By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service

CUMANA, Venezuela -- The red beret of President Hugo Chavez's revolution never went out of style in this impoverished coastal town in parched northeastern
Venezuela, and it was here that the president traveled this month to escape the fervid conspiracy theories running rampant in his capital.

Chavez's populism breathes easier here. Looking out over the flapping red flags of the Venezuelan Communist Party, the orange banners of the Movement Toward
Socialism, and the hand-drawn "With you now and always" signs, it is possible to recall the heady days that followed Chavez's election three years ago when he
promised to shift power from what he called the "rotten oligarchy" to Venezuela's disenfranchised.

But now, Chavez is under fire. In army fatigues and red beret, he lashed out at his opponents. "We all want a different nation, a healthy nation, all except these few
squalid ones," he boomed, in a reference to his critics, delighting the crowd of several thousand supporters gathered on a blazing airport tarmac here, about 190 miles
east of the capital, Caracas.

After winning two presidential elections, engineering a new constitution and destroying a corrupt two-party system that controlled power and patronage in Venezuela
for decades, Chavez is facing resistance to his autocratic style and leftist policies. A disjointed opposition is growing into a cohesive civic protest movement.

The president is still enormously popular among the almost 20 million poor, out of a population of 24 million. But his support is showing signs of dissolving more
quickly than he or Western diplomats had once thought possible, driven by the full-throated media that eagerly carry coup rumors and criticism from labor unions,
schoolteachers, business leaders, farmers and other groups hoping to drive the president from power.

Public opinion polls, political defections and interviews suggest that a legal opposition movement is coalescing around several politicians and new political parties,
although few have offered detailed alternatives to Chavez's left-leaning platform. Meanwhile, a clandestine movement to oust him by force is underway, suggesting a
rough ride ahead for one of the United States' leading oil suppliers.

Select radio stations recently have been playing satiric anti-Chavez songs written to the bouncy rhythm of traditional gaita music, while pot-banging protests have
echoed around the capital during the president's notoriously long national addresses. And two specific campaigns are underway to remove Chavez from office -- a
petition drive on the streets, and a push in the National Assembly to have him declared insane by a medical panel appointed by the Supreme Court. Neither has much
chance of success because Chavez allies have a majority in the National Assembly and fill the high court and the national election board.

"There is no legal solution, so what can we do? In my opinion, military intervention is inevitable," said Oswaldo Alvarez Paz, a former opposition governor summoned
by Chavez after his election to help draft a new constitution. "Chavez has created this atmosphere of confrontation. I think the process to remove him has already
begun, but when it will finish I do not know."

Much of the new opposition has matured over the past six months as Chavez, once accused of conducting a revolution only of words, has approved dozens of laws
without much public participation. Using decree powers authorized by the National Assembly, Chavez issued an energy law requiring new ventures to be 51 percent
government owned and a long-promised measure that allows the government to seize unproductive private farmland and turn it over to landless peasants.

The land reform law also extends credit to any private farmer who wants to make his land productive rather than lose it. But the two land reform measures have
prompted a powerful segment of the opposition to act. The ranching association and leading business groups have called a national strike for next month.

At the same time, a crime wave that has resulted in more than 5,000 murders this year has brought poor people into the streets demanding more security.

"We are facing a hysterical, irrational opposition without serious leadership," said Tarek William Saab, a member of Chavez's Fifth Republic Movement and head of
the legislature's foreign policy committee. "If they are moving toward a violent solution, encouraging the military toward violence, then they are playing with fire. The
business sector continues to criticize us. So why don't they do something to help this country, like bringing back the $120 billion they keep in banks overseas?"

As the rally here suggested, many Venezuelans still view Chavez as the only one who cares enough about their problems to solve them. Sweating after five hours
waiting for the president, Revela Echeverria clutched a piece of notepaper covered with blue writing. "Commander," the note began. "I am poor and I need your help
finding a place to live." She hoped to pass the note, signed "Your friend, Revela," to Chavez.

"These old politicians, some of whom are still around here, stole our pensions, never gave us enough to eat, built so little housing we are in the streets," said
Echeverria, a mother of five children who said she earns $60 a month working in the town hall of Carupano east of here. "Now they tell us we are ignorant for
supporting Chavez. They are the ignorant ones."

For the opposition, the question is who among it has the skill to take on Chavez, whose popularity ratings have fallen from the 80 percent range to somewhere near
50 percent. A senior Bush administration official said, "He's had the best of his presidency already. But the key sometimes is not how popular you are, but how
popular your opponent is. And in Venezuela there is no one right now who comes close to Chavez."

Caracas Mayor Alfredo Peña, a longtime media personality who once served as Chavez's chief of staff, appears to be the most viable challenger. Although elections
are five years off, Peña commissioned a poll this month that showed him defeating Chavez by almost 10 percentage points. Chavez has already begun calling him
"Little Bean Three," recalling a name he gave to his first presidential opponent who made the mistake of saying that one of his pastimes was riding his horse Little
Bean.

Peña is one of several mayors who are trying to challenge Chavez and his revolutionary rhetoric by running a competent government. He hired former New York
police commissioner William J. Bratton to address Caracas's crime problems. The challenge has been daunting, however, in a city that has less than one-tenth the
number of police officers per capita as New York and where the 8,000-member police force must share 2,000 guns.

Although his critics say he is an opportunist created by the opposition media, Peña said he broke with the president because of differences over private property, the
dangers posed by neighboring Colombia's guerrilla forces and the importance of good relations with the United States.

"Chavez thinks he is the owner of public opinion, that he is chosen by God," Peña said. "If he doesn't correct his course and govern like a democrat, he cannot finish
his term."

Another potential challenge comes from a new and increasingly popular party made up of mostly young, upper middle-class politicians. The party, First Justice,
sprang from a civic movement that helped create neighborhood mediators to solve problems in ways not unlike U.S. small claims courts.

It has also proposed its own center-right constitution that is about the closest thing to a political alternative to Chavez, guaranteeing health, education and justice while
proposing far less government control over the economy. In less than two years, it has elected six National Assembly deputies, three mayors and 35 municipal
council members. But the party has yet to show much reach beyond Caracas's richest neighborhoods.

"We view individual prosperity as a value, while this government sees it as a problem," said Leopoldo Lopez, the Harvard-trained mayor of Chacao, a section of
Caracas made up of wealthy neighborhoods.

Lopez, one of the leaders of First Justice, said that "many in the opposition are looking for ways to get to Miraflores," the presidential palace, "but this is incorrect.
There is much more governing to be done by a popular mayor than an unpopular president."

Lopez runs his government as a U.S. mayor would, generating monthly progress reports with economic statistics, construction starts and crime rates. He takes to the
streets twice a week to hold open-air meetings with constituents. His party hopes to elect 150 mayors and half the National Assembly within three years.

"Even if .01 percent of Chavez supporters stayed with the president after a coup, taking up arms in his defense, that would be about 20,000 people," Lopez said.
"That's an army the size of the FARC," Colombia's largest guerrilla force.

If Chavez does not have enough problems with a democratic opposition, there are people who say they want to overthrow him by force. These are members of the
shadowy National Emergency Junta, a group whose members say they have support in the military and middle and upper classes. The group has taken out ads in the
Washington Times calling on Chavez to step down, and now its members say they are close to throwing him out with help from disaffected mid-level and senior
officers in the 100,000-member military. Earlier this month, the military command felt the need to issue a statement of support for Chavez, warning that
insubordination would pose a threat to democracy.

Arguing that Chavez's government is illegitimate because it allegedly eliminated the 1961 constitution through an illegal referendum, junta members said they have the
right to take power "to rescue the country from dictatorship." About eight to 10 people comprise the junta, which members say is led by a civilian with support in the
officer corps. The junta is democratic, one member said in an interview in Caracas, and would call an election after the coup "when it was safe to do so."

"Our goal is to take power," this junta member said. "It would be better if Chavez left peacefully. If not, there is no other way to do this but with force. Because he
has left no legitimate exit for the people, this becomes legitimate. It could happen any time."

                                               © 2001