The Battalion
WORLD & NATION
Wednesday, March 1,1989
Government tries to restore order to Caracas
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Rioting over price in
creases ravaged Caracas for a second day Tuesday as
looting spread, and the government said that to restore
order it was suspending constitutional guarantees.
Police estimated up to 50 people were killed and 500
injured in the worst violence in 30 years of democratic
rule. Thousands of people have been arrested, authori
ties said.
Civilians exchanged gunfire with police and shop
owners took up arms to protect their property in the
wake of the riots, which began Monday in Caracas, the
capital, and spread to up to seven other cities.
The month-old government of President Carlos
Andres Perez announced it has decided to suspend
constitional guarantees to re-establish order, and it au
thorized the army to impose a curfew, although no
hours were established. The Education Ministry or
dered school and university classes suspended nation
wide.
Caracas appeared empty Tuesday afternoon, with
police units stationed on the main corners to control
the few pedestrians who dared to venture out. Paddy-
wagons and trucks were filled with those arrested for
rioting and looting.
Policemen fired shotguns and tear gas to disperse
crowds trying to gather in nearby grocery stores. More
than 300 shops and stores have been sacked in Caracas,
according to official figures.
Looting also was reported Tuesday in the cities of
Valencia, Barquisimeto, Carora, Puerto La Cruz, San
Cristobal and Maralcaibo. The casualty toll in those cit
ies was not known.
Gun battles between police and residents continued
into Tuesday morning in San Agustin, a shantytown in
west (Caracas.
Police failed to prevent mobs from sacking stores in
the neighborhood, and one witness described how loot
ers carried 50 cow carcasses from a butcher shop and
hauled off the scales before police arrived.
Residents sacked and'burned one of the city’s largest
shopping centers in the wealthy neighborhood of San
Bernardino in a scene one TV reporter described as
“collective madness.”
“Some people brought cars and station wagons to
carry things away,” a reporter for Radio Caracas Tele
vision said.
Army and national guard units patrolled the streets
but could not stop the lawlessness.
“It is much worse than yesterday. Now we have seve
ral policemen injured and one commissioner died shot
by rioters,” Metropolitan Police inspector Omar Bolivar
told The Associated Press.
Officer Jesus Mesa Isturiz was killed in a poor neigh
borhood where “rioters are better armed than we are.
They have rifles, pistols, revolvers, even submachine
guns out there,” Bolivar said.
A National Guard officer said the death toll may be
as high as 50 in Caracas and surrounding areas. “We
have reports from different units that leads us to figure
it out,” said the officer, who spoke on condition of ano
nymity.
Independent reports estimated damage nationwide
to be in the millions of dollars. On some Caracas streets,
virtually every store was looted.
Six owners of a supermarket in the wealthy Los Palos
Grandes neighborhood stayed on the roof of their
building armed with rifles and pistols, “readv to defend
our property,” one of them said.
He said police had refused to protect his business
and that he and his family decided to “fight the only
way we can.”
The riots began Monday with bus fare increases
across the country —part of a sweeping economic re
form package announced by Perez to breathe life into
the stagnant economy and convince international bank
ers to increase loans to the country.
Officially, bus fares were to rise only about 30 per
cent — on urban routes, for example, from the equiva
lent of about a nickel to 7 cents. But Transportation
Minister Gustavo Rada said some increases had been as
high as 50 percent, apparently because of price-goug
ing by bus drivers.
Caracas residents said rising food prices also were to
blame.
13017101“It was about time something like this hap
pened. People finally got fed up and came down from
the hills to protest,” said Josefina Vasquez, a neighbor
hood leader.
Others called the looters common criminals taking
advantage of mass confusion.
7-Eleven owners plan protest against chain
WASHINGTON (AP) — John
Watson was home asleep, he says,
when Southland Corp. officials, ac
companied by two uniformed, off-
duty police officers, tried to take his
7-Eleven franchise store “by force”
before dawn one Saturday.
Southland had given Watson
three days’ notice that he was in
breach of his franchise contract
when company officials swept into
the store and tried unsuccessfully to
take control of the safe and rip the
door to his office from its hinges,
Watson says.
A 7-Eleven franchise owner for
about 10 years, Watson accuses
Southland of “retail sharecropping.”
He is leading a bitter fight against
the giant Dallas-based chain by the
Capital Area 7-Eleven Franchise
Owners Association.
At issue is Southland’s formula
for splitting 7-Eleven profits. Wat
son and other owners contend it
doesn’t account for the costs of run
ning stores in the inner city, where
labor costs more, shoplifting is more
frequent and managers have to con
tend with neighborhood violence.
Southland officials say they have
considered the complaints and im
proved franchisers’ terms.
Corporate officials also said they
entered Watson’s store before dawn
to avoid interfering with business.
Kathleen Callahan-Guion, manager
of the chain’s Capital division, said
the safe had to be seized because
Watson was in a “serious deficit posi
tion” and had become a “serious fi
nancial risk.”
“We were trying to protect our se
curity interests,” Callahan-Guion
said.
The District of Columbia City
Council and the National Associa
tion for the Advancement of Col
ored People have been drawn into
the dispute, and the owners associa
tion plans a Capitol Hill march
Wednesday to protest the corpora
tion.
Franchise owners claim they
aren’t making enough money under
their Southland contracts, which
give most franchise owners 48 per
cent of the stores’ gross profits.
Out of that owners must pay
wages and cover inventory losses
from shoplifting and employee
theft. Southland is responsible for
leases, taxes, utilities and other ex
penses.
“Sometimes they (franchise own
ers) are getting 48 percent of noth
ing,” said Fred Rasheed, national di
rector of the NAACP’s economic
development program.
Callahan-Guion said the company
has been making significant changes
to help its D.C. stores, and about a
third now get a 52 percent cut to
Southland’s 48 percent.
Separatists in Canada struggle over languages
MONTREAL (AP) — It appeared the French
and English languages could live together in
Quebec after separatist fervor abated nearly a
decade ago, but the struggle resumed in Decem
ber and French appears to have won.
“Resigned is probably the right catchword,”
Donald Taylor, a psychology professor at McGill
University, said.
Language is “a symbol of identity and it also is
a resource that has associated power, and status,
and success and access,” he said. “So these appar
ently minor events evoke very primary feelings.”
Quebec was a battleground of culture and lan
guage in the 1970s between the 81 percent with
French heritage and a minority with a cultural
kinship to Ontario and the other English-speak
ing provinces.
Power shifted to the French-speaking majority
in those years but the separatist tide ebbed after
1980, and with it the dispute over language,
when Quebec voters rejected a sovereignty refer
endum.
Then came a ruling by the Supreme Court of
Canada in December that a 1977 Quebec law' re
quiring all signs to be in French was unconstitu
tional. The court said French could be required
to predominate on all signs but other languages
could not be prohibited.
The provincial government, which has
broader powers than state governments in the
United States, overrode the decision with new
legislation for the language on signs.
Bill 178, as it is known, requires that all out
door signs still be solely in French, but for the
first time since 1977 allowed bilingual indoor
signs. Premier Robert Bourassa described it as a
compromise.
Rallies by activists of both communities have
accompanied the latest round.
Fewer street protests are held now, but the
conflict continues as regulations under Bill 178
are interpreted to restrict indoor bilingual signs
Survey shows decrease
in level of drug usage
among high schoolers
WASHINGTON (AP) — Drug
use among high school seniors
last year dropped to its lowest
level since 1975, an annual survey
released Tuesday said. Still, more
than half of all students use an il
legal drug at least once before
graduating.
Researchers and health offi
cials said they were particularly
encouraged by results showing
the second straight significant
drop in cocaine use and the be
ginnings of a retreat in use of the
smokeable and highly addictive
form of cocaine called crack.
Alcohol is by far the most
widely used of the substances,
with nearly 64 percent of the se
niors reporting they had had a
drink within the previous 30
days. Cigarettes were next with
nearly 29 percent having smoked
within the previous month and 18
percent reporting they were daily
smokers.
Some 16,300 high school se
niors from 135 schools nation
wide were polled in the survey.
Lloyd Johnston, one of the re
searchers in the' study, declined to
identify the schools, but he said
they included public and private
schools across the continental
United States.
The survey, which has been
conducted by the University of
Michigan’s Institute for Social Re
search every year since 1975,
found that the proportion of high
school seniors w'ho reported hav
ing ever used an illegal drug
dropped to 53.9 percent in 1988.
That’s the lowest level recorded
since the survey began, when the
rate was 55.2 percent.
“The news is very encourag
ing,” said Charles R. Schuster, di
rector of the National Institute on
Drug Abuse, which sponsored
the study.
“The problem is there are still
pockets, primarily among those
who have dropped out of high
school, where drug use remains
at very high levels,” he said.
The continued decline in drug
use suggests that anti-drug cam
paigns educating the young about
drug use are being heard, Lloyd
Johnston, a University of Michi
gan social psychologist, said.
WANNA FIGHT?
Open division entries for those wanting
to box in Sigma Phi Epsilon’s 13th An
nual Fight Night are now being ac
cepted. Fight Night will take place April
9 & 10 at the College Station Hilton. In
dividual and Dorm teams are welcome.
Those wanting to fight must form a
team consisting of 4 to 5 members.
‘DEADLINE: APPLICATION WITH ENTRY FEE
DUE MARCH 6,1989
For more information, call Kyle Hamrick
Matt Warner or Darren Richter Ring Chairman
Fight Night Co-Chairman 774-4887
696-7173
Exchange Ideas...
Exchange Cultures...
Be an EXCHANGE STUDENT
May 22 through Tune 22, 1989
***a cultural exchange hosted by Georg August
Universitat students
***live with families in Gottingen, West Germany
^^^travel to other parts of Europe
Informational Meeting: Thursday, March 9,1989 in
Room 604 Rudder at 7:00 pm.
Applications are now available in 223G Browsing Library, second floor
MSC, and are due on Monday, March 20,1989 at noon.
COST = group rate airfare + spending money
MSC Jordan Institute for International Awareness
845-8770
13th Annual
FIGHT NIGHT
BORED BY THE MOONWALK?
TIRED OF THE LIMBO?
TRY THE NUCLEAR POLKA!!!
COME TO THE
INTERNATIONAL
RANGE FEST
Thursday, March 2,1989,Room 212 and 224 MSC
TIME: 8:30pin - TAMU INTERNATIONAL FOLK
DANCERS will teach folk dances (Israeli,
European, South African, and more).
9:00pm - the band, ©©ROB®, will
start playing.
FREE ADMISSION!!!
j$|hMSC IORDAN INSTITUTE
^#T0R INTERNATIONAL AWARENESS
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