to destabilize the government," Alvarez said.

Alvarez said that the Chavez government had no intention of creating another Cuba and that foreign critics were viewing its policies through a distorted prism. "They need to take off their Cold War lenses and get new ones that reflect the new reality" of Latin American politics, he said in a telephone interview Monday from Panama.

Chavez has built an enormous following among Venezuela's poor, who have benefited from his assistance programs and been inspired by his rhetoric of social transformation. Among affluent citizens, however, the fear of a Cuban-style revolution has grown steadily, prompting a surge in political refugees from a country that historically has produced very few.