Pedaling towards disaster: Import-dependent Venezuelan businesses try to imagine a future without dollars

Latin Trade, April, 2003 by Mike Ceaser

After losing Christmas sales to the strike, many retailers have six months' stock piled up, so some goods are still plentiful, for now. And Chavez--at this point scheduled to rule until early 2007--could agree to a binding referendum on his presidency in August.

Violence is mounting. After Spain, the United States and Colombia criticized the arrest of opposition leader Carlos Fernandez, bombs exploded outside the Colombian and Spanish embassies. Five were reported injured in the powerful blasts. The U.S. Embassy closed for a day, as a precaution.

Back at Ciclos Segura, Mauricio Rodriguez, 35, walks in to buy a bike for his wife, but there is only one model available, and even then just two bikes in the shop. Ironically, bicycles enjoyed a new wave of popularity during the gasoline shortages fostered by Venezuela's lengthy petroleum strike, turning into elegant anti-Chavez symbols as the opposition mounted cyclomarchas through the streets of Caracas.

"The situation is bad," says Rodriguez. "And we haven't yet seen the worst. It's coming like death, slow but sure."

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