"Don't buy," strikers tell Venezuelan Xmas shoppers

By Magdalena Morales

CARACAS, Venezuela, Dec 20 (Reuters) - With four days left before Christmas and at a time when the festive shopping frenzy is reaching a peak in most countries, Venezuela''s shopping malls had a surprising message for their customers Friday.

"Don''t buy anything!," Arnold Moreno, President of the Venezuelan Shopping Centers'' Chamber said in an appeal to the public to support a 19-day-old nationwide strike launched by the opposition against leftist President Hugo Chavez.

Moreno, whose organization groups 260 shopping malls around the country, made the call at a meeting of striking oil workers in Caracas which voted to continue a crippling shutdown of the oil industry in the world''s No. 5 petroleum exporter.

The Shopping Centers'' Chamber has also backed the strike, which aims to press Chavez to resign and hold early elections.

Moreno said at least 70 percent of the chamber''s members were supporting the stoppage. Caracas'' biggest and best-known malls in the east of the city, which are normally bustling with shoppers, have remained mostly closed.

"Members of the trade have decided to lose December''s sales and I''m sure that if we have to go through the whole month like this, then we will," Moreno said.

He estimated that malls grouped in the chamber which backed the strike were together losing a total of between eight billion and 10 billion bolivars (between $6 million and $7.5 million) a day by staying closed in December. Christmas month sales are usually much higher than the rest of the year.

While malls in wealthy east Caracas, a bastion of opposition to Chavez, have mostly stayed shut, some comercial centers in downtown and western Caracas, where support for the populist president is high, have remained open. A similar divided reaction has also occurred in other cities.

CHRISTMAS IN JANUARY?

In Caracas'' self-employed street vendors have ignored the strike, doing brisk business as usual. And some traders in closed malls have appealed directly to Chavez, complaining that owners of the commercial centers had stopped them opening.

Many shoppers were frustrated by the closure of the malls, which group hundreds of retailers, comercial and food franchises, cinemas and pharmacists under the same roof. But supporters of he strike seemed willing to make the sacrifice.

"I''m not going to buy anything right now. I''m not going to give any presents to anyone, only in January, when Chavez steps down and the strike will be lifted. I am ready to have December without Christmas to win freedom in January," 57-year-old housewife Josefina Rodriguez said.

Chavez foes accuse him of ruling like a dictator and trying to install communism in Venezuela. Vowing to break the strike, Chavez has refused the calls to resign from the opposition, which includes business groups, unions and civic associations. ((Reporting by Magdalena Morales, editing by Saul Hudson; Reuters messaging pascal.fletcher.reuters.com@reuters.net 58-212-277-2656, pascal.fletcher@reuters.com))