Blinders finally off about Venezuela's slide to dictatorship.

Byline: Myriam Marquez

Hugo Chavez has only himself to blame for Venezuela's chaos. Even the poor, who had been the leftist president's biggest supporters, are mostly fed up with his knee-jerk, strong-arm, uncompromising rule that has devastated the economy, quashed civil liberties and made life miserable for everyone, rich or poor.

In its second week of a national workers' strike, Venezuela is imploding. Chavez blames the rich and the elites for wanting to keep the country's wealth to themselves, but that old commie line _ surely borrowed from his Cuban godfather, Fidel Castro _ isn't fooling most people. Recent polls say only 45 percent of the poor still support Chavez. The majority of the country _ at every level _ wants Chavez gone.

When a president goes on TV to stir up violence against news operations and unarmed protesters, as Chavez has done, that indicates no respect for democracy and peaceful dissent. People holding signs or banging pots to call for Chavez to hold a non-binding referendum on whether he should step down have been tear-gassed, beaten, some shot dead by pro-Chavez thugs. Elites? Hardly.

Killed last week by pro-Chavez mobs were an old lady who worked as a street vendor, a teen-age girl and a professor _ the very people Chavez has insisted his Fifth Republic Movement is supposed to stick up for.

The three were among thousands who marched in Caracas to protest Chavez's escalating reign of terror and his resistance, until recently, to have the Organization of American States mediate a peaceful way out. Those millions who oppose Chavez aren't coup plotters _ they're citizens who want their constitutional rights upheld, who want Chavez to leave the Marxist road he's on and set a peaceful course to democratic rule.

The captain of the gasoline tanker anchored in the middle of Lake Maracaibo, surrounded by 10 other oil ships, shrimpers and others blocking the shipping channel, told it straight in the midst of Venezuela's general strike.