BY FRANCES ROBLES

  CARACAS - A 39-day strike aimed at ousting Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez intensified Thursday with a 48-hour bank and supermarket shutdown, even as more and more small businesses gave up and opened their doors.

  The attempt to revive a wavering strike aimed at toppling the president by closing banks instead devalued the Venezuelan currency, which dipped 5 percent to a record low value of 1,593 bolivars to the dollar, as many people rushed to purchase dollars.

  The strike, called last month by business, labor and oil interests in a quest to force Chávez's resignation, saw important advances as supermarket chains closed, saying they could not operate with 75 percent of banks shut down. Transportation workers said they would decide Monday whether to walk off their jobs of running mass transit, which has so far operated normally.

  LOSING SOME STEAM

  But despite those significant moves, the strike was clearly losing steam as many businesses faced economic reality and reopened. In eastern parts of the city traditionally against the president, business was brisk and traffic flowing. Large companies, including shopping malls, movie theaters and fast-food franchises, remained shuttered. The weakening strike was viewed as a possible boost to the president, who has refused to recognize the work stoppage, even as oil production slows to a crawl and the government loses $50 million a day.

  Chávez has refused to step down, and he declined to authorize the $22 million to fund a Feb. 2 referendum asking voters whether he should quit.

  ''If Caracas is working, then Chávez is winning,'' said Roger Diwan, a senior analyst at Petroleum Finance Co. in Washington, D.C. ``If he can reorganize the oil sector and start pumping, he has won.''

  At Plaza Francia -- the heart of the opposition movement where dissident admirals have protested since October -- you can lunch on pizza or sushi, and then get your hair done, buy a cellphone or book a vacation. Many businesses feign striking by covering their windows with metal gates, while opening their doors for customers.

  ''They'll have to continue with some other kind of protest, rallies or whatever,'' said Orlando Figuera, manager of Guilio's Pizza, which reopened Jan. 3. ``A strike that takes the country backward, paralyzes it, is craziness. We felt a moral duty, a civic duty, to close. Then reality made us open.''

  Even gas lines have shortened.

  SHORTER WAITS

  ''One night I got to the gas station at 7 p.m. and got my gas at 6 a.m.,'' said Rolando Rocha, who, like most taxi drivers, never walked off the job. ``Now, it's maximum 30 minutes. For me, this strike never happened.

  ``It failed.''

  Arnold Moreno, head of the Chamber of Commerce's shopping-center division, said 89 percent of mall stores closed in the first week of the strike. Christmas week the number dropped to 57 percent, but the closure rate is now back up to 70 percent, he said.

  Shopping centers have had a high closure rate, because proprietors were pressured by mall owners, government advocates say. And many stay closed not so much out of civic allegiance, but because customers are scarce.

  At Christmas, sales were down 50 percent, and now they are five to 10 percent of normal, Moreno said. Malls lost some $6 million a day in sales.

  ''Sales are not what they expected,'' Moreno said.

  But even business owners who reopened say the opposition has succeeded in strangling the economy that needs more than pizzerias and delis to survive. Chávez, they said, has taken advantage of their reopening to continue his rhetoric that the strike flopped.

  ''The fact that I'm open and tweezing some lady's eyebrows does not mean there is no strike,'' said Ernesto Oropeza, manager of the Chic Lady salon, which reopened two weeks ago. ``We've had two customers today. I'm not producing. This nation is at strike, and it's about time the president realizes it.''

  BACKING THE STRIKE

  Even as the capital appeared to wake from its month-long nap, the customers at the open stores and the workers serving them insisted the strike was still going strong.

  ''You wake up in the morning and you realize you're running low on toothpaste. You can't walk to the store -- the one nearby is closed -- so you take a taxi to the o  that's open, because you don't want to use up your gas,'' said Evelyn Bermergui, a Chic Lady customer. ``Instead of charging $4, the taxi driver charges $8. There's no milk at the supermarket, so you buy powdered.

  ``You cannot say there is no strike.''