Waving Venezuelan flags and placards reading "Chavez Resign," thousands of
                 people joined the opposition march organized by a broad coalition of political
                 parties, unionists and business leaders to mark the ouster of dictator Gen. Marcos
                 Perez Jimenez in a popular uprising on January 23, 1958.

                 The increasingly united opposition organized what it called "Great March for
                 Venezuelan Liberty and Democracy" amid widespread disillusionment with Chavez's
                 authoritarian style of government, acerbic leftist rhetoric and statist policies.

                 Since taking office in the world's No. 4 oil exporter three years ago, Chavez's
                 popularity has halved to just over 40.

                 "We want Chavez out of office. We don't need him, he is crazy," growled one
                 marcher on television. Nearby, others carried a coffin reading "Chavez Is Dead."

                 The populist president, who still enjoys a firm bedrock of support among the poor
                 majority of the South American nation's 24 million people, ordered his own rally.

                 "We came in solidarity with the president's call," said one female marcher, wearing
                 Chavez's trademark red paratrooper beret. "We share the ideals of a sovereign
                 country, free and independent and living in equality."

                 Since he embarked on his "peaceful revolution" to redistribute Venezuela's natural
                 wealth and fight corruption, Chavez has split one of Latin America's
                 longest-running democracies along class lines, with tirades against "squalid
                 oligarchs" and promises to carve up large land estates.

                 "Both the opposition and the government are measuring their strength," said Luis
                 Vicente Leon of pollsters Datanalisis. "Both of them desperately hope the balance
                 comes out in their favor."

                 Preparing for violence

                 With previous marches last year ending in street battles between opposition
                 militants and hard-line Chavez supporters, authorities were prepared for violence on
                 Wednesday.

                 Hundreds of police and National Guard officials lined the shabby streets of
                 downtown Caracas, where the marches were due to pass within four blocks of one
                 another near the National Assembly building. The government prohibited
                 Venezuela's heavily armed citizenry from carrying handguns for 36 hours.

                 "This is the best proof that we are living in a real democracy where people can
                 demonstrate," Defense Minister Jose Vicente Rangel said from the lines of the
                 government march.

                 The widely publicized opposition march succeeded in motivating Venezuela's
                 politically apathetic middle class, frightened by the possibility Chavez wished to
                 remold Venezuela in the image of communist Cuba, led by his friend President Fidel
                 Castro.

                 "Are you going to the march? I am on my way," said one elegantly dressed women
                 on a cell phone in a patisserie in a wealthy suburb of Caracas. In recent days,
                 national newspapers had published a guide how to go to a political demonstration,
                 including advice on taking sun-block.

                 "Obviously, the opposition has much more to prove now, not just because the
                 president is less popular than he was a year ago, but because the opposition has
                 shown it can organize this type of movement," said Leon of Datanalisis.

                 Economists have blamed rising political tensions for a decline in business
                 investment and a slide in the South American nation's foreign reserves, as worried
                 savers formed lines in some banks to change their savings into dollars.

                 After Chavez had adopted a conciliatory tone in an address to the National
                 Assembly last week, Wednesday's march was likely to return the attention of
                 financial markets to the instability of the political situation in Venezuela.

                 "There is growing consensus that both the economic policies currently in place and
                 the escalation of the political conflict between Chavez and the opposition are not
                 sustainable," said Bear Stearns in a recent research note.

                    Copyright 2002 Reuters.