Local Venezuelans prepare for vote

Referendum will determine length of Chávez's rule

Mirna Lascano, Rena Yllas, Mercedes Alvarez, Pedro Diaz, and Dirgni Rodriguez prepared balloting materials at the consulate. (Photos by Mark Wilson/Globe Staff)

Even in a bland office building on Boylston Street, Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, is stirring up controversy.

His smiling portrait, draped in a red, blue, and yellow sash, beamed Friday from the walls in his nation's tiny consulate near a CVS and a coffee shop, as election workers rushed to prepare for today's crucial national referendum. In Venezuela, and abroad, voters will flock to the polls to decide whether to pass a constitutional amendment that would lift term limits for Chávez and other elected officials.

The contentious socialist leader, an outspoken critic of the United States who survived a coup in 2002, is slated to leave office in 2013. But if the amendment passes, he could run for reelection indefinitely. He narrowly lost a referendum with a similar provision in 2007.

The vote is dividing Venezuelans, from the thousands of demonstrators taking to the streets in Caracas to support Chávez to groups of angry dissidents and to the quiet disagreement among the Venezuelan immigrants living in the Boston area who will be voting on the referendum at the Boston consulate.

"This is another step of him trying to continue his power in our country," said Felipe López, 56, of Newton, a voter and observer who arrived at the consulate Friday morning to set up for the vote. He said he planned to vote no.

But Vanessa Matamoros, a 40-year-old management consultant who plans to vote in favor of lifting term limits, shook her head. "If people don't want him, they don't have to vote for him," she said of Chávez. "He could lose. Everything is possible."

Today, about 720 Venezuelan citizens in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine - the area covered by the Boston consulate - are registered to vote. Polls open at 8 a.m., close at 6 p.m., and the results will be faxed to Venezuela.

Chávez has lost overwhelmingly in elections and referendums held at the Boston consulate in the past. In 2006, he was reelected president with 63 percent of the vote in Venezuela, but he only got 6 percent of the vote in the Boston area.

The referendum is the latest chapter in a political career that catapulted Chávez to power in 1998 on the promise of narrowing the vast gap between the rich and poor in the South American nation, a key exporter of petroleum to the United States.

Chávez supporters pointed out that he is still widely popular in Venezuela for expanding healthcare and education to poor people across the country. And they say that generosity extends to Massachusetts and 22 other states, where Venezuela-owned Citgo donates heating oil to poor people through Joseph P. Kennedy II's Citizens Energy Corp.

But according to the US Department of State, Venezuela's political scene is "highly polarized and volatile." Opponents criticize Chávez for abusing government resources to disseminate his message and fear that lifting term limits will erode democracy.

"He is almost a constitutional monarch now," said Leonardo Vivas, a Venezuelan national and fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School. "If he is allowed to be reelected forever he will be a constitutional king."

For the roughly 2,200 Venezuelans in Massachusetts, concerns about their homeland extend beyond politics to personal safety. The capital of Caracas is said to have the highest per capita homicide rate in the world and kidnappings, robberies, and assaults occur nationwide.

López, who left Venezuela 28 years ago to study in the United States, then married and became a US citizen, said lifting term limits could weaken the incentive for politicians to improve public safety and other domestic concerns. A relative was pistol-whipped and mugged two years ago in the middle of the day, he said.

"There is a huge problem with security," he said. "It isn't safe to go anywhere."

But Chávez supporters say he is trying to build a revolution in his homeland that would dramatically aid the poor and disenfranchised, and they say that makes the middle and upper class uncomfortable.

"I've always supported the revolution and social change," said Ernesto Calderón, a 35-year-old network engineer who lives in Winchester with his family. "You want things to be good for everyone."

Others point out that other countries don't have term limits, and Chávez has shown that he can accept defeat, as he did in the 2007 referendum.

"At the end of the day, it's the people who will decide," said Omar Sierra, consul general in Boston.