By CHRISTINA HOAG
 Special to The Herald

 CARACAS -- Caracas appeared on holiday on Monday, with some 90% of businesses, schools, factories, shopping malls, and hospitals shut in a national ``civic strike'' called to protest President Hugo Chávez's policies.

 While organizers of the strike claimed a big victory, the angry president vowed to ``tighten the screws'' against his opponents.

 Instead of going to work, people across the city stayed at home, and banged pots and pans out of their windows in ``cacerolazos'' that have become the hallmark of
 citizen protests against Chávez. The sound at times reached thunderous dimensions as people shouted ``Chávez get out!'' ``Chávez leave already!'' and ``Viva Venezuela!'' as well as ringing bells and other noise-making instruments on their balconies.

 ``It's a great success,'' said Carlos Fernández, first vice president of Fedecamaras, the country's biggest business association that called the strike to protest a set of
 laws Chávez adopted last month by decree. ``It doesn't even seem like a Sunday, it's like New Year's Day. Everything is completely paralyzed.''

 Streets in Caracas were virtually deserted. Highways normally with bumper to bumper traffic in the morning rush hour were empty. Trucks at the big Polar brewery stood idle; the normally packed parking lot of Makro hypermarket in Petare loomed large with none of the usual mass of traffic, and the huge warehouse like store stood with darkened windows.

 The iron doors of the city's big shopping mall, Centro Sambil, which bills itself as being open 365 days a year, did not open.

 Private schools were closed, private hospitals only treated emergency cases, and newspapers did not publish Monday editions. Bus lines were partially operating, while the city's subway was in service.

 State owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. had to implement its contingency plan, in which management works the production lines because union
 employees did not show up.

 Street peddlers abandoned their stalls all over the city. Sabana Grande shopping boulevard, which on Sunday was so jampacked with sellers and shoppers that
 pedestrians had to elbow through the crowds, stood vacant and strewn with garbage.

 Television showed a similar situation across Venezuela, including the major cities of Maracaibo and Barquisimeto.

 Chávez, speaking in the morning at La Carlota air force base to mark Aviation Day while pots and pans were being banged from nearby residences, appeared furious at the strike's success. He said the action was called by oligarchs attempting to protect their entrenched interests against his land reform policies.

 ``I will never go and sit down at a negotiation table, not to consider the betrayal of a people 1,000 times betrayed,'' he bellowed. ``I am getting a pair of pliers because I'm going to start tightening the screws.''

 While last week Chávez sounded as if he may make concessions on the land law and other economic related legislation, the strike's success appeared to have hardened his atttidue.``Now, even more, we are going to acclerate the implementation of the laws we've approved. The oligarchy is asking that we eliminate them and that means we have to apply them, and fast.''

 Chávez bused in several thousand small farmers from around the country to a rally in downtown Caracas in favor of the land law.

 ``This strike is not of the people, it's of the powerful,'' said Jose Enrique Hernández, 48, a subsistence farmer from south central Portuguesa states. In the working class district of Catia, a traditional Chávez stronghold, about 40% of businesses did not open. Many merchants said they were not chavistas, but did not want to lose the day's sales in the busy Christmas buying season.

 ``I'm against the laws, but this strike doesn't benefit me,'' said Riad Mazloum, 29, owner of a lingerie shop.

                                    © 2001