Folk hero violinist hurt at Caracas protest
A VIOLINIST who gained fame for playing at many of Venezuela’s opposition marches was injured during a protest over the weekend.
Wuilly Arteaga, 23, was seen with blood gushing from cuts on the left side of his face. He said later he had been hit by buckshot.
He frequently protests against President Nicolas Maduro’s government and has become something of a demonstration icon.
“They are not going to frighten me,” he said in a video he posted on Twitter, which shows him in a hospital bed with bandages on his face and swollen lips. “We are going to keep fighting.”
Earlier this week, a new photograph appeared of him crying and holding a broken violin after a military policeman snatched it by the strings.
Messages of support flooded social media and within hours he appeared in an online video playing a new violin donated by a well-wisher.
In another iconic incident, Arteaga wove calmly through clouds of tear gas, with his violin on his shoulder, playing the classic Venezuelan folk song Alma Llanera.
Immortalised in photographs from that performance during a demonstration on May 8, he said he meant it as a “message of peace.”