Venezuelans mourn
Protesters march across Caracas, pray for those killed.
CARACAS, Venezuela — Thousands of Venezuelans dressed in white, some walking with their hands up, marched Saturday in a silent protest in homage to the at least 20 people killed in unrest generated after the nation’s Supreme Court stripped congress of its last powers, a decision it later reversed.
Saturday’s protest was the latest mass gathering in a wave of tumult that has rocked the nation over the past three weeks as demonstrators continue to press for new elections. Throughout the protests, state security forces have confronted protesters with tear gas, drawing international condemnation. Those killed include protesters and bystanders struck by gunfire and a dozen dead in overnight clashes and looting that destroyed more than two dozen businesses in a working-class neighborhood.
“We should remember there are people who were killed fighting for the cause we are defending,” opposition lawmaker Freddy Guevara told demonstrators walking through Caracas on Saturday. “And if they died for this we don’t have the right to rest.”
Elsewhere in the city, smaller pockets of violent protesters, some of them with their faces covered and throwing rocks, clashed with riot police, who responded with tear gas.
The opposition contends rogue, armed pro-government groups are fomenting the violence. Government leaders claim the violence is being generated by right-wing opposition forces working with criminal gangs in an attempt to remove them from power.
“These are terrorist groups on a mission to sow hate and death,” Diosdado Cabello, leader of the ruling socialist party, told supporters last week.
For the first time, protesters were able to cross on Saturday from the east to the western side of Caracas without being confronted by state security, an act that Guevara compared in a tweet to “crossing the Berlin wall” that divides one half from the other. Eastern Caracas is home to some of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, while the western side has poorer communities.
Once assembled outside the headquarters of the Roman Catholic bishops’ confederation, religious leaders led the crowd in a moment of silence and asked God for strength. Then a string of political leaders passed around a megaphone and from the back of a pickup repeated their demand of recent days for immediate elections and freedom for dozens of jailed government opponents they consider political prisoners.
“Let it be heard: The dictatorship is in its final days,” said Maria Corina Machado, who was stripped of her seat in congress in 2014. The crowd responded with shouts of “Freedom! Freedom!”